[argyllcms] Re: Display of iMAC
- From: Ben Goren <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: argyllcms@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:35:45 -0700
On 2008 Jul 19, at 1:55 PM, Volker Sauer wrote:
I'm thinking of getting an iMac (24") as a replacement for my linux
box.
Some people told me, that the display of the iMac is crap because it
actually can't be really calibrated - only by some software settings
in the iMac.
Other people say, that quality is good, it doesn't need calibration
and
profiling is enough to achieve good colors.
What's your experience on that?
I have an aluminum 24" iMac that I'm very pleased with. I would say
that the quality is quite good, but it's not excellent. I'm sure the
folks who do color-critical work at, say, National Geographic, would
find it insufficient. For the rest of us mere mortals, it's all we need.
I would offer a few caveats to be aware of. First, I've observed a
rather significant drift in the native color temperature over time.
Search the forums for my name and you'll see a few different posts
with the output of dispcal -R and you'll see what I mean. I think it
was around 6700K when I got it, and now it's in the 5800K range. If
you're doing critical work, you'll probably want to calibrate and
profile weekly or whenever you do color-sensitive stuff, whichever is
less frequent.
Next, it's subject to persistence aka ``burn-in.'' Much more so with
full brightness and elevated temperatures. The display is around 160
cd/m^2 at minimum brightness, which is quite useable and not only
reduces persistence but saves you about 50 watts of power (and heat).
You'll want to use smcFanControl to run the fans at the highest speed
where the sound isn't noticeable or objectionable (around 2K rpm for
me, but there's more ambient noise then I generally like here...you
may well prefer slower if your office is quiet). And, either use a
solid white image for the screen saver or LCD Scrub. If you set your
desktop background to 50% / 18% gray, it'll be easy to spot the burn-
in, which is most noticeable along high-contrast areas like window
borders.
Last, what everybody talks about: the reflectance. If your work
environment is properly set up, the glossy screen is wonderful, better
than the old CRT displays (which, you may recall, were also all
glossy). If you have bright lights behind you, you're screwed -- but
you wouldn't be able to do color-critical work on a non-glossy display
in such conditions, anyway.
I'd say that, in general, it's an excellent value for the money. It's
not cheap, and you get something that's quite good. It's also not top-
of-the-line...but you're not paying top-of-the-line prices for it,
either. If you're aware of the limitations and either they won't
affect you or you can work around them, then go for it.
I have no regrets whatsoever about my purchase. If my budget were the
same, I'd do the exact same thing again. Of course, if I had tens of
thousands to spend, I wouldn't give it a first thought, let alone a
second, but....
Cheers,
b&
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