What HD monitor is best for editing with Lr & Ps to print

I want to upgrade to a High Definition monitor that will help with editing to the final print using Lr and Ps. I currently have a Dell desktop, Windows 7, Epson P800 printer. What do you recommend? Thanks.!

I want to upgrade to a High Definition monitor that will help with editing to the final print using Lr and Ps. I currently have a Dell desktop, Windows 7, Epson P800 printer. What do you recommend? Thanks.!

Also, what graphics card? Sorry.

NEC PA272W

NEC PA272W

 

I agree.

Why a SpectraView?

1. Nearly all if not all current SpectraView displays are wide gamut, Apple's and most other's are not (sRGB like gamut) with the exception of the new iMac P3 displays. But SpectraView can emulate sRGB with a push of a button. The new P3 iMac cannot. Best of both worlds!
   
2. SpectraView uses a high bit internal processing path (at least 10-bit) with internal 3D LUTs, many other's do not. These high bit LUTs allow precise adjustments to be made to the display’s Tone Response Curve without reducing the number of displayable colors or introducing color banding artifacts.
   
3. Newer NEC SpectraView's use GBr LED which produce far more precise control of White Point, run cooler, use less energy, run far longer than CCFL.
   
4. SpectraView has 3-4 year on site warranty.
   
5. SpectraView panels are hand selected from the manufacturer line (pick of the litter).
   
6. SpectraView has electric technologies like ColorComp, which adjusts and improves screen (brightness) uniformity using individually measured matrices for each display at the factory. All done high bit with compensation for operating time and temperature.
   
7. SpectraView has electric technologies like GammaComp, to adjust the monitor's internal 10-bit gamma Look-Up-Table, allowing various custom display gamma or Tone-Response-Curves to be achieved. Apple and many other's don't have anything like this.
   
8. SpectraView is a smart display system that integrates custom software for calibration including multiple target calibration's which can be loaded to adjust the display while loading the associated ICC profile, Apple (and few other products aside from Eizo) cannot do this. To quote from the manual: “SpectraView communicates with the display monitors using Display Data Channel - Command Interface (DDC/CI) which is a two-way communications link between the video graphics adapter and display monitor using the normal video signal cable. No extra cables are necessary. All adjustments to the monitor settings are done automatically using this communications link. It is not necessary to manually configure the monitor as all of the necessary settings are made by the software“. Apple and other's has nothing like this, nor can 3rd party software you have to pay for extra do this. This is an attribute built from the ground up in SpectraView to serve as a 'reference display system' ala Barco, PressView, Sony Artisan of the past.
   
9. SpectraView will bundle a custom mated Colorimeter with their software for calibration. The price you pay for software and colorimeter with the SpectraView, depending on what country you live in costs significantly less than buying the hardware and software for a non SpectraView. And that extra money will not provide a fraction of the capabilities outlined.
   
10. SpectraView PA series offer the ability to calibrate WITHOUT a Colorimeter with the FREE Multiprofiler software since each panel is measured with a very expensive spectroradiometer and that data is embedded in a chip in the panel. It can update the calibration as the unit ages to ensure calibration.
    
11. SpectraView can emulate with a single click other behaviors, again on the fly, so it can simulate a non wide gamut display (sRGB) among other standardized behaviors (Broadcast Video DICOM, etc)
    
12. SpectraView has internal electronic control over contrast ratio, few others can provide this control over black. Real useful for soft proofing on media that has differing contrast ratio's (matt vs. glossy papers).
    
13. SpectraView has Network support (Windows only).
    
14. SpectraView has provisions to lock the display controls so no accidental alteration to behavior by mistake.
    
15. SpectraView displays allow the user to raise and lower the display for best viewing position AND it can be rotated 90 degrees for Portrait.
    
16. Several SpectraView's support Picture in Picture (you can have two differing calibration's per picture).
    

Thanks very much! How about a graphics card ie MSI GeForce GTX 1070 ARMOR 8G OC Graphics Card. Thanks again

Photoshop and LR can both make use of a fast(er) GPU, but if you're buying a card just for that purpose, a GTX1070 might be a bit overkill. Start with getting the specs of your desktop, as "a dell with Windows 7" is frankly pretty meaningless, and then see whether it actually makes sense at all to upgrade the system with a ~$450 graphics card, or whether it simply makes more sense to save up for a new desktop, or a RAM upgrade, or a SSD upgrade (both of which will do more to make PS happy than a graphics card).

 

Should you proceed with a graphics card, there are more considerations. Higher-end cards like a GTX1070 are often large cards, so you have to first check the available space in the casing you have, and they do consume quite a bit of power, so you need to check if your power supply can deliver enough juice, and they generate some heat, so cooling can be an issue (though not likely). So, again a reason to first get the specs of your desktop.

A second thing to check is whether an nvidia card is actually delivering the best performance in PS/LR at all - I don't know since I use neither, but the software I do use for example relies on OpenCL where AMD cards often deliver more performance per dollar. For sure there will be sites that benchmark the performance of various videocards in PS and/or LR.

