stanikon Loc: Deep in the Heart of Texas

After a great deal of research and question-asking I settled on the LG 27UL500 as the best compromise between quality, color accuracy and price. It is serving me well in combination with my Spyder X Elite calibration tool.

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

if you have the money go with the Benq photo products but a pro I follow (Hudson Henry) and a number of others I work with said the Dell U279DX works great and they use them. I bought one for my M1 Mac Mini and am very happy with it. Calibrates quite easily and even though I recalibrate every month the changes are either none or just a little.

Nickaroo

I have the BenQ SW2700PT Monitor and it really does perform well. I use Spyder Pro and Calibrate it every 2 weeks. Great Monitor as I bought it through Best Buy of all places and received 10% off for my Birthday, saved $150. Very Happy with it and My Friend bought an ASUS, I think that is what He Bought and only spent $400 on it and it seems to work well. What I like with my BenQ is that it will allow me to edit in the ProPhoto setting and renders 99.99% of Adobe RGB. BenQ is very nice, but like some of Our Fellow UHH Members, they have put out some good replies as well.

delder Loc: Maryland

Our Photo Club views our work on a 90" Sanyo TV/Monitor. This was an upgrade from a LCD Projector.

Our Club Leader uses an iPad that COMPLETELY outshines the other devices we use for viewing.
I am speaking to COLOR Rendition in particular.

Just an observation.

Question for all:
Is there any thought to optimizing a digital image for a specific display target? [LCD Projector, Large Screen TV Etc?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

There is no point to optimizing a digital image to a specific display target. There is quite a large amount to be said about optimizing display devices to meet universal standards! Those standards are managed by the ICC (International Color Consortium). It is a group of scientists who came up with a model to describe the color display characteristics of devices and media, and ways to communicate that information via computer to match devices as closely as possible.

If you go to the web sites for Datacolor and Calibrite, you can find educational resources that explain color management in detail. Understanding digital photography generally REQUIRES an understanding of, or at least an awareness of, color management practices and tools.

I worked in a large professional portrait lab during the transition from optical/film photography to digital photography. I ran the digital side of the lab from film scanning to color correction to printing on a dozen different types of devices with as many as 40 of each type. After two years of struggling to adjust color by eye, we bought a $300 kit of calibration/profiling tools and calibrated our nine (identical models) color correction monitors. Then we had Kodak profile their paper on our portrait package mini-lab printers. Suddenly, we were locked in! Instead of $256,000 in paper waste per year, we had cut that by nearly 80%. It was well worth the learning curve.

I calibrate and profile my monitors before any large project. I verify that calibration against my printer and outside lab. I know my files are going to look nearly the same on my monitor as they do in print, or as close as additive color can look to subtractive color. (Monitors mix red, green, and blue light to make white. Printers use cyan, magenta, and yellow, and sometimes black and other colors, to subtract red, green, and blue from white light reflected off of paper. There will always be subtle differences in what can be displayed both ways.)

In short, a calibration kit can calibrate your LCD Projector, large screen TV, or computer monitor. It can put an ICC profile for each device into your computer's operating system, to match the color of files to the color capabilities of the device as best as it can be done. The same profile must be installed on each computer connecting to a given device, so if multiple people use the same projector, the profile must be shared among them. The profile has to be activated in the operating system after connecting the computer, as well.

Most TVs and video projectors are factory calibrated to some version of the REC. 709 color space. So if you don't have a custom profile for your monitor, try the profile by that name, and see if it doesn't improve the results you're getting.

delder Loc: Maryland

To BurkPhoto
response to Question for all:
Is there any thought to optimizing a digital image for a specific display target? (LCD Projector, Large Screen TV Etc?)
I appreciate your detailed response. I should have prefaced my question with: In situations where we have no control over the presentation device. The 90" TV is locked down with ONLY access to the HDMI cable extending from it.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Been there, done that… on my Mac, I go to the Settings and Preferences panel, choose that display, then check the profile. If the OS found a generic profile for that display, I try Rec. 709 (or the variant on my Mac). If that’s no better, I try sRGB. I keep trying until I find one that is better than the rest.

Sometimes, “It sucks less…” is the only answer available!

delder Loc: Maryland

I am actually thinking in terms of optimizing a .jpg to the attributes/limits of a known Projector or display which user has no control over.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

That’s not something any expert I know would even consider. It might work, but the file would be ugly on other devices.

delder Loc: Maryland

burkephoto:
Thanks for your response.
I agree with you that the image would not be optimal for other devices but targeted to the specific target.