# Apple vs PC...?



## John27 (Dec 19, 2012)

By PC I mean PC Manufacturer Dell.  Because I have a question about their Display's 

Hah, gotcha.

I've searched the forum and I'm sure someone somewhere has asked this before or it's been discussed, but I couldn't find it.  But In the next couple of months I'm going to be in the market for a new display.  I currently use a 23" IPS display and I like it, but I really want something bigger.  I use both a homebuilt PC and a 13" Macbook pro.  I definitely want the higher resolutions and something in the 27-30 inch range.  Under $1200ish.

So the four I'm thinking of, is the 27" Thunderbolt Display from apple (Sort of, my motherboard doesn't have thunderbolt on the desktop, does anyone know of a retrofit way to run it to HDMI, DVI or DisplayPort?  I think not being able to use it on the desktop as well might be a dealbreaker.), 27" Cinema Display, Dell 30" IPS display, or finding a second hand 30" Apple Cinema Display.

Anyone have thoughts on this?  Does anyone have experience with both Apple and Dell's monitor solutions?

Obviously, looking for color accurate, good for photo editing and such.  Would just really like to have a 27-30 inch monitor, and I don't think I can get away with anything other than IPS in that size range.  I've had luck calibrating smaller displays in the past but the big LCD screens seem so washed out and flat unless they are IPS.  I'm willing to spend the money to go IPS, but if I'm going to spend the money I want to get the best for my bucks!

Leaning towards the Dell right now just for the sheer size, I saw one on display today at a local Microcenter, it's a nice display.  But it seems like a lot of pros use the 27" Cinema display, not sure if that's just because it's Apple, or if they have really decided to prefer that over the Dell and HP offerings. (I'm not a fan of HP, I guess someone could convince me otherwise but I've been less than impressed with their product reliability and everything from displays, to printers, to computers, to peripherals I've had from them and have failed in an unacceptably short timeframe, with the exception of one, old, 15" display I use as a second monitor!)


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## Garbz (Dec 20, 2012)

At that price you're not looking for colour accurate and good for photo editing. You're looking for even backlighting and features. 

Pretty much any high-end IPS display with a similar gamut will look the same. I don't think there's much of a difference in the price range you're looking at. Except for features.


But there is one critical feature. If you want something great for photo editing try and find a display with an internal colour lookup table. 12bit or 14bit LUTs are the norm. This will allow you to get the most out of calibrating since you're really calibrating your screen rather than faking the output of the video card to compensate for your monitor's inadequacies.


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## sactown024 (Dec 20, 2012)

I dont get why people drop so much cash on a nice monitor. I have a 15" macbook pro and I print through WHCC lab and my prints come out spot on everytime, no calibration. Maybe Apple calibrates thier monitors, I dont know, but my prints come out true to color.

Orrr you can just hook your computer up to your LCD/Plasma TV


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## cgipson1 (Dec 20, 2012)

sactown024 said:


> I dont get why people drop so much cash on a nice monitor. I have a 15" macbook pro and I print through WHCC lab and my prints come out spot on everytime, no calibration. Maybe Apple calibrates thier monitors, I dont know, but my prints come out true to color.
> 
> Orrr you can just hook your computer up to your LCD/Plasma TV



That is probably because WHCC is doing your color correction for you..... not something most pro's or even serious enthusiast's would allow!


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## cgipson1 (Dec 20, 2012)

John21.. I have a Dell 30" IPS... and really like it. It is in your price range. Easy to calibrate, good viewing range, excellent display.

As far as the Thunderbolt display port, they do make adapter cables so you can use DVI, HDMI, etc.....   Amazon.com: dvi to displayport cable: Electronics


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## John27 (Dec 20, 2012)

sactown024 said:


> I dont get why people drop so much cash on a nice monitor. I have a 15" macbook pro and I print through WHCC lab and my prints come out spot on everytime, no calibration. Maybe Apple calibrates thier monitors, I dont know, but my prints come out true to color.
> 
> Orrr you can just hook your computer up to your LCD/Plasma TV



It's not an issue of being calibrated once, it's an issue of being calibrated for my environment.  Each time the lighting changes (just like the need to adjust white balance on your camera) the color representation on the monitor changes slightly and needs to be calibrated.  The differences are subtle, but enough.  Also, cheaper displays represent much fewer colors, leading to other challenges in getting accurate photographs.

