Digital display advice required

[Paulamoulton]

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum and I am new to digital photography compared to serious photographers.
I have just bought a new computer and a SAMSUNG SM2232BW 22" Wide Screen LCD TFT, 2ms, DC3000:1 Contrast ratio, DVI-D, both from Novatech. The monitor was chosen by me after reading various reviews, and although provided by Novatech was not part of the computer package. It was over £200 extra. The graphics card is a nVidia 8600GT 512MB PCI-E and the computer is a Novatech Isys Elite Pro built around an Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Dual Core Processor on a Nvidia MCP73 Chipset MicroATX motherboard. It is all brand new, came with a new installation of Windows XP (preferred to Vista for compatibility reasons) and works fine.
I now realise that all my precious digital photographs, particularly those showing cloud formations and other highly detailed very light areas which were perfect on my old CTX PR960F 19" CRT top of the range monitor, are useless on my new Samsung TFT. All light areas are a mass of orange and/or pink and/or greeny-blue glare characteristic of intense or excessive contrast and completely obscuring the detail, especially in the clouds. Same files, totally different images.
After spending hours calibrating and using every conceivable combination of monitor and software settings, and being still unable to get rid of this glare, I wrote to Novatech to explain what I had discovered, how I had tried to eradicate the problem and to generally complain, asking for a replacement but they have told me that I am demanding too much from the monitor, that it is not meant for serious photography but "for office work, light photography and games", and to return it at my expense for a reduced refund after allowing for them to "clean and repackage it for selling".

I would be very glad if someone on this forum who enjoys photography of the emitted light variety (monitor viewing) as opposed to reflective light type (photographs) could offer me some advice as to what sort of monitor I should acquire, and what other meteorological amateur photographers use.
I was about to buy a decent digital camera but I am glad I haven't now, although having said that I cannot believe that there are not others out there who want to view their photographs on screen without losing any of the detail or quality of the image.

[eman]

It will help if you attach a photo that has this problem on your system and a brief description on the problem area in the photo.

[quentins]

Hi - it sounds pretty odd. I have a standard Dell TFT on the Photoshop machine, and whatever slight shortcomings it might have, I've never had an issue with light, high detail areas actually displaying wildly innacurate colours. I work for litho and high end digital print, and I've never had one problem with an unexpected end result due to the monitor incorrectly displaying what is really 'there'.

I would say it's a fault, an incompatibility or a wrong setting. The supplier is always going to say you're asking too much of the equipment - it's a standard response. I certainly wouldn't swap or upgrade even further without doing some checks. Do you have the old monitor, or a friend who can bring one around? Try another monitor; if you don't see the problem, clearly it's an issue with the Samsung - the cheapest device around shouldn't do what you're describing. If the problem is still there, then it's the signal from the video card and again, best thing to do is treble-check that the settings are all correct. If that doesn't work, and if you don't have another video card lying around, I'd talk to the supplier again.

(As an aside, probably irrelevant, I recently got a Samsung TV and came close to returning it because the out-of-the-box settings for colour, brightness and contrast were so far out. Once I'd spent some time turning some settings to flat-out maximum, and others to absolute minimum, I arrived at a really good picture, human-coloured humans, etc. A neighbour just bought a larger Samsung model, and his also came with the eye-piercing dayglo settings.)

[Visual Reality]

No 22" monitor is going to be "great" for photo editing because of the TN panel used.

You need a PVA, MVA, or IPS based monitor.

How much are you willing to spend?

I use a BenQ FP241 24" calibrated with a Spyder2Express and it gets me as close to perfect that you will ever get on an LCD.

[quentins]

Completely agree with VR here - it costs money to chase perfection. But the problem of:

"All light areas are a mass of orange and/or pink and/or greeny-blue glare characteristic of intense or excessive contrast and completely obscuring the detail, especially in the clouds."

