Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: billh on June 26, 2012, 09:08:25 pm
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Thank you Michael! I’ve been curious about using the Retina MBP for photos and video in place of my old Mac Pro 1,1 (I had hoped Apple would announce a new Mac Pro). The Mac Pro and LR4 take forever to display the D800E RAWs in 1:1 preview, and it is so slow I use my 2011 MacBook Pro for Premiere.
Do you know if the Retina MBP will run FCP 7?
It is also great to have the myriad suggestions and links you provided. I have a plethora of RAID drives, all of which use Firewire 800.
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Yes, it will run FCP7.
Michael
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To be sure that I understand the implications of the Retina screen, when LR and PS are run today, do they open up and give you the high resolution screens (really small text plus really big image area) with which to edit and work with or the low resolution screens?
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Apple have announced a Thunderbolt to Firewire800 adapter, alongside a Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet connector. As yet only the Ethernet connector is available ( £25 from Apple store). The Firewire connector is rumored to be available in September.
It's a bit of a pain they didn't make them both available at the launch of the MBP retina
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I dislike Apple's policy re: ports. I got stuck with mini display port instead of thunderbolt on 2010 Air, firewire is on the way out, usb3 was adopted by Apple much too late, and there are very few thunderbolt devices around.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I find it annoying. At least they could have come out with all the necessary adapters and hubs when they decided to adopt thunderbolt as the way to go, and not being able to upgrade 2010 Air's mini display port to thunderbolt (and not being able to use the 27" thunderbolt display which at the moment seems to be the only one they make) looks like a very big mess. Are they even thinking about it?
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Nice review. From a photographers viewpoint a couple of points would have been of interest.
1) What is the performance using Lightroom 4 and especially how does the SSD help here.
2) How large a gamut is the retina display giving? Is it close to sRGB as the previous MBP displays or it is closer to Adobe RGB?
I also got the new MBP 2012, but not the retina display version. Why?
A fully configured MBP retina version (since it is not upgradable) would cost me about 50% more than the MBP 15" antiglare 1680x1050 display, 750GB 7200rpm drive, i7 2.6Ghz 8GB RAM.
I like to edit on a large display which is a 30" display with a resolution of 2560x1600 and a color gamut of close to Adobe RGB. Also I expected it would take quite some time until the apps were upgrade to fully take advantage of the retina display, but we will see. I also expected that prices on SSD drives to go down and I could replace the internal drive with an SSD drive and possibly also the DVD drive with SSD. I like to not be dependent on external drives except for backup when I'm out. In the office I plug in a FW800 drive and with the USB3 ports I can also use fast USB 3 drives. Also I can add 16GB RAM when the prices come down for the new 1600Mhz 8GB RAM blocks. ....but it is not a retina display and I surely lusted for that too but was a bit disappointed to learn that I had to get also SSD only and a non-upgradable machine. So for me the retirna display will be next time I upgrade my MBP.
I had a MBP from 2009 with a 2.8Ghz Core2 Duo, 8GB ram and 750GB 7200rpm HD. I find the new MBP screaming in performance in comparison. I think that in some cases with Lightroom SSD would make sense but for most operations I don't see it. I have been watching cpu graphs and disk i/o while doing certain operations. While editing there is certainly no benefit. In 1:1 preview generation my feel is that there would some gain like 50% or maybe more since there are quite some gaps when the cpu cores are not all busy, however it is not quite clear if some of these gaps are due to single threading and not just waiting for I/O. So compared to the MBP from 2009 this is a huge upgrade and Lightroom 4.1 flies with it.
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I dislike Apple's policy re: ports. I got stuck with mini display port instead of thunderbolt on 2010 Air, firewire is on the way out, usb3 was adopted by Apple much too late, and there are very few thunderbolt devices around.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I find it annoying. At least they could have come out with all the necessary adapters and hubs when they decided to adopt thunderbolt as the way to go, and not being able to upgrade 2010 Air's mini display port to thunderbolt (and not being able to use the 27" thunderbolt display which at the moment seems to be the only one they make) looks like a very big mess. Are they even thinking about it?
