LCD monitors: crisp but sterile looking

It seems that CRTs (because of their lesser precision) blend the pixel

IMHO this is the key part of your messeage. I am sure that an LCD display
looks crisper or sharper, but there is little benefit to this from a
photography perspective.

What you want is to have your monitor match as closely as possible your
target output. If this is print, then even a cheap ($100) CRT will do a
better job than most LCD (I said most because I dont have experience with
really expensive LCDs). If your target output is for viewing on the web etc,
then your CRT still does a better job because most other people still have
CRTs, so they will be seeing close to what you were seing when preparing the
image.

 

So size DOES matter??

dave

Charlie D wrote:
snip

 

I agree one should try ClearType and judge for themself, and
especially go through the tuning process:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/1.htm?fname= &fsize=

 

Nowadays probably we all use computers to make photography, but
we lack any newsgroup devoted specifically to computer displays
suitable to make photography.

Let me thus post here a pointer to a study performed recently by
Munsell Color Science Laboratory, which unveiled severe problems
with longevity of life in some contemporary LCD screens.

http://www.avvideo.com/2003/04_apr/features/long_live_dlp.htm

The web page of the laboratory is:

http://www.cis.rit.edu/mcsl/

Critics or skeptics of the above LCD longevity study like to
remind that it was contracted and distributed by a competitor
of the LCD technology, who would like to promote its own DLP
technology for displays and large projection screens. Thus as
always, exercise your own judgment.

DLP is being very nicely presented on http://www.dlp.com/ and is
being promoted by TI (Texas Instruments.) In real life, these
displays perform indeed splendid, thus I am sure that we will hear
more of them in the future. Maybe this is even *the technology*
which will replace slide projectors? Since this technology allows
to use high quality white light lamps, best color filters money
can buy, they might have long term advantage over any LCD
technology in terms of color fidelity and color gamut. They can
clearly outgun LCD in terms of luminance and of course, they
do not have any problem with view angle.


If the Munsell study has real founding, be careful with that
investment in a contemporary megabucks LCD screen...

Thomas

 

There's a movement on to make an organic based LCD
verses the current types which involve a great deal of
hand intensive labor. The new screens which will be
much like what your begining to see in Nokia cell phone
displays are similar to the glow produced by bio luminescing
species. The new screens it is proposed will consist of plastic
that is automatically sprayed with the glow compound. The life span
will be somewhat shorter compared to present, however the screens
will be much much cheaper, and replaceable.

 

On my 17" .24 dot pitch CRT at 1024x768, ClearType makes text look
both bolder and fuzzier. It gives it a semi-transparent edge effect
for a slightly ghosted look.

Apparently ClearType is wasted on CRTs because they already blend text
boundaries. I'd like to know how it works if it's not merely
anti-aliasing.

JT

 

ClearType is subpixel rendering. Each "pixel" on an LCD display is made up
of three rectangular subpixels, each one being one third the width of the
pixel. Unlike conventional anti-aliasing, which treats each pixel as a
whole, ClearType uses each individual subpixel directly.

Here is a screen shot of some text rendered by ClearType, magnified with two
different programs:

http://www.geary.com/images/xptext.png

The top image shows the text magnified pixel-by-pixel. The bottom image
shows the individual subpixels (that's why it has red, green, and blue
stripes where you'd expect to see white). If you blur your vision a bit, you
can see in the bottom image how ClearType smooths out the diagonal lines in
the "W" by performing anti-aliasing at the subpixel level. The top image is
closer to how a CRT would display the ClearType text.

Steve Gibson has a more thorough description of subpixel rendering on his
site at:

http://www.grc.com/cleartype.htm

His site is badly broken right now (it's throwing an extra "www." on the
beginning of every URL!) but try later and you may be able to get to it.

-Mike

 

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/what.htm

 

I understand what you are saying, and I can understand why
some people prefer not to see sharp pixels. Indeed, the
font smoothing algorithms to some extent are applying a not
totally dissimilar strategy.

However, it is better not to call this pixelated look an
artifact. Digital images and computer screens *are*
pixelated by design. It is the blurring of pixels on CRT's
that is an artifact, not the clear rendering of these pixels
on LCD panels.

The ultimate solution is using displays with sharp pixels, but
with so many of them that the individual pixels are not resolvable.
Currently, that is beyond the means of most of us.

Rick

 

IMHO the advantage LCDs have over CRT is with those LCDs which have full
digital controls, with each color, contrast, brightness, etc. that can be
set to a fixed repeatable number...
Ed

 

I LOVE my 21" Sony CRT. Before I purchased it, I got a
15" Sony LCD and immediately returned it.

I agree with the use of the word "sterile" - I find it
looks that way because there is no way adjust the color
temperature. Every LCD I've tried reproduces VERY cold and
I find that makes graphics un-natural looking and text,
glaring.

As for sharpness of fonts, you are correct that they are
sharper on an LCD - if your eyes are good enough to read
them at the preferred resolution.

With a CRT, using Windows XP, one can turn on Microsoft's
Clear Type which I found makes a truly noticeable
difference in the sharpness of text.

 

I can adjust the white balance to what I like on my Sharp 15", there's also a
black level control and it comes with a very effective monitor icm profile that
gives more natural colours than my Viewsonic CRT when using profile aware
software. Are Sony falling behind?

 

It's all about gamut, not "natural colors". Your Sharp has a color
gamut roughly half that of a midrange CRT. Try editing an image
with lots of near-blacks or near-whites on your monitor and then
on a CRT and you'll see the obvious difference.

Rick

 

You can also avoid the fixed font sizes using IE by going
to tools/accessibility and checking the box that says
ignore font size specified on web page

 

How do you easily switch back and forth to test it? I
would like to check it out more fully on my 21" Sony CRT.

 

No problems anymore with angle of view, thank goodness. Brightness,
clarity, sharp to the corners and no flicker whatever. I'd have to
agree with you on the grayscale situation, however (grays tend toward
bownishness in the midrange). But you can't have everything, and all
factors considered, I'm very happy with a ViewSonic VX2000.