"C J Southern" wrote in message
"J. A. Mc." wrote in message
With most LCD, "close enough" is all you’ll get!
Assuming that it was calibrated (if you needed that), why would they be any different from CRT monitors (that you have to leave on for at least 1/2 hour to warm up properly, and that drift significantly over time)?
Two problems. The first has to do with physics. LCD’s are based on a different technology, and unlike CRT’s they do not put out an exponentially increasing amount of light as the voltage increases. They are also brighter than CRT’s. The second has to do with marketing – LCD’s are configured to look great in the showroom, knocking the socks off CRT’s in side by side comparison’s, with brighter and more saturated colors.
The result of all this is a device that needs to be calibrated differently. Adobe Gamma makes some important assumptions about the device it is calibrating, one of which is that it can be characterized by a single gamma curve for each of the red, green, and blue colors, and that only one curve point needs to be adjusted to achieve a good neutral balance across the range of colors. Neither of these assumptions work well with LCD’s.
Most of these issues could be addressed by loading a carefully designed video LUT that simulates the response curve of a CRT. There used to be a product called Liquid Color that did this. I use this on my notebook to good effect. Surprisingly this product has been discontinued, and this means that only digitally driven LCD monitors are suitable for fine color work. Fortunately, these are coming down in price, as are the devices used to calibrate them.
—
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