I can follow your thoughts for sure, but as nice the 27" Apple display is, it has one thing that is a no no for me, which is the glas covered display. My wife has it and she loves it but for photo editing I much prefer a non glass covered display. I also chose my new MBP with the anti-glare display (as I did on the old 2009 MBP). So when it comes to the point when I replace my 5 year old HP LP3065 30" display I will not choose the Apple 27" although it does look nice. I was happy to see that the old display adapter for dual DVI works also now on the thunderbolt/display port on the new MBP. On the new MBP I have FW, USB 2/3 ports som I'm happy with that. If you do serious photo editing get the new MBP 15" instead of the MB air ;) There is no comparison in performance.
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Thank you Michael for a convincing review.
Do you have information on the Retina display gamut. Srgb ? Argb ?
Thanks
Goff
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To be sure that I understand the implications of the Retina screen, when LR and PS are run today, do they open up and give you the high resolution screens (really small text plus really big image area) with which to edit and work with or the low resolution screens?
All programs that are not Retina ware simply run in pixel doubling mode. They look normal. If you run SwitchResX you can choose any resolution you like, but of course menues and text will be small.
Michael
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I can follow your thoughts for sure, but as nice the 27" Apple display is, it has one thing that is a no no for me, which is the glas covered display.
Yes, the glossy screen is not a good thing. Fortunately, since 13" Air they started using anti-glare coating on the displays, so hopefully this will be introduced to their entire product line, because producing a glossy screen without coating is just ridiculous. I do prefer a coated glossy to matte, though, because matte reduces contrast too much for my taste.
If you do serious photo editing get the new MBP 15" instead of the MB air ;) There is no comparison in performance.
I might, because I need to replace my desktop this year and replacing both with a single computer does have a certain appeal, and my wife is certainly lobbying for this option because then she'll get my 13" Air. :)
On the other hand, I'd like to see what the new iMac will be like, and I really like the Air. I don't rely on complicated photo editing, I just adjust a few things in the raw converter and sharpen it for the desired medium, so I don't need a super-powerful machine for anything other than the panoramas. I do need a mouse and a big IPS screen when I work with the photos, though, so I really need at least some parts of a desktop system.
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Thank you Michael for a convincing review.
Do you have information on the Retina display gamut. Srgb ? Argb ?
Thanks
Goff
Similar to Srgb. I've just added a plot to the report.
Michael
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2) How large a gamut is the retina display giving? Is it close to sRGB as the previous MBP displays or it is closer to Adobe RGB?
My understanding from someone who managed to profile one is it is pretty close to sRGB.
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For those who are interested I made a little performance test of 1:1 preview generation. I took 20 RAW files from my Canon 1Ds mkIII (21MP) and used my normal import preset which includes sharpening, lens correction, process version 2012 and a calibrated profile for the camera.
This took very close to 3 seconds per RAW file each time I repeated this test. I then took lens correction out and the time was essentially the same. Then I change to PV2010 and the time then went down to about 2.5 seconds per RAW file. I also made this test on heavily edited files (a number of grad filters, but no complicated brushes) and the time went up to about 4.7 seconds per RAW file (which of course would vary with the amount of editing).
I also repeated the test on the old 2009 2.8Ghz, 8GB RAM 750GB 7200 rpm MBP and the time per RAW file was about 12 seconds or 4x longer. Note that the new machine is 2.6hz i7 quad core (turbo boost and hyperthreading) and old one two cores.
I also have a 2011 MBP 13" i5 2.3Ghz (used for music play) which I could test also, but have not done so far.
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My understanding from someone who managed to profile one is it is pretty close to sRGB.
