I’m considering buying a “good” monitor for photography because I’ve got to much issues with my laptop screen when editing photos, like color and brightness differences when I look me pictures on an other media (smartphones or PC monitors).
By “good” I mean good for my usage which is:
exporting 8bits jpegs to display on screens (web/cloud, family, social medias, etc)
printing for myself or to show in small/non-professional exhibitions
I feel I need a bit more accuracy on colors and brightness because for now I need to do many corrections after exporting photos to match what I intended.
My actual almost-fixed criteria are:
27’’ QHD (I’ll also play some multiplayer video-games on this monitor)
Can be calibrated on Linux (I still got to check my GPU related things)
At least 100% sRGB
Around 400€ (430$)
What I’m less sure about:
More color coverage (Adobe RBG, P3)? I don’t think I really need mode coverage than sRGB because I’ll export jpegs and most people have sRGB displays. But I understand that more coverage is generally associated with better sRGB the screen is just better (more expensive)
The 10bit colors thing? Almost the same reasoning but I need to check my GPU and OS capabilities. And this could be a plus for a future better laptop
I was considering this one : Dell U2722D or an equivalent.
What do you think of it? I’m not very knowledgeable on the color related subjects and I don’t really understand the need to have very large color spaces to display mostly on average monitors/smartphone. I just need the minimum amount of color and brightness fidelity.
It comes pre-calibrated with a calibration report but Calibrating it with a spider x I managed to bring the average delta bellow 1.5 @ aiming 120 ccd white brighness
That said the spec advertise a uniform backlight but I’ve not been especially impressed by that (a little bit leaky in the corners, visible when displaying dark images)
A new monitor will be nice to look at but there are a lot of moving parts to be sure that your colors are accurate just on your own system let alone on other devices over which you have no control. Phones and other displays and apps might not be color managed and might still look much different from your setup when your images go into the “wild”… Even just looking at some of the playraw results you can review and look how different things look esp with color and exposure and I think many people likely have decent hardware yet the results obtained vary widely…
I have been using the same laptop for over ten years without ever calibrating it. For professional work. Why? Because when I work with that machine most of the stuff is for internet usage. Nobody would know any better because their devices will look wildly different anyway.
So what do you do? You aim for consistency within your images you present next to each other. And that will work with any contemporary display.
That’s completely true and I worked uncalibrated for years but I think it’s worth saying that for a modest cost calibration can be a part of the workflow… And any improvement is a net win IMO. Plus, for those viewers with calibrated devices you’re ahead of the game. And the percentage of better devices is growing.
For me personally, it’s a no-brainer to work calibrated – at least occasionally – given the reasonable cost, but of course that’s a personal choice.
I personally think one can get away without calibration if they use a monitor with a defined colorspace “mode”, e.g., sRGB, and then use a corresponding profile for the display profile. That’s what I do for my tablet, close enough for gov’t work…
But, if I were going to spend money to improve my color management, I’d first get a colorimeter with which to make calibrated display profiles. That’s the whole point of color management, that is to make a rendition in a gamut that is tailored to the rendition medium.
I looked at the specs and it is very similar to my Iiyama XUB2792QSU-B1. I mean almost identical. And the Iiyama is a very nice display, I even bought a second one for a different computer.
Compared to my hardware calibrated NEC it looks more “modern” (wider gamut, better lighting, higher resolution) and I have no problems editing images on it. I had to dial down the brightness to a super low 5 and contrast to 60 and did a little color shift to make it more easy on the calibration, but even out of the box – using the Warm setting – it was awesome.
I haven’t got much useful input on this, except that I have a Lenovo 32q-20b which is great, although I don’t have any real comparisons except a new-ish but cheap laptop and a decent but 12 year old laptop.
It blows them both right out of the water in terms of resolution and gamut, and it’s now profiled with a Spyder and displaycal which made a noticeable but fairly subtle difference.
Sounds like mine! I have left the contrast at the default 75, following advice from either spyder or displaycal (forgotten which), and as to brightness I usually have it set to 0 (which certainly ain’t 0!), except when there’s sunlight coming into my room when it goes up to around 35 - 50%. And colour ‘preset’ is set to ‘reddish’ which seems closest to D65.
Not suggesting it’s at all rigorous, but I find it a nice ‘proof of concept’ that images edited on my screen look very similar viewed on most mobile devices. My phone, a couple of family member’s phones, etc. Cheaper laptop screens are all over the place though.
I was looking up the claimed gamut coverage for the Lenovo and discovered that it’s discontinued… not sure why I’m surprised.
The DisplayCal profile viewer shows that it has close to 100% coverage of sRGB (and Rec.709) but not AdobeRGB.
For what it’s worth, I still use a 2011 iMac for all my processing (running a Linux OS) – it’s never been calibrated in any professional sense of the word. No one’s ever seemed to notice from any of my images.
Obviously, depending on the type of photography you do and the purpose of the resulting images, you may need a more accurate and capable display. But for me? I’ll stick with what I’ve got until the curse of old age finally renders it inoperable.
I’ve been using the 2021 or 2022 model of this. Mine only runs at 75 Hz and doesn’t have USB-C, but otherwise has similar specs. At the time, I paid $299. I don’t do much printing. Mostly just social media for family and friends. I don’t have a calibrator. For the money, I was so happy, I bought a second. (They’re not connected to the same computer, so I don’t know how well the color/ brightness matches between them OOTB.)
$349
ASUS ProArt Display PA278CGV Professional Monitor
27-inch, IPS, QHD (2560 x 1440),
144 Hz,
95% DCI-P3,
Color Accuracy ΔE < 2,
Calman Verified,
USB-C PD 90W,
VESA DisplayHDR 400,
FreeSync Premium,
Ergonomic Stand,
Green Sustainability
