Question…
I was watching a video on PhotoShop and the instructor said that unless you are going to spend at least $1,500 on an LCD you should invest $500.00 on a good CRT, which has a much greater gamma range then a less then $1,500 LCD would give you. Any truth to this statement?
there’s virtually no CRTs in production any more - not even for watching tv on..
just make sure any lcd you buy is IPS technology
I reckon the guy is correct though
The bigger thing is the technology behind the panel. Almost all the panels that are rated at very high speeds (like 5ms or faster) are garbage as they only display 6-bit color. My Macbook Pro, that I’m writing this on right now, only displays 6-bit and while for most stuff on it it’s fine and I don’t notice, gradients in Photoshop don’t look correct and you can see banding sometimes. So, no color decisions from this screen.
But you don’t have to spend $1500 for an Eizo, LaCie or one of the high-end NEC’s… just make sure it’s S-IPS or IPS and you should be fine. My previous-generation Apple 24" LCD has great color rendition… and today Dell just yesterday announced a more color-accurate 24"er -
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/08/06/dell.u2410.display/
Don’t worry too much about it. If you are doing super critical final pre-press colour it might prove a real issue, but I doubt it. And if you were then you shouldn’t be trusting monitor colour anyway, you’d be working by numbers and running high-end proofs.
I do colour correction for national and international advertising as part of my daily work and I use a cintiq LCD and a Lacie LCD and have for years now. It’s not an issue for me. YMMV of course.
*EDIT* Okay, just realized you said <$1500 and both of mine were more than that. I was sort of reading that as LCD versus CRT totally. Anyway, I think the point still stands that it’s probably not that much of an issue for most people’s line of work.
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