Thanks and here is the profiling from both the old MBP 2009 display and the 30" HP monitor. It looks to me from Michaels graph that the new retina is somewhere in between the two.
(http://www.pbase.com/hkruse/image/135056285/original.jpg)
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Thanks and here is the profiling from both the old MBP 2009 display and the 30" HP monitor. It looks to me from Michaels graph that the new retina is somewhere in between the two.
I’d really like to see the profiles off this new display technology generated by a Spectrophotometer, not a colorimeter who’s filters may or may not handle this new product correctly!
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I also have a 2011 MBP 13" i5 2.3Ghz (used for music play) which I could test also, but have not done so far.
I repeated the test on this machine and the time was 6 seconds per RAW file (compared to 3 seconds on the new 15" MBP as mentioned previously).
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Similar to Srgb. I've just added a plot to the report.
Michael
Hello,
that's a little disapointing. My Dell Precision notebook shows, admittadely only at full HD resolution, a tiny less than Adobe RGB with it's IPS-panel.
So the question is - is it better to abdicate from resolution or from color-gamut ? I've got no clear answewr to this question.
Robert
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It would be great to have both, but since LR4's soft proofing allows both screen and print gamut evaluation having only sRGB isn't all that limiting.
Michael
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Hello,
that's a little disapointing. My Dell Precision notebook shows, admittadely only at full HD resolution, a tiny less than Adobe RGB with it's IPS-panel.
So the question is - is it better to abdicate from resolution or from color-gamut ? I've got no clear answewr to this question.
Robert
I would take as close to AdobeRGB gamut as possible over resolution for photo editing (as long as the resolution was at least say 900 to 1080 on the short side) any day as you really do not want to be doing any serious editing at SRGB or lower. I suspect most folks would still not be doing serious editing on their small Retina Macbook displays/ laptops anyway though. Then the question becomes, why spend the bucks on the Retina MBP when one could buy something lighter and/or cheaper for on thr go? Heck, for around $1100 bucks now, one can even get a very nice IPS ultrabook in the Asus Zenbook Prime (basically like a Macbook Air with a better IPS screen).
The larger question (if I understand the software resolution side of the Retina Macbook Pro) - is if these very hi resolution screens become more popular - will photographers begin providing hi resolution images on their websites for better native Retina resolution viewing (and do these images then have to be specially tagged to do this?) or simply have their lower resolution images interpolated/ scaled up by the software (which while the Retina Macbook Pro does a good job at, photographic images still show some artifacts from the interpolation).
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Anand has the full comparison on the display here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/5 (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/5)
Also note - the Retina screen is neither gloss nor matte, it has NO protective panel at all - it's raw LCD.
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Interesting that the antiglare "high res" (1680x1050) screen on the MBP has a higher color gamut than the retina display.
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Apple has posted an FAQ (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5266?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US) on the retina display
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Apple has posted an FAQ (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5266?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US) on the retina display
Thanks Chris for posting this very intersting link !!
Robert
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And for those that have a retina display, here is an early problem (http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/150929/apple-explains-macbook-pro-retina-display-settings-with-support-faq)
Scroll down to the 'image persistence' video
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Web page creators need to put images online with special identifiers so that modified browsers can select the correct resolution to display for each element. This will likely happen fairly quickly, especially on photography related sites. I intended on putting Retina-aware images on this site beginning in the near future.
I'm not paranoid about image theft but I'd advise caution against putting "Retina-aware" images on the web. It's one thing to put a 900 x 600 pixel or so jpeg on a website (and inadvertently make it available to bloggers and other copyright averse online users), it's a different ballgame putting up 1800 x 1200 images (and larger if you are going to really take advantage of the new screen) that begin to be useful for print usage. Too risky IMO.
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I'm not paranoid about image theft but I'd advise caution against putting "Retina-aware" images on the web. It's one thing to put a 900 x 600 pixel or so jpeg on a website (and inadvertently make it available to bloggers and other copyright averse online users), it's a different ballgame putting up 1800 x 1200 images (and larger if you are going to really take advantage of the new screen) that begin to be useful for print usage. Too risky IMO.
