Monitor Recommendations

the one i'm using now is a VP2770-LED - i thought it was a true 10bit, it's actually an 8bit, but it's not that bad. my other screen (the second screen, was going bad but i use it as a secondary, it is a 10bit screen and it's a HP LP2475w

your looking for an IPS screen, pref a true 10bit, non glare screen (some are mirror smooth and you don't want that). i have a 2560x1440 for the main screen resolution. the video card can support at least 2 screens. DVI would be best, but i think some screens do HDMI i forget the advantage other than size. like my video card can handle too DVI's an hdmi and some other connector. the screen i have has edge lit LED (it lights it from the sides), the fanciers ones light it from the back and i think the lesser only the top.


---Mike Savad

Mike Savad...wow! When you are good, you are very, very good.......as my Mother often said to me, plus the 'understood' addendum.......you know the one, lol.

parts of me wished i spent more on the screen, but at the time the "better one" was like $2000. and i'm like--- no way!!!!! the downside to a large screen is that everything gets small. i have like a 100 tabs open and still plenty of space to do stuff. i never thought i needed 2 screens, but once you have it, it's useful to have. partly it feels like i'm batman. but mostly i can spread things out in photoshop.

---Mike Savad

Bob,

What's your budget? I would think any new-ish monitor around $200-$500 would do. I've got a cheap Sceptre and seems to work for me! If you start down this road,no tellin' what you'll spend and should always be realtive to your product,

Rich

Thanks for the information, Mike. You raise lots of questions so I'm off to do some research. I guess the first thing is to find out what my video card will support.
@Rich - I was thinking that I could get a major improvement over my laptop monitor for about $500 and not have to upgrade my laptop.

Bob,

Almost ANY monitor will be better than the laptop screen. I have the HP Pavillion, 17" laptop and would never use it as the primary screen for editing. For your situation, I would find lot's of monitors around $200 or so!

Rich

I have a Asus ProArt - factory calibrated. I like it. In the $300 range for a 24 inch. I have my old one hooked in as a second monitor.

"The ASUS ProArt Series monitors were designed for professionals who require wide viewing angles, high resolutions, wider color gamuts and true-to-life color accuracy. "

http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-PA249Q-24-Inch-Screen-Monitor/dp/B00CMHQOJU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413170339&sr=8-1&keywords=Asus+PA249Q

Edward, the PA248Q is around $300, but it not really a good graphics monitor.

Bob,
The PA249Q or the PA279Q, 24" and 27" respectively are great 10 bit graphics monitors. Read the reviews.

These are from Asus. For the money they are the best. You can always spend more.

You need to calibrate a new monitor regardless of the "factory" calibration. The factory calibration is not an actual
calibration of the monitor. It is something more like putting the specs in place or whatever. I would need to by hand
copy an article into this post to really describe how it is not a full proper calibration. Just isn't.

The better reason for calibrating your monitor is to turn down the brightness. You need to be
at 16% brightness on some cruder monitors. On the better equipped monitors you need
80 cd/mm^2. My Asus is at 81, as low as it will go, more than good enough.

Monitors project light. Prints reflect light. You want your starting material and your computer editing
to line up brightness wise with your printing. So you want to work with a monitor that is closer to reflected light.

The Asus monitor works with HDMI.

I think my HDMI cable is slightly loose. Every day once or twice per use, and I use the monitor for over
five hours per day, the monitor blanks out for a second or two and then comes back for hours. There is
nothing wrong with the PC or the Asus monitor. But the HDMI cable is barely in the socket. Just not
a good fit. I bought my HDMI cable from Walmart. Go figure, cheap.

My PC is a Dell i5 4440 Quadcore, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB HD, Intel 4600 Video card (dont buy any more Video card than that, waste of money
for the non gamers.)

Photoshop is made to run on Quadcore chips.

Within Photoshop hit control + alt + k the key. That will bring up the preferences dialog box.
Under that is the performance tab. You should be using 70 to 80% of your RAM resources available to Photoshop.

Mine was set at 60%. I upped it to 75%. The max is 3255 MB. I am now using 2441 MB. This has sped up my Photoshop times greatly.

The 3255 MB is really for a 32 bit machine.

Wow, I am glad I am writing all this out. My OS is 64 bit like everyone elses. I downloaded from Adobe Photoshop CC. I ignored the
Photoshop CC 64 bit option. I have both options downloaded, but the simple Photoshop options was not labeled as 32 bit, it is.

I just switched it out for the 64 bit option on the task bar. This allows me to use 10936 MB of RAM or 75% of the potential RAM.

Thanks for the opportunity to write it out.

Good luck with your shopping.

Dave

One One 1000...two one 1000....three one 1000...four.....Photoshop is front and center.

