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Author Topic: Going Mac...'Gulp!'  (Read 5320 times)

Josh-H

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« on: September 21, 2006, 11:35:20 pm »

I am about to pull the trigger on my first ever MAC purchase - wont go into the reasoning for my thinking.. suffice to say it seems to be that its the platform of choice for serious photographers.

Question is: On the new 17" power book pros there is an option to order the LCD screen 'matt' or 'gloss'

According to apple - this si the difference

"Choose the glossy widescreen display to make your graphics, photos, and videos appear with richer color and deeper blacks - great for watching DVD movies. If you prefer a display with anti-glare coating for a matte rather than glossy viewing experience, choose the standard widescreen display. "

Well.. that may well be the case... but is it accurate?

Could use some advice please....
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ericstaud

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« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2006, 12:44:18 am »

Hard to know with out getting to use both.

My Laptop, Eizo LCD, and Apple cinema display all have matte screens.  Most LCD's that are made for quality retouching have Matte screens.  I would assume there are good reasons.

It is my guess that the glossy is aimed at the movie watching, video game playing crowd.

Also, LCD screens already exhibit much higher contrast than printed media.  So if you have to judge color saturation and contrast for images that will end up being printed then maybe that is another vote for Matte

-Eric
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Josh-H

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« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2006, 03:33:40 am »

Michael - what did u purchase?

What have other photographers here purchased?

I rang apple 3 times and got three different sales / technical ppl who gave the following answers:

Call 1. The Mate is more accurate
Call 2. The Gloss is more accurate
Call 3. We dont know....

*scratches head* All i want is to make sure I order the screen that will give me the most accurate color! And no one seems to know for sure.... just lots of um.... I think... stuff!

I googled it... but that just adds more conjectue - there dont appear to be any real world tests.

Found this burined deep in a brochure..

"MacBook Pro comes standard with an antirefl ective coated widescreen display that’s
perfect for a wide variety of professional and personal uses. For users who prefer a
more immersive viewing experience, MacBook Pro can be confi gured with a glossy
widescreen display, giving your graphics, photos, and videos even greater color
saturation."

Looks like Matt is the go.
« Last Edit: September 22, 2006, 04:03:26 am by JHolko »
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michael

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« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2006, 04:07:39 am »

My 17" Macbook Pro has the matte screen, and my just purchased 13" Macbook has the glossy screen, so I have experience with both.

It's a toss up, as Apple says. The matte screen is easier on the eyes, especially if one is working in a reflective environment, office, restaurtant, train, etc. The glossy screen is more pleasing to the eye, but only if used in a non-reflective environment, such as a private office or room where you can control reflections.

As far as "accuracy" goes, I won't regard either as superior to the other. They're both fine for casual use, but I wouldn't do any critical colour work with either, preferring instead to use an external monitor. Laptop LCDs are just not good enough, offering quite a bit of tonal variation, whereas desktop LCDs are comparable to CRTs in this respect.

Michael
« Last Edit: September 22, 2006, 05:28:58 am by michael »
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alainbriot

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« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2006, 04:45:46 am »

I have a MacBook Pro with the glossy screen.  I ordered it trusting Apple's mention on their order page that it is "better for digital photography."  Then I read reviews saying the opposite and got nervous until I received it a couple days ago.  Fact is, as Michael points out, the glossy screen is really not reflective in a home, office, studio environment.  It is far less glossy than the Sony Vaio Glossy screens (I also have one of those).  The Sony is way too glossy.  I call it "glassy".  The MacPro glossy is very usable.  I haven't calibrated it yet but I don't plan to use the laptop display for critical color work.  Best to connect it to an external display for that.  The MacBook Pro has an external monitor connector which makes this easy.

