Whatever you buy, LCD or CRT, although especially true of the former, a wise investment would also include a colorimeter for calibrating your display. Adobe Gamma is not designed with LCDs in mind, so a 3rd party alternative, software or hardware-based, is needed. Perhaps the least expensive hardware solution is the Pantone Huey, under $100 US, and I’ve seen several people speak favorably of it. I have the Monaco Optix XR with EZColor 2.6 profiling software (about $250) and have been pleased with it; a pretty good review of it may be found at <
http://www.camerahobby.com/Digital_MonacoEZ_Color_OptixXR.ht m>.
In conjunction with having built a new PC, I also decided I wanted to get an LCD monitor and purchased the recently released 24" BenQ FP241W. In calibrating it, I found that I could not calibrate the brightness per the profiling wizard, as every time I decreased the brightness to move a pointer into the desired range, the pointer would them jump right back to the higher point where it began. Setting a 6500°K white point was easy though, requiring a drop from 50 to 49 on the Red, with Green and Blue remaining at the 50 midpoint. With regard to the brightness, Monaco’s website said that for LCDs it works best to just set the contrast and brightness to what the user finds most comfortable and then profile the LCD without any changes to those settings; apparently the critical task of getting a proper color profile built for the LCD is still achievable this way. I believe Monaco described this as profiling the LCD rather than calibrating it. I’ve yet to do any work in Photoshop to provide any results on the print matching, but my initial impression of this BenQ monitor is that colors appear excellent. The proof will be in the printing of course.
Before buying the BenQ, I purchased a Dell 2407WFP for about $700 (the Benq was $800) and it was pretty much dead on arrival, not maintaining a display for more than 1-2 seconds. So, I was leery of quality control with Dell, that they’d ship a monitor so obviously bad. I heard the 2407WFP was actually integrated by BenQ, which also concerned me, not having heard of BenQ as anything but a low-end equipment manufacturer. But, this FP241W has been reported as perhaps a sign of change at BenQ for the better, and I hope so, as the monitor does indeed seem well-built and has seen favorable reviews. Depending upon your budget, I suggest you give the BenQ a look.
Regards,
Daryl