Digital BW, The Print

> From: televe47 [mailto:televe@...]
>
> Does anyone have any experience or recommendations for LCD monitors
> for strictly black and white use?
>
> Are they any easier to calibrate than a CRT, or is it just a question
> of getting brightness and contrast adjusted correctly?

No, LCDs are much harder to calibrate. Colorimeters, even those touted for
LCD calibration, have a fairly wide acceptance angle, and so respond to
light emitted from the LCD at a fairly significant angle, not just
perpendicularly. So, if you tilt the screen 45 degrees, or turn the LCD 45
degrees to the side, and the image looks noticeably different, the
colorimeter will "see" that difference, and be confused by it. It will
blithely go ahead and produce a profile, and say that it calibrated the LCD
successfully, but the result will be wrong.

I went to Best Buy and checked out a whole row of LCDs, and the only one
that appeared to have a wide enough viewing angle, for under $1000, was the
19" Samsung 192N. Oddly, the 17" model was as crappy as the rest of them. I
was only there to pick out a monitor for my business partner, so I didn't
get to try my Spyder on it. However, its performance seemed to my eye to be
about as good as the LCD on my IBM A31p laptop, which has an extraordinary
viewing angle. However, even it required a bit of manual tweaking in Optical
to make the bottom step in a gray step wedge visible.

Also, most LCDs have a somewhat narrower gamut than CRTs. So if you want
really good results, and easy, consistent calibration, stick to CRTs, or
prepare to spend some really big bucks on a high-end LCD.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...