As an aside, I have to say this is a great laptop computer.
« Last Edit: September 22, 2006, 04:46:03 am by alainbriot »
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Josh-H

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« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2006, 05:41:06 am »

Quote
I have a MacBook Pro with the glossy screen.  I ordered it trusting Apple's mention on their order page that it is "better for digital photography."  Then I read reviews saying the opposite and got nervous until I received it a couple days ago.  Fact is, as Michael points out, the glossy screen is really not reflective in a home, office, studio environment.  It is far less glossy than the Sony Vaio Glossy screens (I also have one of those).  The Sony is way too glossy.  I call it "glassy".  The MacPro glossy is very usable.  I haven't calibrated it yet but I don't plan to use the laptop display for critical color work.  Best to connect it to an external display for that.  The MacBook Pro has an external monitor connector which makes this easy.

As an aside, I have to say this is a great laptop computer.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=77235\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Thanks - would be interested in what you think after a calibration.

My immediate thougt as to the glossy screen would be 'crushed' blacks and overly saturated images. Manufacturers are really prone to crushing blacks to try and drive them down.

Sounds like was unfounded.
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digitaldog

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« Reply #6 on: September 22, 2006, 09:40:58 am »

I saw my first Gloss screen that had been in use few awhile and it looked pretty nasty (dirty) from use. I suspect you need to be even more anal about keeping it spotless than the matt screens.

With my matt Powerbook (year old) I have a keyboard condom (iSkin which I love) and I always keep one of those special cloth's over that and between the screen when the lid is down. I can use this cloth and a spray from Klear Screen if and when it gets a bit dirty. The screen doesn't look as good as the day I got it, but close.
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Tim Ernst

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« Reply #7 on: September 22, 2006, 07:32:10 pm »

During a recent workshop I was teaching everyone had their own laptops - all but one were the normal lcd screens, but one lady had a glossy screen. It was head and shoulders the favorite of all the students - the images just looked stunning, so much better then everyone elses (including my large cinema display on my desktop). However when it came to printing, we could never get a print to even come close to the color that was displayed on her screen - and we profiled all the monitors with an eye one. So in this instance at least, while the images were just gorgeous, it was very frustrating to her not to be able to get accurate color on the monitor for printing...

Tim Ernst in Arkansas
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David White

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« Reply #8 on: September 22, 2006, 08:15:21 pm »

I'm also thinking about the MacBook Pro to replace my aging Toshiba laptp, but am waiting until the new models with the Core 2 Duo are released.  I've got the same question.  A lot of the posts I've seen elsewhere seem to be split about 50/50 on this issue.  The real killer for the glossy screen would be if Tim's experience with a profiled glossy screen not being able to closely match the print is repeatable by others.  

Normally I wouldn't be doing critical work on a laptop, but there are rare occasions where I may need to print from the laptop and it would be nice to at least be in the ballpark.
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Josh-H

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« Reply #9 on: September 23, 2006, 04:29:25 am »

I rang around the local mac stores today and finally found a store that had both the glossy and the matte in 17" in stock on demo. I rang them up and asked if I could come down and do a serious comparison over a couple of hours in a darkened environment. They were kind enough to accomodate - on one proviso - that I bought one or the other there and then.

I went down there with my Spyder Pro 2, a couple of test discs [Digital Video Essentials, Monster Video calibrate] and with a color spectro photometer that I use on a daily basis for calibrating plasma displays in my other job [insert plug - www.cableman.com.au]  

I will qualify my findings by saying that I hold an ISF certification from the Imaging Science Foundation and a THX Level II Theatre Technician certifcation - so I have a pretty good grasp of color management, calibration and displays - its grounded in Home theatre - but the principles are the same.

Anyway....my findings....

First things first.. thanks to the  guys at the store for giving me the time and space to do this comparison - they kindly set me up in a back room where i could work at my liesure and control the light. [Amazing service! - and it worked as you will see below]  

I calibrated both devices with the Spyder Pro 2 in a dark room [the gloss and matte] and generated a profile for each of them. I then calibrated the 30" Cinema display in the room as a reference point - I set them all up side by side.

A quick note.. out of the box the matte was much closer than glossy and looking at the graphs shows less of a correction factor. The glosse took some fiddling to calibrate due to its reflective surface. I had to turn off the work light as it was interfering with spectrophotometer readings. I put a question mark up on how the glood reflects stray light back into the Spyder when calibrating - its just an unknown factor....

