Digital BW, The Print

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?

I hope these questions are not too far OT.

Terence Lowe

I'm using a Samsung SyncMaster 172T LCD connected to a Windows XP 
system via a fully digital video card, and printing on an Epson 2200 
with ImagePrint 5.6 "Lite."

I've used both Monaco and Colorvision spyders to calibrate the LCD 
monitor. The bad news is that neither will calibrate the brightness 
on an LCD. They do color only. Monaco did a poor job of calibrating 
the color. Colorvision did a little better. Both their support groups 
tell me to just set the brightness where I like it and go. Sounds 
like bad advice to me, but apparently no calibration company has 
really solved the LCD problem yet. Their current "solution" simply 
means they figured out how to modify the sypder so it can sit on the 
LCD screen without doing any damage. 

The good news is that my B&W work is very good WYSIWYG. The B&W image 
on screen is very, very close to the Epson 2200/Imageprint print. The 
color prints are also very good, but slightly darker and slightly 
less saturated than the on screen image. This, I'm told by a few 
other amatures with a little more experience than me, is normal 
because a monitor screen is a transmissive device and a print is a 
reflective device.

> 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@...

> Are they any easier to calibrate than a CRT, or is it just a 
question
> of getting brightness and contrast adjusted correctly?
> 


GretagMacBeth Eye1 with Profiler Pro 4 will adjust the brightness and 
contrast on an LCD display. I'm not yet a fan of LCD displays for 
critical Photoshop work. After using an LCD display (even a good one)
for awhile then switching to a Sony Artisan CRT one can only 
say, "Ahhh, yes, now THAT's more like it!"

An LCD display (doesn't take up much space on a desk) would be great 
as a secondary display to put next to a primary CRT. All the 
Photoshop menus could be put on the LCD monitor leaving that 
beautiful CRT display dedicated to the image only. That's what I'm 
planning on doing on my next upgrade. There's always that next 
upgrade, isn't there?

BTW, Jon Cone (Pieziography, Inkjet Mall) made a post somewhere 
saying they're working with Sony to offer a special version of Sony's 
Artisan monitor to use for B&W printing. No mention of when this 
might take place.