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Good monitor suitable for Photoshop and HD editing?

R

recordprod

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 26, 2005
59
0
My feeble 19" monitor isn't cutting the upgrade to HD I've been looking at the possible replacements that will plug in to my MacBook (so 30" is out!) that can give a crisp, fast and accurate(ish) display for editing pics and video.

The 23" Apple looks good but are there any cheaper alternatives? The Dell 24" looks quite interesting etc. Anyway, I thought this would be a good place to ask for opinions :)

Thanks!

Mike
 
If you want to use an Apple Cinema Display for judging color for video editing, you'll need this: http://www.matrox.com/video/products/mxo/ Otherwise you'd be better off with a properly calibrated external TV monitor for video work.

As for judging photographs and graphics in Photoshop, the Dell monitors are every bit as good as Apple's.

-DH
 
-DH said:
If you want to use an Apple Cinema Display for judging color for video editing, you'll need this: http://www.matrox.com/video/products/mxo/ Otherwise you'd be better off with a properly calibrated external TV monitor for video work.

As for judging photographs and graphics in Photoshop, the Dell monitors are every bit as good as Apple's.

-DH
Click to expand...

Yup, but even with a b'cast monitor he'll need an MXO to get the HD signal out of his laptop.


Lethal
 
i dont have a hd monitor, but i do have a 20 inch dell that i use. it uses the same phillips lcd screen that the 20 inch apple display uses, from what i heard though, the dells backlight is brighter. my monitor is calibrated and the colors are pretty good on it, but for video editing i always check the colors on a tv monitor.
 
If I downconvert to SD for a crt monitor would that give good enough colour information?

Thanks for the monitor suggestions. Quite a few of my snaps are published and so far, even with my Samsung TFT, I've been seeing the printed images look close enough to how it looked on the monitor so TFT's aren't that bad.
 
recordprod said:
If I downconvert to SD for a crt monitor would that give good enough colour information?
Click to expand...

If you downconverted to SD you'd still need a b'cast monitor ($500 for the budget models) and a way to get a signal out of your laptop. If you own a miniDV camera odds are you can use that to act as the go between via firewire.

It all depends on how accurate you need the colors to be.


Lethal
 
As it's been stated before, you need a broadcast monitor if color is really critical.

If it's not CRITICAL, then I would buy the Dell 24" LCD. It's on sale right now for $569 has a 1920x1200 resolution and is (essentially) the same panel that Apple uses in their displays (both made by Phillips, if I remember correctly).

Also, HERE is an interesting article on color calibration. There are a number of hardware solutions for calibrating your LCD monitor. Pantone makes an entry level calibrator called the Huey which is great for basic print uses.
 
makkystyle said:
As it's been stated before, you need a broadcast monitor if color is really critical.

If it's not CRITICAL, then I would buy the Dell 24" LCD. It's on sale right now for $569 has a 1920x1200 resolution and is (essentially) the same panel that Apple uses in their displays (both made by Phillips, if I remember correctly).

Also, HERE is an interesting article on color calibration. There are a number of hardware solutions for calibrating your LCD monitor. Pantone makes an entry level calibrator called the Huey which is great for basic print uses.
Click to expand...
So the hardware cabilbration you do for say photoshop work etc.. Is that profile OK for judging FCP timeline / Digital Cinema Desktop output also?

I have a Pantone Spyder system - I assume that would work fine?
 
I'm not too bothered about super accuracy, so long as it is close enough (maybe using a spyder etc). I'm not a Dell fan at all, have one of their laptops in the office, horrible thing, but the monitors seem to be pretty decent.

As a matter of interest, on the MacBook does driving a larger monitor like this suck up a lot of extra RAM?
 
Even w/a calibration tool you still don't have a way to get a good quality signal out of FCP w/o the MXO. FCP's Canvas window and Digital Cinema Desktop feature only give you a proxy image.

Maybe if there was an HDMI ExpressCard, and it was compatible with FCP you could get an HDTV w/HDMI and go that route. But I don't know if they are any HDMI cards like that.


Lethal
 
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