best monitor for viewing, editing and printing

[dinsdale]

How does the Apple 24" monitor compare with the Nec 2490wux!2? They are both around £600 in UK - maybe there is a comparable monitor for around the same price, or less!? I am saving my pennies, but do not really want to go much above £600!

dinsdale

 

[martyp]

I would prefer the Apple 24" Cinema display solely for the fact it uses LED backlighting which is more accurate.

Although it depends how you feel on using a glossy screen - I personally prefer it.

If you would prefer a matte screen then I would say the NEC is probably one of the best on the market.

However, whatever monitor you buy you will need to calibrate it using a device like a Datacolor Spyder3Pro or else you will not be seeing accurate colors anyway.

Hope that helps.

 

[dinsdale]

Best Monitor

Thanks for that - I think I'll probably go for the Apple, when I can afford it! I recently got the Spyder3Pro calibrator and it works well enough with my old cheapo monitor. However, I have been recently trying to make a print from a scanned colour print using my Epson 3800Pro printer, with Epson inks and papers (using epson profiles). The scanned print looks fine on the screen, but I couldn't get the new print the same using Photoshop, and wasted loads of paper and ink trying different settings and combinations. I did eventually get an almost perfect match to the original (a 7x5 pro job), using the printer driver settings, and actually made a 17"x12" print, which looks great! Stupidly, I failed to save the settings I used and have been unable to repeat it. I have today installed a new Epson scanner, as my old HP cheapo scanner was getting temperamental! The same print scanned with the new scanner looks great on screen, but still prints too dark , using Photoshop - very frustrating, but I shall persevere! I realize that I'm probably in the wrong forum, so I shall post this in some photography ones. However, any helpful advice or suggestion from anyone would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks.

 

[martyp]

There are calibrators that do screens and printers but I can't recall the make and model of one I see on an episode of Photoshop Users TV recently...

These are not required if you're using Epson ink and paper with the specific profile though, so a nice new calibrated monitor should get you the results you'd expect.