The main thing here is, I want big.  That's the first goal here.  Big twisted nematic displays are awful.  They are even more washed out, and color inaccurate.  Sometimes you can get away with the smaller monitors, but I've yet to find a cheaper 27"+ monitor that didn't look obviously poor in terms of color quality and contrast.  It needs to be IPS.  Apple's Retina Macbook Pro is an IPS display (heck, so is the iPad/iPhone), but the problem with using any laptop for photo editing is that as you move rooms, (and with TN displays, change viewing angles) colors change with the lighting.  Having a fixed, accurate monitor for doing that sort of work is important. 

Finally, resolution is another issue.  I'm not a pro, but every pro I've talked to, or person who has been doing this for a while has told me that pictures should be, whenever possible, adjusted at 100% zoom.  1 pixel for 1 pixel.  Otherwise, you are compressing pixels and once again, not having accurate color representation, and perhaps other distortions.  On a 1920x1080 (2mp) monitor, my 15mp images are kind of unwieldy.  Plus, those super high resolutions are gorgeous and give you tons of screen real estate.



cgipson1 said:


> John21.. I have a Dell 30" IPS... and really like it. It is in your price range. Easy to calibrate, good viewing range, excellent display.
> 
> As far as the Thunderbolt display port, they do make adapter cables so you can use DVI, HDMI, etc..... Amazon.com: dvi to displayport cable: Electronics



Thanks Charlie.  I got a little trigger happy though and went ahead and jumped on the Apple Cinema Display.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but everything I read (and per apples website) states that the thunderbolt display MUST have a thunderbolt signal (some even say from a mac, not even a PC!), and that no adapters currently exist to make it work with a DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, et al output. You can make it physically plug in, but that's about it.  You won't get a signal.  That works for the Macbook, doesn't work for the PC.  But, Apple does still make the 27" Cinema Display.  It's just hidden in a little link at the bottom of the thunderbolt display page, where those of us who haven't upgraded our entire fleet of computers to 2011+ Mac's must be shunned to!  Same display, just different connectivity.  The thunderbolt would be nice as an effective 'docking station', but, not if I can't use my PC with it!

I appreciate the input though!


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## sactown024 (Dec 20, 2012)

yeah that makes sense, I always adjust my photos at full zoom too.

Bigger is Better!


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## John27 (Dec 20, 2012)

sactown024 said:


> yeah that makes sense, I always adjust my photos at full zoom too.
> 
> Bigger is Better!



More bigger is more better and more better is more gooder!


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## sactown024 (Dec 20, 2012)

Just buy a $600 monitor man, you can get something thats more than capapble of what you need since you already said your not a pro. Then take the other $600 and buy a nice lens.


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## John27 (Dec 20, 2012)

sactown024 said:


> Just buy a $600 monitor man, you can get something thats more than capapble of what you need since you already said your not a pro. Then take the other $600 and buy a nice lens.



We've been over this!  The larger twisted nematic displays are horrendous.  Some degree of color accuracy is important to me.  I'm not a pro, that's true, but I don't want my pictures to have washed out shadows or blue tinted faces either.  It's true $600 will get something that will show pictures on it, but A) It'll be 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 which is a bit low for working with higher resolution images, and doesn't give as much screen real estate and B) Won't be color accurate.

I already use a 23" calibrated IPS.  I cannot imagine going back to a TN display.  I'd rather stick with my 23" than go with a 30" TN display.


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## cgipson1 (Dec 20, 2012)

sactown024 said:


> Just buy a $600 monitor man, you can get something thats more than capapble of what you need since you already said your not a pro. Then take the other $600 and buy a nice lens.



IMO... you can't buy a truly nice lens for $600   You can buy an consumer lens for that...some of which are OK. But then I have expensive tastes... lol!


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## cgipson1 (Dec 20, 2012)

John27 said:


> sactown024 said:
> 
> 
> > Just buy a $600 monitor man, you can get something thats more than capapble of what you need since you already said your not a pro. Then take the other $600 and buy a nice lens.
> ...