That's a very valid point with deep reaching consequences!
Actually this may end up being the most impacting aspect of this upgrade.
Cheers,
Bernard
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I've been giving a lot of thought to this. A watermark may be the only answer.
Michael
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I've been giving a lot of thought to this. A watermark may be the only answer.
Exactly, things will quickly point in that direction.
If you look also more broadly, this is getting close to an article written a few years ago by one of your contributors about the death of paper... ;)
Cheers,
Bernard
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I've been giving a lot of thought to this. A watermark may be the only answer.
Michael
Maybe, or some new way of embedding images and displaying them in a non-saveable way; something like flash, and hopefully designed against the print-screen function.
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Maybe, or some new way of embedding images and displaying them in a non-saveable way; something like flash, and hopefully designed against the print-screen function.
To be displayed on a screen, at some point in time the image will have been decoded and written into a buffer (main memory, dedicated frame buffer on graphics card). At that point in time all you would need to do is dump the contents of the buffer. For example, fraps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraps) is a common program used to grab the contents of the OpenGL or DirectX frame buffer to create a video file. There is very little programming skill necessary to grab the frame buffer and convert it into a usable image format. Put simply, if you can see it on your screen, it is in a buffer somewhere and disabling print screen isn't going to stop anyone other than casual thieves (opportunistic theft).
Sadly, a large, centrally located watermark is likely the best strategy to deal with folks intent on printing your work without paying. There are algorithms that can be used to remove watermarks partially. The basic logic for such an algorithm is that to be visible a watermarked pixel must have an RGB value noticeably different from the value of the surrounding pixels (and the surrounding pixels generally have values similar to the pixel that was changed). So, removing a watermark is basically a specialized smoothing-like operation. You also want to throw in some edge detection to identify the regions that are being manipulated.
So, watermarks can also be defeated, to an extent. The image won't look as good, but depending on the print size some users would find it to be acceptable enough to print (and steal).
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To be displayed on a screen, at some point in time the image will have been decoded and written into a buffer (main memory, dedicated frame buffer on graphics card). At that point in time all you would need to do is dump the contents of the buffer. For example, fraps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraps) is a common program used to grab the contents of the OpenGL or DirectX frame buffer to create a video file. There is very little programming skill necessary to grab the frame buffer and convert it into a usable image format. Put simply, if you can see it on your screen, it is in a buffer somewhere and disabling print screen isn't going to stop anyone other than thieves of opportunity (casual theft).
Yes, that is true, but the most casual ones are usually the ones you need to worry about. Also, if the process of theft is made technically difficult, it might be easier to prove malicious intent in court. It's the difference between picking up a wallet from the pavement and picking pockets.
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Yes, that is true, but the most casual ones are usually the ones you need to worry about. Also, if the process of theft is made technically difficult, it might be easier to prove malicious intent in court. It's the difference between picking up a wallet from the pavement and picking pockets.
Unfortunately it isn't very difficult from a technical standpoint. Photoshop and GIMP already include the tool necessary to remove small/unobtrusive watermarks and more than likely you are already familiar with it (though obviously not for this purpose): the content-aware spot healing tool.
http://www.instantfundas.com/2010/04/how-to-remove-watermark-from-image-or.html
Regarding the watermarked image used for the example in the above link: The big "X" across the image with single-pixel width is trivial to remove with a negligible loss of quality. Fixing any single-pixel wide modification (especially a linear feature) is trivial. Don't waste your time making watermarks like that. A non-uniform curvilinear watermark that is non-contiguous would be much harder to remove. For example, a watermark that consisted of many small, non-contiguous modifications of varying hues would be more difficult to remove (think of polka dots that were arranged to form words). If you varied the color of each polka-dot, you could also overlap them to form the watermark, but some discontinuities will make it harder to create an automated program to remove the watermark. Large blocks are easy to programatically identify and remove. The standard LR watermarking would not be hard to remove.
