Apple Displays for Digital Photography

Apple
Displays for Digital Photography
© 2006 KenRockwell.com

I get my
goodies at Amazon and Adorama.
It helps me
publish this site when you get yours from those links, too.

Apple 30,” 23″ and 20″ Cinema
Displays (Courtesy of Apple)

LCD or CRT?

I used to
favor CRTs, but today I prefer the larger working space (square
inches) I can get on an LCD.

I
suggest a calibrator,
since LCDs are often designed to look vivid and brilliant instead
of accurate. The great news is LCDs don’t vary once they’re calibrated.
With an LCD you can borrow a friend’s LCD calibrator once and be
OK for a long time.

CRTs often come out of the box well adjusted, but
will vary over time and Heaven help you if you ever touch the RGB
controls without a calibrator, since they’re rarely any way to get
back to the factory settings.

See also
my pages on the differences,
details and calibration of
monitors.

Working Space

Color spaces
are pretty similar among monitors.

By working
space I’m talking about how many square inches or pixels you have.
The more you have on a bigger monitor, the more work you can do
at the same time without running out of room.

I can work
in PhotoShop CS2 or read email or sort photos just fine on my
tiny 12″ laptop. The reason I’m shopping for a bigger monitor is
so I can work in PhotoShop CS2 and Dreamweaver 8 and e-mail and browse
the internet
and sort photos and take notes in my text editor,
all at the same time. When I work on my computer I have a lot going
on.

Apple Displays

Today Apple
only offers LCD monitors called “Cinema Displays.” Don’t
let the fancy name scare you: they work on all modern Macs and
PCs that have the correct digital connectors. They are extraordinary
among LCDs because they don’t change their color
or brightness as you view them from odd angles.

Apple’s displays
are also better than most because even Apple’s
smallest is still a big monitor with lots of working space.
Apple makes no ordinary 17″ 1,280 x 1,024 or 15″ 1,024 x 768 monitors
for cubicle workers.

Apple makes
a family of three LCD displays: the big
20,” the huge
23″
and the gargantuan
30.” The prices dropped again in August 2006 to $699, $999 and $1,999. In November
2005 they sold for $799, $1,299 and $2,499.

Resolutions
are 1,680
x 1,050 (20″), 1,920
x 1,200 (23″) and 2,560
x 1,600 (30″). All are about 102 DPI. The
rest of the specs are here.

They are all excellent. Your choice will be based on
how much working space you’d like, and that’s based on how much
you like to do at the same time.

I’ve always
been a fan of the beautiful Apple monitors. You probably
can buy an off-brand with the same picture quality for less, but
I’d rather stare at sculpture than an ordinary computer monitor.
These monitors are the main reason I’m contemplating buying a
machine to replace my 12″ iBook since the iBook can’t drive
these. They also talk to your Mac for brightness and power and
have a small USB and Firewire hub.

The great news is that today it seems that the off
brands like HP, Sony, and etc. actually are priced above Apple. This
will vary week to week.

Another great
difference is that the off brands just don’t have the size and
resolution. Off brands seem to stop at about 1,600 x 1,200 resolution
with 1,280 x 1,024 more common in their “big” monitors, which is
a fraction of the space and resolution of Apple’s mid-level 23″
monitor’s 1,920 x 1,200.

Unlike traditional
monitors which, contrary to popular belief, actually take analog
VGA inputs from a computer and re-digitize them for display, the
Apple Cinema displays take digital DVI inputs directly from the
computer. They work on both Mac and windows so long as your windows
machine has enough graphics power and a DVI connector or two.

Each
display is excellent. The image looks the same even when seen
from an angle.
This differs from laptop displays which look lighter or darker
depending on the angle from which they are viewed.

Your choice
depends on how much you like to do at the same time. Even the 20″ is
plenty for working in Photoshop. Personally I do everything on
a 12″ laptop.
The 20″ display has 1,680 pixels horizontally so there’s enough
room for two separate panels, one on each side, when web browsing
or reading email. I do this all the time on a monitor this size because
it gets more done by saving switching among windows.

The previous
20″ display was introduced January 28th, 2003 at $1,299. The
current model was introduced June 28th, 2004 at $1,299 and sold from November 2005 – August 2006 for $799. It dropped to $699 in August, 2006.

The newest 20″
iMac appears
to have the same excellent LCD screen as the 20″
monitor. You can
get the same pixel count (1,680 x
1,050) in a smaller screen in the 17″ PowerBook,
although the PowerBook’s display brightness varies with viewing
angle, just like all laptops I’ve ever seen. All of Apple’s
external monitors today incredibly don’t change color or brightness
if you view them from off-center.

23″
Cinema Display and G5
(Courtesy of Apple)