Quality counts... if you want good images (pro or not). Some people don't seem to really care about quality, or just do not know the difference it can make. Very common among many of the "new Pro's"... but most of them have never used the kind of equipment that allows them to see that difference.


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## Mully (Dec 20, 2012)

On a mac pro i am using a Samsung 24' monitor and it is spot on.... set it up once and have not made any other adjustments


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## John27 (Dec 20, 2012)

cgipson1 said:


> John27 said:
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That's my problem, spoiled by an IPS display that's been calibrated.  Blinds closed, daylight temp lightbulbs used in the room, etc.  I have a relative who is a long time digital photography enthusiast and works in marketing so digital editing and such is his life, and those are some of the tips he gave me.  It's not that you look at the monitor and go 'ooh ahh', it's that you look at an image on there, pull it up on your laptop later and go "Ewww, agghhh"

The difference becomes incredibly apparent switching between IPS and TN displays.

It's not for everyone.  It's certainly a lot of money.  But then, people tell me that buying a thousand dollar Camera is a waste of money when "an iPhone takes such good pictures" or "My Nikon Coolpix does just fine!".  Well, for them, sure.  And in the right circumstances (nice even daylight lighting, outdoors, etc.) other than not being as sharp, our pictures will probably be similar.  But I bought a DSLR for the OTHER situations, where absolute camera manipulation, performance, and control are paramount.  Much the same with my affinity for IPS displays, and the same reason I like to use a gray card.  There are those beautiful images that just MUST be accurate.  OR, I am intentionally exaggerating or washing out the colors in post, and it needs to look right.  I could push the green on a picture of a grassy field, and that's where it really counts.  Because the image could actually be more BLUE than GREEN, but my inaccurate monitor represents it to me as GREEN.  There are lots of examples like this.  The difference is subtle until you get into a situation where the difference is immense.


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## cgipson1 (Dec 20, 2012)

Mully said:


> On a mac pro i am using a Samsung 24' monitor and it is spot on.... set it up once and have not made any other adjustments



I have a Samsung 24" that I now use as my 2nd monitor, and it is a great monitor (non IPS though) ! The new TN stuff.. yuck!


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## John27 (Dec 20, 2012)

cgipson1 said:


> Mully said:
> 
> 
> > On a mac pro i am using a Samsung 24' monitor and it is spot on.... set it up once and have not made any other adjustments
> ...



My second monitor is a crappy 15" HP display that came with a computer years ago.  Yuck!  Works for what I use it for though.  Some applications it's handy, I display the 'grid' in lightroom on it (one of the places you can see a night and day difference, select an image on the left, totally different image pops up on the right!  But I don't do any actual adjustments on the 15") and I always put my tools and toolbars and stuff in photoshop on the left monitor to give me more screen real estate for the actual image.

But soon my second monitor will be a 23" IPS display, my mouth is watering already!

SOME TN displays can be good, but most of them are trying so hard to push 'numbers'.  Synthetically high contrast ratios, 2ms response times, claiming to display millions more colors than they actually do.  And, they want it to be the brightest, most vivid display on the shelf (under fluorescent lighting).  The best looking TN displays you see on the shelf are often the worst for photo editing.  They are being pushed for these bright vivid colors but they aren't close to accurate.  The result is, an exposure that looks spot on but a print that looks underxposed, or colors that look vivid and really 'pop' but all the C&C you get on TPF is "Looks really washed out" or "Did you set your white balance?"


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## sactown024 (Dec 20, 2012)

I am interested to see someone edit 2 of the same photos, one on a standard macbook monitor or hp or whatever and another on a calibrated $1500 IPS monitor and see the difference. I am not saying there wont be a difference, I genuinely want to see the difference.


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## John27 (Dec 20, 2012)

sactown024 said:


> I am interested to see someone edit 2 of the same photos, one on a standard macbook monitor or hp or whatever and another on a calibrated $1500 IPS monitor and see the difference. I am not saying there wont be a difference, I genuinely want to see the difference.



