Recent iMacs and screen calibration

[Westside guy]

Hi,

For various (mainly non-photo) reasons I expect to purchase a desktop Mac sometime between now and the end of the year. I've been on laptops exclusively for several years, and generally have used a laptop coupled with an external display for photo editing - but if I buy a desktop there would be some value in making it my main photo editing machine.

If you're wondering about the external displays, what I had at home crapped out - so the only "good"-ish display I currently have access to is a Dell monitor at work (I do some photo work as part of my job, so that's reasonably kosher).

I know the current iMacs - both little and big - have glossy displays, but they are now all IPS screens I believe... so I was curious to hear from people that own them and have properly calibrated them (e.g. with a Spyder or other colorimeter). How do they do overall for photo editing? Does the IPS glossy displays have trouble with blacks (or whites)? Any quirks you've noticed?

In the long term for home I still hope to buy a photo-quality monitor (e.g. LaCie, NEC, Eizo) as well, but that's another ball of wax.

Thanks for any feedback!

 

[Ruahrc]

I think one concern is that the new iMacs are LED backlit, and most entry level colorimeters don't work well with LED backlighting. If you read up on calibration on TVs, they make a big deal about this with a lot of recent TVs being LED backlit. I think they said that Spyder 3s and i1 Display2s don't work well with LED sources, and that you need a higher end meter to accurately calibrate it.

I'm not 100% sure I buy into it totally yet but they have some fairly compelling arguments/evidence.

Ruahrc