RE: NEC PA Displays
RE: NEC PA Displays
- Subject: RE: NEC PA Displays
- From: Roger Breton <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 21:47:07 -0400
Todd,
Thank's for the link.
How well can *any* calibrated display match a hardcopy proof? That depends
on a lot of things. But, out of the box, I'd say that a large number of
displays I've worked on, calibrated and profiled, over the year, don't match
a hardcopy proof all that well. Good or bad? Of course, no one would be
silly enough to gladly accept wide visual differences between a display and
a proof, me the first one.
In my humble experience, a lot of conditions have to be met in order to
conclude that a given display can't ever match a hardcopy. We first have to
consider what kind of hardcopy we're comparing against. If it's an inkjet
proof, boasting the usual FWAs, then it's reasonable to expect a larger
discrepancy between the display and the proof. If the inkjet paper is free
of FWAs, then it's reasonable to expect a closer match between the two
conditions. But even then. The exact nature of the light falling on the
copy, providing the raw material for generating the light stimulus that
impinge on our eyes, must be studied and understood. Otherwise, that's just
one variable that might very well heavily contribute to the relatrive
mismatch between the monitor and the proof, and it wouldn't be fair to blame
this on the monitor. I once had the good fortune of measuring my venerable
ColorChecker chart illuminated by good graphic-arts fluorescent bulbs, with
a spectroradiometer, and I was shocked, I mean utterly shocked, to find on
the white patch of the chart the same spiky spectral power distribution as
when I measure the bare tube directly with my instrument or the light
falling on a perfect diffuser, in spectral irradiance mode. I mean I would
have never expect the spectral composition of the white to bear the same
ugly spectral signature as that of the bulb itself -- it was a big
disappointment and eye openier. It was then I concluded that the light
falling on the proof is paramount in determining the chances of obtaining
any match between any calibrated monitor and hardcopy proofs.
Case in point. I recently had the chance of calibrating/profiling a popular
high-end brand name monitor, which I won't name the make here, with an
equally popular high-end software package, using an i1pro -- here's one
instrument I can always recommend with my eyes blindfolded (thank you
X-Rite!). I did everything by the book that day and thought I had it made
when I started to compare with...a hardcopy proof, placed inside an
expensive graphic arts desktop viewing booth. Things didn't match all that
well, at first, and I thought I was in hot water. It didn't matter how
closely I adhered to D50, gamma X and so on. But in the end, on the same
display, using a different piece of software, using the same i1pro, my
efforts were met with success albeit, in the end, I had to make some white
point edits in order to match the proof to my satisfaction.
So, how well does the NEC stack up against a hardcopy proof? Depends on a
lot of factors, as you see, beginning with whomever is making the
comparison. The point in all this, I think, Todd, is to keep in mind that,
as we edit and color correct images, we don't constantly "have" a physical
analog under our eyes to compare against. I think what's important is that,
as long as the calibrated monitor color space largely "evokes" the correct
chromaticities in our brain, as we work with the images, then the ICC
"media-relative" conversion will get us there. At some point, we have to let
go of the exact colors we see on the monitor and accept that the ICC system
indeed adapted the monitor colorimetry to the physical media, during the
profile transformation, having to trust our eyes that a relative match was
obtained between the hardcopy proof and the monitor. It gets more
complicated than that, but, in a nutshell, this is both a realistic and
reasonable to expect. It's possible to get superlative matches between some
calibrated monitors and some hardcopy proofs, true, but at a higher
"conceptual" cost than average -- it takes considerable skills to find the
right combination. Meaning, when comparing 10 monitors side by side,
calibrated with different instruments and software packages, all of them
could be right, numbers wise, if we go by their own instruments but, for the
purpose of matching anything in the physical world, we might not find any
one of those ten monitors to satisfactorily match the hardcopy proof, yet
every single monitor would show perfect colorimetric scores.
FWIW, I rarely found, except in a few limited cases, a
monitor/instrument/software combo that gave me an accurate hardcopy proof
match out of the box -- always had to work for it. And even then.
Best / Roger
> For what it's worth, Here's Lloyd Chamber's review of the NEC PA271W.
Lot's
> of details, though he doesn't address what I consider the most important
> factor: How well does it match a hardcopy proof? Can it do accurate
> softproofing?
>
> http://diglloyd.com/articles/Recommended/displayNEC27.html
>
> -Todd Shirley _______________________________________________
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