Painting on a TN LCD monitor?

[Portus]

My monitor has a PVA panel with a 12ms gray to gray response time, now the colors and contrast may be good but the response time with dark colors is quite distracting, it takes almost a second for the pixels to fully react, with this in mind I've been thinking about getting one of EIZO's TN monitors in the hopes that while the colors, contrast and viewing angles aren't as good at least the response time is better but I have my doubts, has anyone had a good experience working on a TN monitor?

[Mirana]

So...quality of gaming/movie watching is more important than quality of artworking...? Or are you doing animation/film work?

[Gory]

It depends, probably. I have a TN monitor and it drives me nuts. It's an Acer P243w. I'm sure there are TN monitors that are better than mine (it's cheap) but I can't recommend it from my experience.

It has a lot of backlight bleeding and pretty rotten viewing angles (every time I adjust myself on my seat I have to adjust the monitor)

Bad viewing angles I can live with, but the backlight bleed drives me nuts. The darkest colors are actually lighter in value than the almost darkest colors. It wasn't so bad when I first got it, but the backlight bleed seems to get worse over time. I've only had this monitor for a couple months.

Although I've never had a monitor with really bad response time, so I'm not sure which would annoy me more.

edit- BTW Gaming and movie watching both suck a lot on this monitor. Especially movies. The backlight bleed is very distracting for me.

[Portus]

Originally Posted by Mirana

So...quality of gaming/movie watching is more important than quality of artworking...? Or are you doing animation/film work?

No, not at all, it's just that white cursors against a dark background ghost really bad and when painting on top of a dark color with a light color the pixels don't change instantly, from what I've seen even 6ms *VA monitors don't have very fast black to white response times, manufacturers only mention gray to gray response unfortunately.


Gory: Yeah that's a very good point, I haven't actually thought about black levels on a TN monitor, they all have crazy dynamic contrast numbers like 10000:1 and 8000:1 but if blacks are actually lighter than the colors it's not really a good solution. Maybe I'll just get an high-end CRT as a second monitor, they're dirt cheap now-a-days.

[Brashen]

I'm using Samsung's 2693hm and it uses one of the best TN panels out there.....I will tell you now that this doesn't come close to a bad IPS panel. I Highly recommend that you go for an IPS paneled monitor. They are expensive but well worth it. Unless you have a really tight budget HP's new LP2475w is a really great IPS monitor and it's cheap as well. If you'd like to know more about monitors and all their specs then I suggest www.PRAD.de. It has the best info base for monitors with indepth reviews for alot of them.

I just ordered the NEC LCD3090WQXI to switch from this panel.

[Portus]

Yeah I know about Prad.de it's where I got the info about the EIZO 778, let's just say they glamorize the reviews a bit.

IPS monitors seem to have quite low contrast compared to *VA's, my 778 has a really good contrast and black level but low response time I guess you can't have it all.
The other problem is apart from the Apple monitors it's really hard to find a S-IPS monitor at the local stores to take a look :/

[Brashen]

Depends where you live I suppose. But I can tell you this: IPS is the way to go for colour critical work. By the way dont you get annoyed by the gamma shifting in PVA .....nasty headache inducing feature.

[Portus]

Nah not at all, at least on PVA's it's the tint (colors+gray) that shifts a bit in the edges, if the monitor was a widescreen, IPS would be the only option but for 19" monitors a PVA is acceptable, you have a comfort spot in *VA's unlike the cheap TN's which no matter where you look at them they shift color everywhere, such monitors should simply not be allowed to be manufactured, filling in the market with absolute trash that the masses buy because they have 10000:1 and 2ms... but there are good TN's, I've seen reports of 8bit(?) TN monitors but don't know more.


I've seen a couple of S-IPS 20" monitors which have a good contrast of 800:1, let's see how they turn out to be.

[Brashen]

8 bit TN panels? No that would be a real break through and would cause a pretty big noise in the LCD market. As you know TNs use dithering techniques to mimic 8bit and even 10bit colour reproduction.

If you're looking for an excellent 20in IPS I' really recommend the NEC LCD2090UXi but as I said before Hp's 24 inch is about the same price is NEC's 20 inch, so if you're looking for more space but still incredible quality HP is your man.

Feel free to ask more questions dude. And Good Luck.

[Clochette]

Almost a second? Wow I'd drive nut...
In my mind LCD are awful to work! I know a bunch of people who have this kind of screens and I can't stand browsing web with it, so I can't imagine Photoshoping on it. Too much glossy, I hate seeing my own face in the screen instead of what I'm doing. Plus the colors and contrast change depends or where your are, if you move your head a little bit on the side you almost see negative colors! -_- And the whites are burning and aaargh it's a pity to look a good picture with it.
The LCD technology is not enough competent yet to satisfy me, or it is but the prices are unreal!
CRT is still a good value imo.
My monitor is a ViewSonic Professional Series P227f, and it's a very good one.
Unfortunately soon it will be harder and harder to find CRT monitors...

[Portus]

That NEC has a A-TW-IPS, seems interesting with good response and is significantly cheaper, I think I'll go with it, cheers!

I do wonder how manufacturers like Samsung say in their monitor specs that the TN monitors are capable of 16,7 million colors, with dithering they would manage 16,2 million, either they are flat out lying about the specs or they're using some tricky dithering.

Clochette couldn't agree more, I've waited quite a while before I made the switch to LCD and even now they are not up to the task, they are good enough, unfortunately I can't work full time on a CRT due to having astigmatism so I've been looking for solutions.

[Brashen]

Congrats on the pick. Good choice.

As for the second part..... Big Businesses lie it's a known fact. We as prosumers have to sift through the lies to get to the good stuff. But sometimes they do deliver as promised but those are rare occasions and far apart.

I'm also looking to get to of these to set up with th 30 inch in portrait mode so I can have the palettes on one side and the reference material on the other.

[Gory]

Originally Posted by Portus

due to having astigmatism

Huh? What exactly does having an astigmatism have anything to do with the inability to use a CRT monitor? You realize your glasses correct astigmatism, right? Do you realize it's an incredibly common diagnosis, right?

In the 7 months that I worked as an optician I could safely say about 90% of the patients I dealt with had an astigmatism. In fact, it's probably more common than simple sphere correction alone.

Maybe if you had a nystagmus or amblyopia or something like that.

If your eyes ache when viewing a monitor take a 10 minute break and look at something else. Getting a new monitor won't fix your problem. Or clean your glasses. (That tends to help a lot)

Sorry, I don't mean to be an ass... But I hate to see people waste their money on things that they delude themselves into thinking will fix their problem. I had the same issue myself not too long ago. I spent $175 on an eye exam that I didn't need. (The biggest reason I left optical, actually)

[Portus]

When I only used a CRT I had tremendous headaches at the end of the day, with the LCD I don't, it's simple to me because the image is sharper in the LCD and I don't have to strain my vision as much (even with glasses I don' have perfect vision, not even close).