- surely that must be a fault? Cheapest monitor I ever had might have been pretty low res., but it didn't make areas look obscured by glare, and it was possible to get it to show white as white!

I'd make sure I had a decent signal - prove to yourself that what you're seeing at the moment is really what your new monitor is supposed to be capable of - before spending another penny.

[SpecialK]

Most modern monitors are pretty close out of the box. People will suggest Spyder or Huey or other devices which no doubt will help - for $100 - , but I just use a couple simple online monitor calibration checks, and compare everyone's images in the galleries here. If their "calibrated" images look good to you, and yours match theirs, you are set.

I used the top link mostly, if I recall corrrectly.

http://www.jasc.com/support/kb/articles/monitor.asp

http://www.displaycalibration.com/brightness_contrast.html

http://www.displaycalibration.com/color_depth.html

http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php

[Visual Reality]

$100?

My Spyder was $50 or $60.

And for the record, calibrating by eye can work well. I have done this before with success. However, the adjustments that the Spyder will make to your screen cannot be duplicated by user controls.

[SpecialK]

Well, you got a good deal somewhere. Here's latest from Amazon:

ColorVision Spyder2 Suite Win/Mac (18)
$89.99

Pantone huey Pro MEU113 (78)
$93.52

ColorVision Spyder2PRO Win/Mac (38)
$164.75


Still if you can't get rid of orange clouds by eye, there is a problem :-)

[Visual Reality]

Wrong Spyder:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16800998044

http://www.amazon.com/ColorVision-Spyder2-Express-Win-Mac/dp/B000ES4PYU/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1205599688&sr=8-1

[blackudder]

It sounds like the monitor is not configured for full color support. Go to display properties and make sure it's set for (highest) 32-bit color. Also make sure that your resolution on your desktop is matched to the native resolution of the monitor.

You may not have a "perfect" display, but you shouldn't be that unhappy with what an LCD monitor can produce right out of the box. It could be a faulty video card or a faulty monitor if all the settings are correct. To determine which, you'd have to swap one of them out. If you were satisfied with your CRT quality, you should be satisfied with the LCD quality.

Try opening an image and hitting Alt-Printscreen and then paste that into an image program to save it. That should save what you're seeing and not the picture (which could be fine). See if you can post that to a free picture site and then post the link here so folks can chime in.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

Have you tried connecting the LCD to a friends computer, it's probably easier than opening up the computer for starters.

[Margus]

Samsung offers couple of monitors with enhanced colors.

SyncMaster XL20 (http://www.samsung.com/us/consumer/detail/detail.do?group=computersperipherals&type=monitors&subtype=lcd&model_cd=LS20EDBEB/XAA)is the best for any graphics work incl. digital photography and probably among the most expensive monitors from Samsung too :)

A reasonably priced one with enhanced colors is Samsung Syncmaster 931C. However it does require some effort and calibration, as suggested in the following review:
http://www.vnunet.com/personal-computer-world/hardware/2184588/review-samsung-syncmaster-931c

[Margus]

Question, did you by any chance shoot your digital photos with a camera which allows selecting other than sRGB colors? Take a look at another thread in this forum, it may help.

http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38047

[Visual Reality]

Question, did you by any chance shoot your digital photos with a camera which allows selecting other than sRGB colors? Take a look at another thread in this forum, it may help.

http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38047
Referring to this (http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/adobe-rgb.htm)? :cool:

I think this person really needs a calibration from a Spyder2 at the least...probably no need to go with the more expensive ones.

[Margus]

Referring to this (http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/adobe-rgb.htm)? :cool:

I think this person really needs a calibration from a Spyder2 at the least...probably no need to go with the more expensive ones.

Exactly, plus seeing the pain of our marketing department while preparing materials for the printhouse and fighting for the "right" colors :)
You can't accidentally mess up your colors with compact digital cameras, as they have only sRGB support built in. However at least some of the digital SLRs support both sRGB and Adobe RGB.

cheers,