 

All that said - the only reason to get a graphics card would be better application performance. The screen, nor screen calibration, does require a dedicated video card. Integrated intel graphics can do just fine. So, it will do nothing to improve the printing in any way.

Graphics card choice also pertains to colour performance; see:

10-bit per color support on NVIDIA Geforce GPUs | NVIDIA

and then:nVidia graphic card for 10 bit/color in Photoshop | Adobe Community,

I don't know all the specs and situation with current products, but it would be prudent to do due diligence research.

Edited December 15, 2017 by Wayne Melia

For 10-bits colour in PS, you need an nvidia Quadro card (their workstation line of products) - these come at seriously different pricetags compared to the Geforce cards. Same goes for AMD cards, you'll need the FirePro cards, same story and same pricetags.

For an enter high bit video path, the video card, the application, the display and the OS all need to be in line for that output. With a high bit display, the need for an entire high bit path is a questionable goal in that banding seen is often tiny if at all and if you're working with high bit data (more than 8-bits per color), you know the visible banding isn't in your data. Here's a file you can download to inspect if you really have a fully high bit display path or not. If you do, at 100%, it is totally smooth.

http://digitaldog.net/files/10-bit-test-ramp.zip

I, too, was looking to upgrade my Dell desktop running Windows7 a year ago. Took digitaldog's advice and bought a NEC PA272 with Spectravision. Wonderful monitor. I refuse to do any serious photo editing without it; its that good. Then invested in a SSD, which provided the speed I wanted (boot time went from ~2 minutes to 10 seconds as an example). Then found a used Nvidia Quadro K2000 graphics card that provided 10-bit color and perhaps a bit more speed on the more math intensive PS and LR tasks. Not sure how much a $400 current technology graphics card would help; according to Adobe, there's only a limited number of functions in PS/LR that invoke the graphics processor to gain speed. The K series cards provided a huge improvement in lower power consumption and smaller size than their previous generation cards. Plus, it was smaller and less power hungry than the OEM graphics card it replaced. Zero issues with compatibility as well. Hope this helps.

Photoshop and LR can both make use of a fast(er) GPU, but if you're buying a card just for that purpose, a GTX1070 might be a bit overkill. Start with getting the specs of your desktop, as "a dell with Windows 7" is frankly pretty meaningless, and then see whether it actually makes sense at all to upgrade the system with a ~$450 graphics card, or whether it simply makes more sense to save up for a new desktop, or a RAM upgrade, or a SSD upgrade (both of which will do more to make PS happy than a graphics card).

 

Should you proceed with a graphics card, there are more considerations. Higher-end cards like a GTX1070 are often large cards, so you have to first check the available space in the casing you have, and they do consume quite a bit of power, so you need to check if your power supply can deliver enough juice, and they generate some heat, so cooling can be an issue (though not likely). So, again a reason to first get the specs of your desktop.

A second thing to check is whether an nvidia card is actually delivering the best performance in PS/LR at all - I don't know since I use neither, but the software I do use for example relies on OpenCL where AMD cards often deliver more performance per dollar. For sure there will be sites that benchmark the performance of various videocards in PS and/or LR.

 

All that said - the only reason to get a graphics card would be better application performance. The screen, nor screen calibration, does require a dedicated video card. Integrated intel graphics can do just fine. So, it will do nothing to improve the printing in any way.

 

Very sorry! Here is the specs on my machine; DELL XPS 8500, Windows 7 Home Premium SP1, Processor Intel Core i7-3770 CPU@3.40 GHz, RAM 16 GB, System Type 64 bit, Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GT640, Monitor LG 32", FHD(HDMI) Native Res 1080x1920. Printer Epson SC P800. Calibration using Colormunki.

 

My issue has been that I think I went to cheap on the monitor. Resolution does not appear to be there. Prints coming out of the printer look nicer that on the monitor. I want to raise the bar on print image quality(nuances) that the current setup does not display. Thanks again everyone!

Per your recommendations, I just installed a NEC PA272W with SpectraView. The graphics card I already had is just right for the monitor. Mission accomplished, with your all's help. Once again, the members of Photo.net helped me fix, improve and enjoy my digital darkroom. THANK YOU!!!

I'm curious why you guys are discussing HD monitors. Shouldn't a new monitor for photo editing be 4k?

I'm curious why you guys are discussing HD monitors. Shouldn't a new monitor for photo editing be 4k?

Hardly necessary, hardly as important as a good color reference display system.

Thanks, Andrew. I know you're a MacBook Pro user and I assume you connect (or would connect) that NEC PA272 to your MBP. Is there a noticeable difference in visible resolution between the external monitor and the retina display? After all, the NEC has less than half the pixels per inch of the retina display. Cheers.

Yes! :)

And I never drive the MacBook at highest resolution; everything is too tiny!

Edited January 2, 2018 by digitaldog

Many thanks again.