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Both posting a small resolution image and posting a watermarked image are techniques that go from the premise that someone is going to steal the image, and when he does, you want to limit what he can do with it. As you said, watermarking has limited usefulness, since a determined and skilled person can remove it. Reducing image size is more useful but is ultimately self-defeating, because you eventually make an image that is so small, it doesn't present your work in any significant way.
So, as long as the choice is between presenting my work properly and limiting theft, I decided that presenting my work properly has priority. YMMV.
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If the intention is to prevent theft of higher resolution images and have one's work look good when viewed specifically on say an Apple Retina MBP screen, the best compromise at present is likely just to leave images at their current, lower resolution (optimized say for a vertical resolution of between say 768-900 pixels when viewing ones website at full screen) and let the Retina MBP perform it's linear interpolation up of the images (the default Retina screen resolution). Looking at current images on the Retina MBP which have been interpolated up in this way display the slightest hint of interpolation artifacts which one really must look closely at to notice. Imo, this is much less obtrusive/ noticeable than a big watermark on a higher resolution image. When higher resolution screens become the norm, perhaps then worry about a permanent solution (and by then, there may be a solution readily available).
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I tried to think of some positive things on this topic regarding "regular folks" (those who are not OCD photographers such as those lurking about the LuLa forums, myself included), stealing images from photographers:
1. They will likely be downloading an image limited to sRGB with 8-bit precision.
2. They will probably be printing on their personal printer and know nothing about color profiles.
3. As a result of 1 and 2, the print they create won't likely come close to what they would have received had they paid.
I know, small consolation.
I believe anyone willing to steal and print an image wouldn't likely have ever paid for the image. There are those in society who are ethical and believe in paying others for their work and those who do not. Trying to compel those in the later category to pay is difficult and may not be worth the effort.
I have to run, but I just had an odd thought based on conclusion 2. Most browsers don't support embedded ICCv4 profiles so including one won't make a lick of difference to the on-screen rendering in the browser. Most applications used for printing, however, do. You could always use an embedded ICCv4 profile that was GRB instead of RGB ordering so that it would look like crap when they went to print it after downloading.
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I believe anyone willing to steal and print an image wouldn't likely have ever paid for the image.
I am often skeptical of this "pirates wouldn't pay anyway" argument, like when applied to movie and music downloads, but in this case I agree: the most likely result of preventing unauthorized use of your screen-resolution images is that the would-be pirates will keep searching, and find another less well-protected image that is good enough amongst the billions available online. That seems far more likely than them going through the hassle of paying you for your screen-resolution image.
I would guess that the most likely ways to generate a sale from displaying an image online is (1) selling a print, or a higher quality file suitable for printing at about letter size/A4 or above, and (2) for commercial web-sites. For (1), keeping resolution down to "free sample" size seems enough: 1280x800?. For (2) maybe hidden digital signatures and web-searching tools that find your images reused on commercial sites might help, if the abusing site is big enough to be worth going after legally.
P. S. There is an irony to this worrying about 5MP "retina resolution" compressed JPEG images being good enough that people will not pay for higher quality versions, just after some weeks of worrying that the resolution of the D800 is not good enough due to its AA filter, or that the 5DMkIII has inadequate dynamic range.
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I am often skeptical of this "pirates wouldn't pay anyway" argument, like when applied to movie and music downloads, but in this case I agree: the most likely result of preventing unauthorized use of your screen-resolution images is that the would-be pirates will keep searching, and find another less well-protected image that is good enough amongst the billions available online. That seems far more likely than them going through the hassle of paying you for your screen-resolution image.
