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LED or LCD, which to trust?

polycounter lvl 10
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hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
I've run into a dual monitor problem. I work primarily off my LED monitor. Contrast and colors look great, but checking the image against my LCD screen, everything looks too light and washed out. My brightness is up on both of them. I've checked the images against other computer monitors and even phone screens, in all most all cases, what I've created on the LED screen seems correct, but I'm concerned about the difference. If I correct for LCD I'm afraid of the images being all together too dark. So what do you use? Which screen do you trust?

Replies

  • EarthQuake
    First off, LED is the backlight type, LED backlit monitors are still LCD monitors. LCD monitors generally use LCD or CFL backlights, LEDS are more efficient but neither have anything to do with the color accuracy of the display.

    Secondly, you should look into color calibrating both monitors, with something like a spyder color calibrator or similar. I wouldn't trust either screen if they are not calibrated.
  • Mr Whippy
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    Mr Whippy polycounter lvl 7
    Even with calibration devices they never really match properly.

    Solid colours don't flow nicely from screen to screen unless they are the same screen, and even then different age displays might look different.


    From my experience just getting the basics right is really important, and that is the basic per-channel gamma looking about right on your display in the ambient conditions you work in, and obviously the most important of all, just check overall intensity gamma actively (ie, day vs night ambient light might mean swinging the screen brightness setting around to get the gamma looking ok)

    Also in the end things will never look perfect from screen to screen eventually. That is why checking on many displays is so important.

    I used to do a lot of video work and would have about 10-15 displays I'd go check on from old CRT to new LED TV's etc before deployment just to make sure there were no nasties that popped out on any of them.


    Dave
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