Then I ran the DVE disc and checked it with the color spectrophotometer. This was interesting as it [the spectrophotometer] cant generate a profile as its designed to be used for calibrating plasma displays and projectors. However its more accurate [it costs about 10 grand] than the small Spyder and is excellent for checking how good a job the spyder generated profile is doing. In other words it can measure how good a job of producing accurate color the monitor is doing - but it cant do anything about it. Its also excellent for hunting down and revealing color errors - usually in the green channel which is by far the most obnoxious....

Bottom line is.. the Spyder generated profile does a pretty dam good job of getting the video card and LCD to generate accurate color - its not 100% perfect but its dam close and close enough for all but the most critical color work. Note: The 30" Cinema display shows a more even greyscale with less color shift when grayscale tracking [virtually none that is measureable] edge to edge - the differnce between the greayscale tracking of the cinema display is marginal - I couldnt see it with my eye - but the machine can see it. The laptop screens show slight errors [in the red channel] at certain points on the screen [again.. I cant see it with my eye, but it is there]- meaning their uniformity and tracking is not quite as good as the cinema display - nothing to be concerned about and MUCH better than most laptop screens I have ever bothered to test. Its actually a lot better than I expected period.

Anyway I digress. Point is I wanted to get them producing as accurate a color as possible so I could compare them - and bottom line I got them all dam close to perfect. Meaning they are for all intents and purposes IDENTICAL in their ability to reproduce accurate color. They both also do a fine job of grayscale tracking. The gloss screen takes a bit more fiddling and is less acruate out of the box - but once calibrated does just as good a job as the matte. The out of the box comment is actually a bit irrelivent as I only had one there to try - another may have produced a different result....

To end the story.. I had agreed with the store to purchase one or the other. So I purchased the Matte - purely because I found the reflections on the glossy screen to interfere with what I was trying to do when calibrating - which most likely means it  would cause me issues in the field.

There was another reason for choosing matte however...

Totally unplanned...I also purchased a 30" cinema display.... it turned out to be an expensive visit! My Visa is smokin!  Its display is matte so matches nicely with the matte notebook.

This will be my last post here for a while... Im about to shut down the Dell and fire up the Mac and learn to use a whole new O/S.  

I hope this might help others who are unsure of which to purchase - and for the sake of clarity - it doesnt matter. Buy the one you prefer the look of.


***Update***
Edit - I returned the Mac Book Pro for a full refund - I was NOT happy with its speed running CS2. I purchased a Dell Precision M90 workstation laptop instead.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2006, 12:52:45 am by JHolko »
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StephenS

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« Reply #10 on: September 26, 2006, 09:50:39 pm »

Joshua,

Thank you for that post - I found it quite helpful and timely as I am researching my next laptop.

Interested to hear what you conclude regarding the 30" ACD once you've had it up and running awhile.

Stephen
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Gregory

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« Reply #11 on: October 28, 2006, 09:55:30 am »

Quote
To end the story.. I had agreed with the store to purchase one or the other. So I purchased the Matte - purely because I found the reflections on the glossy screen to interfere with what I was trying to do when calibrating - which most likely means it  would cause me issues in the field.

There was another reason for choosing matte however...

Totally unplanned...I also purchased a 30" cinema display.... it turned out to be an expensive visit! My Visa is smokin! :o Its display is matte so matches nicely with the matte notebook.
thank you. that was a great report, and exactly what I needed to know. I'm buying a Core 2 Duo 15" MacBook Pro next week ;-)

Quote
Edit - I returned the Mac Book Pro for a full refund - I was NOT happy with its speed running CS2. I purchased a Dell Precision M90 workstation laptop instead.
fortunately, I don't use Photoshop, but there are a lot of people waiting for Adobe to update Photoshop for the Intel version of OS X. it's taking a *very* long time.

regards,
Gregory
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