I am glad you picked up on the subtle difference. With songs and movies, it isn't likely that someone will listen to or watch a similar substitute for what they wanted. I can just imagine a conversation:
Inquiry to a friend: "Did you see (the new) James Bond last night?" (assuming it came out the previous night)
Response: "Nah, it wasn't available on BitTorrent so I watched the previous one instead."
Thanks to image search tools on the web, such as Google Images, if the result is too small, watermarked heavily, et cetera it is quite easy to simply move along to the next result. In the world of photography there seem to be very few exceptions to this principle (maybe for the top 0.001%, maybe).
For (1), keeping resolution down to "free sample" size seems enough: 1280x800?. For (2) maybe hidden digital signatures and web-searching tools that find your images reused on commercial sites might help, if the abusing site is big enough to be worth going after legally.
Those sound like good strategies to me.
P. S. There is an irony to this worrying about 5MP "retina resolution" compressed JPEG images being good enough that people will not pay for higher quality versions, just after some weeks of worrying that the resolution of the D800 is not good enough due to its AA filter, or that the 5DMkIII has inadequate dynamic range.
Yes, it is quite ironic. But it is similar to the principles expressed in The Innovator's Dilemma and it relates to the principle behind point 2 in your second paragraph. Because the market is saturated, photographers have two choices:
- Move further up the value chain.
- Lower per-item profit and prices to remain competitive at the same level in the value chain.
I suspect that most people on LuLa plan on taking the first strategy and therefore the equipment they use has become more critical as they attempt to keep or expand their revenue while moving up the value chain by selling higher-end/more specialized items. In a high-end, specialized market it is likely that fewer items will be sold and more work will go into the creation of each item. To keep the same revenue each item must be sold at a higher per-item profit. Even if you do not work in an area that creates new technologies, The Innovator's Dilemma is an excellent book to read. And if you do, it should be mandatory.
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On Windows 7, the Snipping tool makes it possible to cut all or part of any image to the clipboard.
On OSX, Command-Shift-4 provides the same function.
Flash does nothing to change this.
My rule is never post more pixels than you are willing to give up for free.
When you create the web page use an image with the max pixels you are willing to give away free.
Size the image window to a % of page width, rather than absolute pixel size and and let the Retina MBP perform it's linear interpolation to get the needed pixels.
A trivial watermark can be deleted easily and a large obtrusive watermark destoys the image aestehtically.
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Personally, I will take wider gamut over higher resolution. YMMV.
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If the intention is to prevent theft of higher resolution images and have one's work look good when viewed specifically on say an Apple Retina MBP screen, the best compromise at present is likely just to leave images at their current, lower resolution (optimized say for a vertical resolution of between say 768-900 pixels when viewing ones website at full screen) and let the Retina MBP perform it's linear interpolation up of the images (the default Retina screen resolution). Looking at current images on the Retina MBP which have been interpolated up in this way display the slightest hint of interpolation artifacts which one really must look closely at to notice. Imo, this is much less obtrusive/ noticeable than a big watermark on a higher resolution image. When higher resolution screens become the norm, perhaps then worry about a permanent solution (and by then, there may be a solution readily available).
Agreed. I keep the resolution of my Macbook Pro Retina one tick up from Apples ideal retina setting, and pics look fine to me. I was just on Magnum's website looking around, and there aren't any noticeable issues. The "ideal" retina setting looked fine, too. I plan on outputting my web jpegs at their usual size.
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Personally, I will take wider gamut over higher resolution. YMMV.
But this is a laptop, and like other laptops it's a 6bit display that uses dithering to obtain "millions" of colors. But it isn't an 8bit display. This means the battery will last longer. It's more than adequate for preliminary editing and for web stuff and the like more than enough in color quality.
