Using 2 Monitors of Different Resolutions?
Hello guys now on a good and deserved vacation and I am going to spend some of that time going back to the old pencil and paper 
A good offer (i think) came to me this day. A 21.5" FULL HD LCD Acer Monitor at the price of 1,500 MX (115 USD). A strong force is telling me to buy that thing immediatly but first I wanted to kindly ask for your opinion.
I have a 15" 1366*768 notebook, powerful enough to work smoothly with software like Maya, Photoshop CS6. The main concern I have is the eye strain or eye problems that using 2 Monitors of different resolutions could carry, is there a way of working that could prevent this? I would use the 21.5 as my main monitor, modeling would be orgasmic compared to my actual display :poly124:. Could Use it for some animation while the another as a huge graph editor. Some illustration and painting. Is there really a way to callibrate both? Any similar experiences you would like to share. Well thanks in advance. And cheers.
A good offer (i think) came to me this day. A 21.5" FULL HD LCD Acer Monitor at the price of 1,500 MX (115 USD). A strong force is telling me to buy that thing immediatly but first I wanted to kindly ask for your opinion.
I have a 15" 1366*768 notebook, powerful enough to work smoothly with software like Maya, Photoshop CS6. The main concern I have is the eye strain or eye problems that using 2 Monitors of different resolutions could carry, is there a way of working that could prevent this? I would use the 21.5 as my main monitor, modeling would be orgasmic compared to my actual display :poly124:. Could Use it for some animation while the another as a huge graph editor. Some illustration and painting. Is there really a way to callibrate both? Any similar experiences you would like to share. Well thanks in advance. And cheers.
Replies
I have two different monitor sizes at diff aspect ratios too, 16:9 and 16:10, and it's annoying at first but you get used to it. I did anyway. The extra room is handy for other windows etc, but you won't be able to drag from the top of the largest monitor across to the smaller one for example as there's some dead zone to make up the difference (ie the top of the smallest is at about 85% of the biggest on mine).
Can't comment on eye strain or other issues like that.
Just keep in mind the space you need for keyboard and mouse and maybe tablet with how you place your setup. Especially if you are going to use the notebook. Or maybe look for one of those notebook stands that elevate them a bit. Might also put the screen on a better hight compared to your new one. And maybe create some more space for your "tools".
to counter the colorcalibration problem i simply do all the color based stuff only on my main monitor.
this kinda sucks if you do 2D work and want to open a reference on the other screen, but its still better then having only one small screen.
And my screens are two different sizes, so one of them is smaller in height, but it works okay. The problem is when I want to span my program over two screens, I'm forced to not have it maximized in the bottom of my larger screen.
This! I've got a 24" 16:9 and a 19" 4:3, the res difference is fine but the colour change is huge.
Not to say I've managed that yet but you get my point
Max has lots of multimonitoring bugs, such as improperly handling any monitors left of the primary monitor. (colour picker goes nuts, some camera controls don't work) so using max might cause you problems.
yeah, my main is a dell ips and secondary is a crappy asus tn panel
The software in which I do all the 3d stuff is Maya 2013 and 2012. I do my animating and modeling work with them. Since I changed to 2013 and of Notebook I have experienced some rare bugs with Maya's interface and some tools, But I don't know if it is because of the version (stupid enough to move to 2013:\) or if my video card is causing all the problems: Ati Radeon I hope Maya doesn't have this kind of issues with 2 monitors.
The Max bugs are caused by the developers assuming a mouse location can never be negative and using unsigned math. Sloppy.
In fact I like that the secondary one is smaller, so I can still throw my mouse up into the corners of my main screen without having to be pixel perfect. I hate that in most dualscreen setups the two desktops are gapless, so I've set my small screen up so it has a ~4cm border on top and bottom, so I can still use the 'hot corners' so to speak.
However if my secondary monitor were to be a 17 inch full-HD screen, the pixel size would be drastically different, and the scale change would be pretty damn annoying, I think.