I tell ya what I'll do.  Once this monitor comes in, I'll set it up and calibrate it, and then I'll set my laptop up right next to it.  I will adjust the same photo so that they look identical on each display (or as close as they can, anyway) and then post the results.


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## sactown024 (Dec 20, 2012)

John27 said:


> sactown024 said:
> 
> 
> > I am interested to see someone edit 2 of the same photos, one on a standard macbook monitor or hp or whatever and another on a calibrated $1500 IPS monitor and see the difference. I am not saying there wont be a difference, I genuinely want to see the difference.
> ...



yeah. def interested!


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## John27 (Dec 20, 2012)

sactown024 said:


> John27 said:
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Well Luckily it shipped from somewhere close and it is due in tomorrow.  If I get a chance (and so far, I think I will have some time) I'll do that tomorrow evening.


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## John27 (Dec 20, 2012)

Here's a teaser shot.

What I did was, I found a scan of a gray card (card used for metering and setting white balance).  This is the exact same image, pulled up inside a web browser (google chrome) on each display, running off of the same computer, and the same video card (Radeon HD5870).  The monitor on the right I 'de-calibrated' by returning it to factory settings and setting windows to the default color profile.  Previously it was calibrated, it is not now, the one on the left is 'as is'. 

Not that they are both inaccurate in the image because this was shot with my iPhone, the white balance is obviously off just looking at the walls, but, this is to demonstrate the difference, not to compare accuracy.  Accuracy we can compare later, but what is crucial to understand is the DIFFERENCE between the two display types, which should be amplified even more with a higher grade IPS.  Furthermore, it demonstrates the need to calibrate a monitor because this is a substantial difference.

I will do the test I talked about before, on a calibrated Apple Cinema Display, and again on a laptop.  I'll lay them out just like these two displays are, and make sure the image looks the same in each, to demonstrate how this difference can appear in photographs. Using Windows' built in calibration tools, and a little trial and error, I could easily 'match' the two monitors, so they show the exact same shade of gray.  But that wouldn't necessarily be accurate!


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## Garbz (Dec 21, 2012)

sactown024 said:


> yeah. def interested!



This is par for the course for us. My girlfriend cranks out photos from her laptop and then comes to me to check what they look like. The end result is usually "Awww crap" and she walks away. 

Anyway you want to see a side by side comparison:

NEC Spectraview next to a laptop.





This is a top to bottom colour balance issue on a non IPS monitor. Note the text at the top and bottom is the same colour yet looks completely different:





That kind of really is an issue when you're judging colour, like this red screen here on the left with the crappy monitor and the right with the spectraview:








Oh then there's also inconsistencies with viewing angles. The first picture is taken straight on, the second from an elevated position:









A screen CAN look ok, but how do you know? The bigger the screen the worse the effect is too as the angles between the top and bottom of the diverge from your eye. 
That's why we get expensive screens, and we calibrate because displays drift over time.


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## sactown024 (Dec 21, 2012)

wow I guess there is a huge difference, thats amazing. What monitor did you end up buying anyways?


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## cgipson1 (Dec 21, 2012)

Garbz said:


> sactown024 said:
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> > yeah. def interested!
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Great post, Garbz!!


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## John27 (Dec 21, 2012)

sactown024 said:


> wow I guess there is a huge difference, thats amazing. What monitor did you end up buying anyways?



Apple Cinema Display, should be here today.

I'll still do the edit thing, because it sounds like fun to see the consequences of using a cheap display vs a good IPS.  But Garbz really did an excellent job!


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## sactown024 (Dec 21, 2012)

John27 said:


> sactown024 said:
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> > wow I guess there is a huge difference, thats amazing. What monitor did you end up buying anyways?
> ...


Now you got me wanting a Apple Cinema Display, ugh


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## John27 (Dec 21, 2012)

sactown024 said:


> John27 said:
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I got it about an hour ago.  It's delicious.  The built in magsafe connector is nice too if you have a macbook, the display will charge it.  The thunderbolt display does this too and is essentially the same thing for the same price, but it doesn't work with anything other than a mac.  However, if all you have is thunderbolt equipped macs that you wish to use, it adds a whole lot of functionality through rear firewire, USB, Ethernet, etc. ports.  Kind of like a docking station.


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