To me this isn't about "more resolution" ... in fact it's just the opposite. It's about eliminating resolution from the equation. On LCD displays things normally only look good at the native resolution. But with the retina MBP, you can pick pretty much any resolution you want, and the screen looks good. As mentioned in the previous post, I also keep my resolution set to one notch above the "best for retina display". the best for retina display shows the same screen real estate as the previous standard MBP, 1440x900. If you use that setting, the display works just like the new iPad ... 4 pixels are used to show a single pixel ... the screen appears virtually identical to a previous MBP (ok a little sharper) but I had the higher resolution MBP, and using the next scaled setting shows more screen and is equivalent to what a 1680x1050 screen shows. There are 5 built in "scale" settings on the retina MBP, which show the equivalent of 1024 x 640, 1280 x 800, 1440 x 900, 1680 x 1050 and 1920 x 1200 resolutions. With switchresx you can set it to almost any resolution you want and most of them look really good (I tried 3840 x 2400? ... lol, tough to see any buttons to get it back to a readable resolution) So the retina MBP really doesn't have a "resolution" ... it's anything you want. Just a choice of how little or how big you want stuff to be.
That was a great review (as usual) and I hadn't even noticed the reflections. I moved away from matte screens a long time ago, and pretty well tune out all reflections or slightly adjust the screen for annoying ones, but after reading the article I compared my new MBP to my last one, and the reflection control is pretty amazing. This is really a sweet display.
One thing I didn't see in the review was how good the battery life is. I've been browsing the internet for over an hour or so now, and I have 7.5 hours of batter life left. wow ...
I'll have to crank it up with some CS6 and LR tomorrow to see how the battery does, but guessing it'll still be pretty sweet.
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But this is a laptop, and like other laptops it's a 6bit display that uses dithering to obtain "millions" of colors.
This is interesting. Do you have sources for this? My 27" desktop accepts 10-bit input, but I suspect that the panel is 8-bits natively.
Having very high resolution, the drawbacks of spatial dithering would be smaller (the "noise" could operate at spatial frequencies where it is unlikely to be seen, while still adding to the number of steps available for gradations).
-h
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Unfortunately, Apple laptops actually moved from an 8 bit display (with the 15" G4 PPC Powerbook which used a Samsung display, one of the best looking screens on an Apple laptop until now imo) to the "cheating" 6 bit display with the Macbook Pro's and later which, I believe, are all LG based displays. That is when this dithered color came about. I'm not 100% sure though that this is still the case with the Retina display. It's also likely not the case with ALL laptops.
Not sure that I would want to do any color editing on a screen which has limited gamut. Sort of difficult to edit colors you can't see. :)
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This is interesting. Do you have sources for this? My 27" desktop accepts 10-bit input, but I suspect that the panel is 8-bits natively.
-h
There was actually a lawsuit brought against Apple about their 6 bit laptops not providing true "millions of colors" as advertised.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1992035/posts
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Not sure that I would want to do any color editing on a screen which has limited gamut. Sort of difficult to edit colors you can't see. :)
The number of bits and the gamut are two different things.
-h
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The number of bits and the gamut are two different things.
-h
I know. That remark was in response to the idea of doing basic editing in Srgb.
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The number of bits and the gamut are two different things.
True but the wider the gamut, the more need for more bits.
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True but the wider the gamut, the more need for more bits.
I wish Apple would make an extremely professional notebook with a kickass display (10-bit panel, wide gamut, 14-bit 3D LUT, built-in calibration). The MacBook Pro Extreme Edition?
Years ago IBM had a 15" T42p with an optional IPS panel that added a full half inch to the display thickness but was really quite wonderful to look at. I really don't care how thin my notebook is if the images are not rendered accurately and with a wide enough gamut to be represent the colors well.
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Unfortunately, Apple laptops actually moved from an 8 bit display (with the 15" G4 PPC Powerbook which used a Samsung display, one of the best looking screens on an Apple laptop until now imo) to the "cheating" 6 bit display with the Macbook Pro's and later which, I believe, are all LG based displays. That is when this dithered color came about. I'm not 100% sure though that this is still the case with the Retina display. It's also likely not the case with ALL laptops.
