Digital BW, The Print

Sony has stopped production of their Artisan monitor <sigh>. A sign 
of the times? It may be we won't have much of a choice soon.

I have heard good things about Eizo's top of the line ColorEdge 
LCD's though. Better than Apple's from what I understand. Their 
ability to be precisely color profiled/managed and good shadow 
detail are strong points. Shadow detail has always been the LCD's 
weak point, but Eizo claims their ColorEdge LCD's have shadow detail 
equal to a CRT. Not cheap though -- about three grand for the 
ColorEdge CG21 21" monitor, almost twice the street price of the 
Artisan.

I have also heard the color gamut of LCD monitors is not as wide as 
a CRT (not a big issue for BW work) and this would need to be looked 
into, this may have changed by now. Finally, I've been noticing HUGE 
contrast ranges on LCD's spec'd out recently -- to the order of 
800:1. Contrast ranges like that make soft proofing very difficult 
because there's no way paper can ever approach that.