How good is my monitor?

Hardware
1

Hi everyone,
I have a luxury dilemma: I am using a 28’’ 4 k screen (cheap, early model) which is calibrated. The display is decent since I have calibrated it. However, compared with my Iphone display the black point and contrast is poor.
My screen (Samsung U28D590D) has this specification:
image

A simple search revealed:
In terms of the TriForce of NTSC Power, the 72% rating is roughly the equivalent of 100% sRGB , where over 94% NTSC you get into the high-end DCI-P3s and Adobe RGBs of the world. In practical terms NTSC is a measurement that dates to the early days of TV – but it’s one that can compare most if not all colour gamut standards.

My question is: how poor is my monitor? Is the reduced color gamut a problem for proper photo and video editing or is it just luxury to have a bigger color space to look at? Is high contrast needed to make a good color adjustment? My experience for printing (with an external printing company) is actually pretty good but as I said my pictures look much more punchy on my iphone display.

Also: can you recommend a cheap but good 4k monitor for photo / video editing. The usual youtube videos are very divergent for this topic.
Your help is much appreciated.
Daniel

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Hi Daniel,

I’m no expert (or even close!) on monitor qualities. However I am suspicious of all things Apple and the decisions made behind the scenes unbeknownst to you.

Why do some things look better on your iPhone? Multiple possibilities:

  • the LED display technology you have on your iPhone (OLED) out-peforms your monitor’s, which is a backlit LED.
  • Apple software makes all sorts of preprocessing decisions for you (for pics taken on the phone)
  • Apple software makes all sorts of enhancement decisions for you (for pics uploaded to the phone).

Things looking punchy suggest higher contrast and compressed dynamic range to me. All are achievable with good raw processing software.

If you take pics on your phone, I think you’ll find it is not possible to get a pure RAW, just some Apple proprietary format that has already baked in many adjustments, some of which are destructive.

My mug of flat white’s worth…

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Thanks for the reply. I am comparing photos taken with a camera and processed in dt then uploaded to the phone vs the same image on my monitor. By the way: the iPhone photos look horrible on my PC if you look at the details.
So, I hope that the image display software on my phone does not apply some “magic” to the image. But your thoughts could be correct as I am using the regular “Photos” app to look at the photos. I will make a more thorough comparison of movies played by VLC on both devices (which hopefully does not apply enhancements).

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I believe a lot of it is due to different monitor technologies, even if we disregard all those apple points (which I believe you are right about). TN monitors, specially older ones, have a very flat and non satured look, compared to VA, IPS and of course OLED which beats them all in that department.

I currently use an uncalibrated Dell S2721QS for editing photos and it looks much closer to my oled phone (S20 FE) and tablet (S7 Tab). Side by side with my secondary monitor, the Dell S2719DGF, the difference in those departments I mentioned above is night and day, sometimes to my photo editing detriment. I have no idea if color calibration would changes things up, although when it comes to brightness I usually use it at around 25-30% while editing.

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Morning, @DanielLikesDT,

I’m not an expert either — but my present monitor
is a U28E590. I believe that model is one year younger
than yours; apart from that there are no significant
differences between them.

What gfx do you have? (If on Linux: do you use free or proprietary drivers?
What do you calibrate with?)

I am fully happy with my set-up, I doubt that my color-vision
is sufficiently good to fully appreciate what a pro monitor would yield.

my pictures look much more punchy on my iphone display.

Of course! That is fully natural. Photos from my el-cheapo P Smart
phone look superb on its screen – but utterly lousy when shown on the 4k Samsung.

What other makes to look for? Some forumers have reported good results
with BenQ. A step up would probably be Eizo (but they are way more expensive).
Use the forum search utility for more info.

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

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Hi Claes,
in the end I guess I am just looking for a reason / excuse to get new gear! :grinning:
But to answer your questions:

  • i have a nvidia 2060 gfx, running the latest ubuntu with proprietary drivers
  • i am calibrating with a spyder device (not sure what the correct name is) using argyll from the command line

I think a relevant question is also - now that I am thinking about it in more detail - for what display should I edit my photos and videos? Which display will be used to look at them? And is there anyone - with “color-vision” as you call it - who is capable to even see any significant difference.
I assume that if my pictures look good to me on my “cheap” monitor they will look even better on other devices. And as long as the colors are not totally crazy it should be okay.
So, another episode of: no new gear needed, I guess.

