LCD Flatscreen - Big Mistake?

[banjolover]

I recently got rid of my older CRT monitor for a 17" LCD Flatcreen display. It is a KDS, model Rad-7si. I really like the monitor, but now I come to find that these types of monitors cannot really be calibrated using the Adobe Gamma software, and by experience, I know this to be the case. Anybody have a solution for this problem? I know that some of my printed output has not been in total agreement with the monitor's display. Is there a way to bring the two into closer agreement other than eyeballing the print and manually tuning the monitor to "match"? The monitor has brightness and contrast adjustments, and each of the three color guns (RGB) can be separately adjusted. There is no Gamma setting as far as I can tell. There are two additional color settings which can give an overall WARM or COOL color cast to the image, but that doesn't seem like it would be of much help in "calibrating" monitor to printer. Did I make a mistake in getting this type of monitor?... or is this perhaps a low-end example of the species, lacking the necessary features to do a calibration in Adobe Gamma? I appreciate any insights on this topic. Thanks

[DocLotus]

Hi banjolover;

The problems that you are experiencing are fairly common with most LCD monitors.

Before I bought my LCD (Samsung 243t 24 inch widescreen) I did some research and discovered that many, if not most, LCD monitors have a problem showing very fine graduations of grey scale such as the Adobe Gamma checker or ColorVision grey scale calibrations.

I was using my beloved Sony 19 inch flat screen CRT monitor for the last two years which did a great job with fine grey scale graduations.

I was using ColorVisions SpyderPro to calibrate the Sony monitor.

Upon reading many reviews on LCD monitors, it became evident that most LCD’s were not appropriate for great color matching to true colors or to printer matching. That is why I held off so long getting an LCD until the Samsung 243t came out a few months ago.

The reviews I read on the Samsung 243t all remarked that it is one of only a very few LCD’s that did a good job with grey scale and could be calibrated precisely. In fact, they said the Samsung was almost dead on right out of the box, I had the same exact experience with mine, and it was very close to a perfect color match. It also had only one dead pixel right under the Win XP Start button so it was never noticed for a couple of weeks.

The Samsung 243t uses a new type of LCD that is much more precise when it comes to fine graduations of colors such as grey scale.

However, my ColorVision SpyderPro would not work with it as it did not work with most LCD monitors due to the many problems in calibrating most LCD monitors.

I was a hardware beta tester for ColorVisions new Spyder2 Pro which does a great job with LCD monitors; it came out last October and is one wonderful piece of hardware (I have the Spyder2 Pro Studio package plus the PrintFix II printer color calibration scanner and standard color sheets). If anyone is serious about color matching I have nothing but praise for ColorVision. They have great products, they stand behind them with great customer support, plus they have been very generous and quick to pay rebates without a lot of nagging questions. It seems that they want the customer to be very happy with their products and indeed I am.

It seems that the manufacturers have not standardized the way things are done with LCD’s as well as they have with CRT’s which have a much longer evolved time frame to work out all the many problems. Part of the problem is the type of LCD they use plus the florescent backlighting causes some other problems. These problems are slowly being resolved but it will take another two years to bring a high end LCD up to the same level of color matching as a high end CRT. This year and next we should see the replacement of the old fluorescent back lighting slowly replaced with the latest LED back lighting which will bring LCD monitors up to the brightness of a Plasma display (but at a higher price). I can hardly wait.