Sunday, October 30, 2016

"Color Accuracy" Needs of a Photographer/Retoucher

Disclaimer: I'm not resurrecting this blog. I just needed a place to put this stuff. I don't have time to write anymore.

I’m going to put this in writing because well, I don’t want to misrepresent myself through a podcast or get side-tracked by some random detail. Here it is: There are so few displays on the market that are built to the requirements that photographers need.

Color Accuracy
This is generally the big keyword. That’s the lure though. When people google “color accurate displays” (as I have in the past), they’ll find monitors that are color accurate. Sometimes this means factory-calibrated(1). Sometimes this means that the display can be calibrated properly. Sometimes this means that they provide hardware calibration for the internal LUT and not just software calibration of your monitor profile. Personally, I have not found this to be the biggest issue with displays created for photography/editing. Specifically because I think most of the manufacturers have gotten their stuff together and created panels that calibrate to proper specifications. In other words most manufacturers sell some displays capable of being calibrated to a delta E < 2 or 3 which is industry standard. What I'm saying is that color accuracy is just the tip of the iceberg.