Not sure that I would want to do any color editing on a screen which has limited gamut. Sort of difficult to edit colors you can't see. :)
Dithering has been around a long time and I'm pretty sure there aren't any portables (perhaps still one) which do not use 6bit dithered displayed. I would be interested to know your source for when Apple began using them, but you could be right. the G4 Macbook goes back a long way - but I thought it also used a 6 bit panel. I think the addition of LED backlighting helped tremendously.
As far as color editing, you can't see all the colors of most printers now on any display, and the majority of any images colors are well within the range of sRGB. But when editing in the field it's more preliminary work and the MBP is just fine.
I wish Apple would make an extremely professional notebook with a kickass display (10-bit panel, wide gamut, 14-bit 3D LUT). (The MacBook Pro Extreme Edition?) Years ago IBM had a 15" T42p with an optional IPS panel that added a full half inch to the display thickness but was really quite wonderful to look at. I really don't care how thin my notebook is if the images are not rendered accurately and with a wide enough gamut to be represent the colors well.
Just no one out there to buy it. I'm the opposite, I want light (and thin is fine), long battery life and decent performance. When I get home I plug my NEC PA
301w into my MBP and things are great.
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I wish Apple would make an extremely professional notebook with a kickass display (10-bit panel, wide gamut, 14-bit 3D LUT, built-in calibration). The MacBook Pro Extreme Edition?
I have a distinct feeling that Apple was more into that kind of customers 10 years ago than they are today.
-h
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I have a distinct feeling that Apple was more into that kind of customers 10 years ago than they are today.
Sadly true.
Wayne: When I get home I also plug in to my PA301W, of which I have two. Oh how I love those displays. But taking one or both on the road isn't feasible due to the size, weight, and potentially power challenges. The box those things come in is monstrous. Both times the UPS guy was like "WTF type of monitor comes in a box like this?" Ironic part was it was the same guy both times and I gave him the same answer. Felt like the twilight zone.
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I’d take a 10-bit sRGB like SpectraView, maybe even an 8-bit SpectraView if such a device existed, over a high bit laptop wide gamut display any day of the week. I don’t think anyone should be waiting on high quality laptop display’s from Apple. On location, fine. Back home, hook up a high quality external display like a SpectraView or Eizo and do the color critical work.
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Not sure if it's been mentioned here yet, but after checking out the retina display at the store yesterday, one thing that struck me as immensely useful to us photographers is the viewing angle consistency: much better than the non retina MBP.
It seems you could actually reliably adjust image brightness on this device.
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Not sure if it's been mentioned here yet, but after checking out the retina display at the store yesterday, one thing that struck me as immensely useful to us photographers is the viewing angle consistency: much better than the non retina MBP.
Your conclusion is spot on. Anandtech's review (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/) includes a video which clearly demonstrates this phenomenon by placing the new model next to the old model. It also places new glossy (2 layers), old glossy (3 layers), and matte next to each other to show the difference in reflectivity. I definitely recommend watching and reading the review.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/
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Hello,
there was an very interesting article on the new retina in a computer related journal in Germany ( c't). They explaned the technology behind the new display and the question of resolution.
Most interesting was that Lr 4.1 seems to be partly 'retina ready' and partly not. They wrote that all text-elements in Lr are already adapted to the new resolution, but not the graphics. So, when running windwos 7 on bootcamp, the pictures look much sharper and more crisp than in Mac OSx, but the txt is nearly unreadable in Windows in comparing to Mac.
So, it looks as if there is much work to do for Adobe, but it is good tp read the the work has begun and they are going to do the adaption.
Robert
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any one curious about the MacBook Pro Retina display gamut, I did a little video comparing it to sRGB. I used i1Profiler and the new i1display2. results are good, no problems calibrating, and I like how i1Profiler can directly control the macs brightness setting to get the luminance correct.
http://youtu.be/mIFnztUehP4