Dave

Hi Bob,

As Mike mentioned, you'll want to go with an IPS screen. They've come down in price and continue to do so. IPS is known to do a pretty good job at reproducing color, which is a must when working on photography, artwork or graphic design. One can pick up a nice sized IPS monitor to a few hundred.
If you can afford it, I'd suggest not going smaller than 27". Don't forget the calibration device too!


Peter

Bob,

I dont know much at all about ISP screens. The Asus ISP on Amazon starts at around $158.

You need the capacity to work with 10 bit color depth. The cheapest truly 10 bit color depth monitor
is the Asus PA249Q. The PA248Q is not 10 bit.

10 bit allows you to use aRGB.

In the Photoshop software, you should use the corresponding 16 bits per channel or 48 bit color depth for aRGB.

The monitor 10 bit is a different number than the 16 bits per channel for the software, but the
main thing is giving the PC or MAC the needed data to avoid banding. If you use 8 bits per channel
which happens to correspond to sRGB, then you will get banding at times. This is where you get splotches
of color as if all the same in a given spot.

In everything you actually see or want printed there are gradients of color. If you get banding in a print
you have failed.

I dont use aRGB, but I do use 16 bits per channel in the software and 10 bit color depth with the monitor.

Let me make this a little bit clearer. The 16 bits per channel is for editing your images. It is a finer set of gradients.
It covers 1.07 billion colors. More importantly it brakes up the actual image you edit into smaller manageable parts.
Your eyes only cover 3 to 4 million colors, but the machine needs the data for the final
product. When you finally print in all likelihood the print will be sRGB. SRGB is 16.7 million colors.

The human eye has a wider range than the two digital systems, aRGB and sRGB, but the gradients are finer in the digital
systems. The two digital systems only cover most not all of the human range.

Dave

IPS allows a larger viewing angle and it won't darken as you look at it from an angle.

10bit allows for more colors on the screen. you won't notice it as much between 8 and 10bit, until you see a gradient. then you'll see banding or missing areas in the color pallet. the banding becomes an issue as you try to remove it, it won't leave.

with the advent of huge tv's and phones, monitors have gone down in price a lot.

---Mike Savad

Eizo Coloredge

Since you have a laptop, you should research its video capabilities and get a monitor whose native resolution matches an available mode.

Sure, you could probably find a 4K UHD monitor that will plug into your HDMI port (if you're willing to pay the price), but would your laptop be able to pump out 3840 by 2160 pixels?

Thanks to all for the great info which is slightly above my ability to understand (at this time) but I am picking up good points for my research. I think my first step is to see if my laptop is up to the task.

Your laptop is probably up to the task because it is a more modern laptop supporting HDMI.

The question is more how fast will the laptop be? Probably slow.

With bigger files you can wait forever. Possibly increasing your risks to the data.

Not so with a Quad Core chip, 12 GB RAM or more, and 1 TB of hard drive for storage of a lot of versions etc.....

The costs of a new Asus monitor and a good Quad Core PC are probably under $1100 if you shop carefully.
The monitor is close to $492 with sales taxes in my state, CT.

Dave

I went through hell and high water to get a monitor that will hold a calibration and look good. I now have one of the higher-resolution models. It is a Dell and I love it.

http://www.engadget.com/products/dell/ultrasharp/u2713hm/

Bob,

I'd just grab the laptop and take it to where ever you're gonna buy the monitor and get the right cable and hook up a monitor, less than $200 should be fine and you're good! A 24" will seem huge so depends on how much room you've got for the laptop and then, the new monitor.

Rich

I'm feeling a thread drift to "what computer do I need". I have hdmi which works but is not ideal according to some reviewers and I have a sorta slow duo core which will probably be slower if I hook it up to a second monitor. I can see where this is all leading.

Thanks,Ted....!

Bob,

I'm sorta in the same place as you and will probably buy a new "box" soon. I've bought stuff before from CompUsa,which is now Tiger Direct and there is a store here and I'll take a look at what they have,probably something like a "refurb" or a special. Fast processing and at least 8gbs of RAM, good video card and maybe something that can support 2 monitors,which is what I had and liked using. Certainly under $800 or so. Win7 or even Win 8,not sure, hearing that Win10 is coming soon.

Rich

Ted,

Excellent call. The Dell U2413 is sort of new on the market this year. I think it was pulled last year.

Pro the built in calibration software for the x-Rite i1

Con the contrast of the Dell monitors are sort of second rate. This may have been improved upon.

The Dell U2413 and Asus PA249Q are very similar machines. Either will do the job extremely well
at bargain prices.

You do have to calibrate a monitor regardless of the claims of a factory calibration.

Dave