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Author Topic: Retina MBP report  (Read 25862 times)

Wayne Fox

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #40 on: June 29, 2012, 03:48:29 am »

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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hjulenissen

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #41 on: June 29, 2012, 05:05:23 am »

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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Tariq

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #42 on: June 29, 2012, 06:59:31 am »

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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Tariq

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #43 on: June 29, 2012, 07:30:57 am »

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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hjulenissen

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #44 on: June 29, 2012, 08:41:47 am »

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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Tariq

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #45 on: June 29, 2012, 11:13:13 am »

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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digitaldog

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #46 on: June 29, 2012, 11:15:06 am »

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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lfeagan

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #47 on: June 29, 2012, 01:35:27 pm »

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.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2012, 01:37:18 pm by lfeagan »
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Lance

Nikon: D700, D800E, PC-E 24mm f/3.5D ED, PC-E 45mm f/2.8D ED, PC-E 85mm f/2.8D, 50mm f/1.4G, 14-24 f/2.8G ED, 24-70 f/2.8G ED, 70-200 f/2.8G ED VR II, 400mm f/2.8G ED VR
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Wayne Fox

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #48 on: June 29, 2012, 01:44:22 pm »

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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hjulenissen

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #49 on: June 29, 2012, 02:52:27 pm »

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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lfeagan

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #50 on: June 29, 2012, 03:26:42 pm »

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.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2012, 03:29:20 pm by lfeagan »
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Lance

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digitaldog

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #51 on: June 29, 2012, 04:16:42 pm »

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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cybis

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #52 on: June 30, 2012, 05:54:25 pm »

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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lfeagan

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #53 on: July 01, 2012, 12:07:02 pm »

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 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/

« Last Edit: July 01, 2012, 02:55:47 pm by lfeagan »
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Lance

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Robert-Peter Westphal

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #54 on: July 01, 2012, 01:05:37 pm »

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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Wayne Fox

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Re: Retina MBP report
« Reply #55 on: July 02, 2012, 05:44:15 pm »

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

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