The Tenuous Link

I want to buy a couple of new monitors. One will be used for a little bit of TV watching and PC work, the other for photo editing and PC work. I was going to get two the same, but it seems that it would be best to spend a bit extra on the one for the picture editing ...

Monitors that are designed for video and gaming currently give fast response times (5ms "black to black" and 2ms "grey to grey") and typically have at best a 170 degree horizontal viewing angle. Monitors designed for photo editing seem to be a bit brighter (450 Cd/m2), have slower response times (greater than 8ms), have 178 degree viewing angles and are more expensive.

The faster response times and narrower viewing angles indicate a panel based on Twisted Nematic (TN) liquid crystal technology, and these do not have the ability to display full 8 bit-per-pixel (aka 24 bit) colour. They are often quoted to have 6 bit-per-pixel colour resolution. That's not ideal for picture editing.

The viewing angle specs (horizontal and vertical) are important for 2 reasons:

1/ When you sit in front of the monitor the different parts of the screen will be at different angles to your eye. I noticed this when I tried to set the gamma correctly for my monitor - when the test patterns looked good in the middle of the screen they would look wrong at the top and bottom. If my monitor had a perfect 180 degree viewing angle then that wouldn't happen.

2/ Viewing angle seems to be the best way to distinguish the different panel types at dabs.co.uk. The other specs are either not always quoted, or don't necessarily distinguish the panel type in the monitor.

Apart from the extra cost of the photo editing monitor it's slightly annoying that the 1600x1050 resolution isn't available in a 22" size, only 20". But I guess I'll be able to look out of the window more easily :-)

Also textblog.anands.net/archives/11: recommends Eizo, Apple, NEC or Lacie brands for photo editing.

// posted by Steven @ 10:28 PM