toptrainer Loc: Wellington

I work at office depot and have a 200 dollar credit I want to use for a monitor. What Aspects should I look for in a monitor I want to use for fixing photos. LCD, led, ratio connection? I am also running it off a laptop with hdmi cable. Thanks in advance.

ebaribeault Loc: Baltimore

Just purchased a HP2311X have had it a little over a week and love it

toptrainer Loc: Wellington

I wish we had that in our store

BHC Loc: Strawberry Valley, JF, USA

Check out the HP 2211x; Office Depot carries that one.

toptrainer Loc: Wellington

I will check that out today' thank you

Kyla

An ISP monitor is the very best for pictures, it shows the true colors.

mtnredhed Loc: The part of NorCal that doesn't move

I think you meant IPS (in plane switching). Expect to pay a bit more. The give away is the large viewing angles.

HP ZR24w or the Viewsonic VP2365wb. Both are real deals for what you get for the money. Don't expect to get the full sRGB gamut or even close till you get near $1000

I have the VP because I stumbled on a crazy deal for one. It's not perfect, but with some tweaking I can get the gamma right (not the same for all 3 colors). A good monitor won't help if you don't calibrate it. There's various free tools you can use to get pretty close short of getting calibration hardware.

Disclosure: I work for HP but not for that division. I do cloud plumbing.
jim

jasman Loc: Forte dei Marmi

My two cents...

Agreed, the IPS (In-Plane Switching) technology is vastly superior to the Twisted Nematic (TN) types that are pretty much the standard offering at retail office-supply and Best Buy type stores. You'll have to shop closely to find the IPS models and, likely, the clerk in the store won't know what you're talking about when you ask about IPS.

The IPS design offers greater contrast and brightness, much wider viewing angles without color shift, and typically use 8-bit (or more) color look up tables that display the full 16.7 million colors that most video cards can generate. (As opposed to 256 thousand colors on a TN monitor - though many do some fake pixel manipulation and "claim" 16.7 mil colors.)

The IPS monitors can actually be calibrated vs. the TNs that don't calibrate well and require you to be looking "head on" at the screen - you'll see the colors vary as you move your viewing angle even slightly up/down or left/right of dead center.

Plus, if you're using a Spyder or similar tool, many of the IPS monitors can be calibrated exactly to sRGB or aRGB specs which makes it easy to accurately prepare images for printing at places like Adorama, etc.

Putting an inexpensive TN monitor in front of a good video card and applications like PSE 10, CS5, or Lightroom for post processing is no different than putting cheap glass on a great camera body. As is said here often: you get what you pay for.

Regarding contrast ratios for LCDs, there's no industry standard for how the testing is conducted and rated. That said, the contrast numbers are only useful for comparing different models made by one manufacturer and not for comparing monitors (or TVs) between two different manufactures.

Lastly, the typical factory default settings on monitors (and TVs) are designed to present very bright/vivid images. The idea is that you'll look at the various models for sale in the store display and pick the one with the brightest image. The problem is that, typically, those settings are not useful for real-world viewing and photo editing.

Lots of UHH folks have posted comments about specific monitors they use - what a great searchable resource.

Again: just my opinion... your mileage may vary.

davejann Loc: Portland Oregon

Any comments on the monitor that is on the iMacs?

jasman Loc: Forte dei Marmi

From some limited exposure to the current Intel-based Mac world: Mostly low-to-mid-range IPS monitors except for the higher-grade cinema stuff that uses variations of the more advanced IPS technology implementations... and all are overpriced.

There are *very* few companies that make the LCD glass and every computer company or monitor maker buys from them. Ditto on graphics chipsets.

Again, my opinion... your mileage may vary.