Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Colour Management => Topic started by: Dave R on December 11, 2008, 01:13:20 pm

Title: Monitor advice needed
Post by: Dave R on December 11, 2008, 01:13:20 pm
I am not sure if this thread is more appropriate for this forum, or if I should have posted it in the computers/hardware forum instead, but I am hoping somebody out there will have some good advice for me.  Many thanks in advance!!  (BTW, this is my first post on this site.)  

Anyway, I am hoping to upgrade to a new monitor, as soon as budget allows for it (likely to be either the NEC WUXI 2690-2, or the NEC WQXI 3090, with the Spectraview for either one).  But before I can do that, I am hoping to get by with my current, dual-monitor setup, just a little while longer.  I am using a 19" Lacie Electron Blue IV CRT as my primary photo editor (it is getting old quickly), and a 17" LCD as a secondary panel (an NEC MultiSync LCD 1770GX, which I use primarily for Photoshop's palettes.  It's a couple years old so far.)  The problem is that they no longer seem to calibrate as well as they used to.  (They always looked a little different from each other, but now they are getting to be way off.  The Lacie is much warmer than the NEC.  Or has the NEC gotten cooler instead?)

What I would really like to do is just bite the bullet, and get one of the newer NECs I mentioned above, but I can't really do that quite yet.  So, I am wondering what my best option(s) would be at this point.  The Lacie I have is about 3 or 4 years old now, and I suspect that I really should have retired it already.  Would the NEC 1770 make a decent editing monitor just for the interim, or should I keep the going with the Lacie for now?  (I don't believe the NEC 1770 was dedigned with photo editing in mind.)  Or, can someone recommend a newer model in the meantime, that won't break the bank for me while I save for the one I truly want?  Or, is it something else?  (For example, can calibrators go bad?  I'm using a Spyder 2 Pro.)  Any and all advice would certainly be appreciated.  BIG thanks!!!

Dave