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This is the most important part.

High black point is often a characteristic of cheaper monitors. OLED is best but the material degrades quicker.

100% sRGB is pretty standard. Given most people online view your work that way, I would say anything bigger is a luxury, but it depends on your output. If you make a lot of prints and your printer has a gamut similar to adobe RGB, then upgrading might be desirable. Or if you work a lot with video that is being displayed DCI-P3 then a monitor that displays that whole gamut is desirable. But if you just output Rec 709 then sRGB is fine. Also depends a bit on subject. Most subjects fall within sRGB. Bright saturated flowers and coloured lights, as well as some other artificial things like high viz, are typical exceptions. If you don’t shoot them, you might not notice much difference at all. I have an adobe RGB monitor and shoot saturated flowers, but when I hit soft proof (sRGB) only few show a significant difference.

If you have a high contrast screen you will adjust contrast less in your images, which will then look flat on monitors with low contrast. Conversely, if you have a low contrast screen, you will adjust contrast more in your images, which will then look too contrasty on screens with high contrast. To put it in perspective, most print papers are between about 100:1 and 400:1, so a 1000:1 monitor is already much greater. iPhones are about 1400:1 which is probably why they look more contrasty. So which is correct? I’m not sure there is a singular answer. Depends what your output/audience is.

It doesn’t sound to me like you are in desperate need, but don’t let me talk you out of it :wink:

There have been a few discussions before about monitors on these forums, they might be informative to you.

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Dear Soupy,
thanks very much for this sophisticated answer. I think you were able to put into words what was whirling in the back of my head as a ragged cloud. It is much more clear now. The main thing is really what we are using our material for and I cannot imagine anyone in my surrounding using anything else than sRBG and Rec709 (even for the future) except maybe for the people that are going to buy HDR displays (which is something where I cannot grasp the impact).

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No problem. Here are a couple of resources to give an indication how good your current monitor is:
https://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black.htm
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Pay particular attention to how well your monitor distinguishes the darkest and lightest patches. My old macbook didn’t do a very good job on those, and I noticed a big difference going to a new benq… so much so I had to re-do a lot of edits.

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I only skimmed the thread and haven’t composed my thoughts but here goes:

What I would say about this is that no matter how awesome your monitor is or isn’t you have to be aware of your audience and intent. Not colour profile intent but objective. You see, once you publish or print your work, then it is outside of your control how it would look like through other screens and media. All you can do is do a good job on your end in terms of good hardware and software colour management from beginning to end and fairly respectable scene-referred editing that is not extreme enough to make it incompatible to your average audience’s hardware or viewing environment. E.g., HDR and wide-gamut displays are still outside of most people’s wallets. Maybe this forum is loaded; I don’t know. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I did the tests, I think the screen is well calibrated and pretty good according to these tests. Only at the very low end (between 0 an 1) of dark patches I could not see a difference. Also for the Lagom test I think the results were good. The contrast test was basically perfect except for the bright parts of red and magenta. Surprising results for me.

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Dear afre,
I agree with all of your points. My findings from this conversation and testing is:

  • calibrate your screen, this makes sure you get correct colors when your display can show them and optimizes the other settings as well
  • it does not matter so much if your screen can show a gigantic color gamut, it is probably good enough for most applications and audiences if your colors are okay for sRBG and Rec709. this is what most people will use to look at the pictures I assume.
  • in terms of contrast, black point and brightness you need to know where your device is located relative to your audience. Tims answer is perfect here:
    If you have a high contrast screen you will adjust contrast less in your images, which will then look flat on monitors with low contrast. Conversely, if you have a low contrast screen, you will adjust contrast more in your images, which will then look too contrasty on screens with high contrast. To put it in perspective, most print papers are between about 100:1 and 400:1, so a 1000:1 monitor is already much greater. iPhones are about 1400:1 which is probably why they look more contrasty. So which is correct? I’m not sure there is a singular answer. Depends what your output/audience is.
  • for printing some testing is necessary to get to satisfying results (that is at least my experience).

This sums it up for me (for now).

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