Forum Moderators: phranque
After checking for dead pixels (none), the first thing I noticed was how drastically different the color was from my old high-end, flat-screen CRT monitor. Many light colors were totally washed out and basically looked like plain white (or at best, dirty-white). Other colors that should have been muted and warm turned out very bright and obnoxious.
Like any good geek, ;) I quickly found the settings I needed to get the color display back the way I was used to. But this brought up an interesting question: Given that most people won't adjust their monitors much, what impact will LCD monitors have on web design?
On CRT's, I could pretty much count on my websites looking approximately the same for everybody. I had access to enough average CRT's to test on, and there never was a very drastic difference. Sure, one in twenty might be pretty dark, but it didn't affect the colors to any serious extent.
However, this LCD made such a big difference in colors that my sites looked entirely different. This is a serious issue to me since a lot of color research has gone into creating our color scheme, etc.
I would chalk this up to my particular LCD model or brand, but I've read enough reviews of LCD's to know that excessive brightness and contrast seems to be pretty much the rule. It appears that LCD makers are deliberately setting the defaults too high, maybe in an effort to make the new displays seem brighter and higher quality. Whatever the reason, I don't think mine was an isolated incident. It seems that new LCD monitors simply don't do color accurately or the same as CRT's.
So what implications are there for web developers with the huge growth in LCD usage? Obviously there are way too many CRT's out there to ignore, yet the same can now be said of LCD's. And, the same website will now look incredibly different between the two types of monitors, since I can't believe that many people will actually adjust their brand-new LCD. (Not that I can blame them - I never yet saw a monitor with controls that even approached easy or intuitive to use.)
Any thoughts?
This is a serious issue to me since a lot of color research has gone into creating our color scheme, etc.
Yahoo logo = red
Google logo = red, blue, green, yellow
Microsoft flag = red, blue, green, yellow
WW logo = green, brown, yellow, purple, light blue
Bland = functional
> It seems that new LCD monitors simply don't do color accurately or the same as CRT's.
I'll worry about "your" funky-coloured monitor about five minutes after I decide I need to support Netscape 4. ;)
This could be a clue: I don't see CRT, LCD & Plasma versions of DVDs for sale...
This could be a clue: No one does any serious graphics work on a LCD...
Balam, are you saying that most LCD monitors do display decent colors right out of the box? If so, then maybe I need to do some more hands-on testing - this may not be as big of an issue as I thought. Regarding different versions of DVD's, doesn't it seem as though CRT, plasma and LCD TV's are pretty well equal in terms of color representation? But so far, CRT and LCD computer monitors seem to be pretty different in my experience. One this is sure; there are a lot more LCD monitors out there than NN4 installations. If - if - LCD monitors, categorically, display colors significantly different than CRT's, then it would seem that this is an issue worthy of consideration.
<edit>
>> This could be a clue: No one does any serious graphics work on a LCD...
Right, but that won't stop all non-graphics people from buying LCD's to use for browsing my website. ;)
</edit>
You haven't looked at enough CRTs, I've seen an amazing range, the older cheap ones get, the more washed out the colors are, they have settings too, brighness, contrast, colors, they can all be changed.
I've found that the current default settings for the last lcds I've bought are pretty good, I adjust them using the tools that come with either the monitor or the video card (nvidia color correction is better than the monitor software I've looked at, for example).
I just got two average quality viewsonics on sale for an office, and they are fine, out of the box, I didn't even bother adjusting the colors, no problem.
And then there's macs, which will almost all display your stuff much more lightly than you designed it for, and stuff designed on macs will display much more darkly on pcs than it was designed to do in most cases, unless the designer actually understands how to design for this in mind, and apply the proper corrections.
So it's the same old web thing, forget having it be perfect, just make sure it looks ok in most cases.
High end graphics may happen on crts, I can't say that for sure since I don't know, but for almost everyone else, lcds are the way forward, crts are going to be a relic very soon, except for high end high resolution graphics work, and even there I suspect that the much larger sizes you can get with lcds in the future will knock off most crts from even that niche.
I don't want to bum out the guy who said all high end graphic work happens on crts, but I was hanging out with a designer friend of mine, he showed me one of the most advanced design companies around, shots of the office they work out of, guess what? all lcds... so forget the term 'all high end design'.. this is one of the very highest end companies in the country.
In other words, don't worry, be happy, you've picked the right path forward. And your eyes will thank you, over and over, the older you get, the more they will thank you.
Since switching, I have missed my crts exactly zero seconds.
...umm...don'tt most newer Mac's have LCD displays? I only mention this since most graphic designers seem to use Macs not PCs.
Certain ultra high resolution applications may still require crts in the future, but that number is going to drop steadily, anyone remember the amiga? great for video editing once upon a time, the very best.
One of the g5 machines is all in the lcd monitor, except some stuff in the base, and that's the machine most designers will be buying.
OLED display is a self-luminous display that does not require a back-light, offering high contrast ratio, a quick response time and wide viewing angle-all in a package slimmer than current LCD modules. To enhance this display, Sony has employed its unique Super Top Emission technology for outstanding brightness and greater color gamut. These translate into image quality and clarity that could previously viewed only on CRT (cathode ray tube) displays.
OLEP is also used on these new little music cubes that walmart sells.
I have read bits and pieces from other websites and heres what they basicly are saying (don't quote me on any of this, I could be wrong),
OLEP has higher quality and will replace CRT, DLP, LCD and Plasma technologies in the near future. It is cheaper to produce than the other four. It produces the best blacks. Its screens are bendable like a piece of paper and can be folded or rolled up like a projector screen. It can be made so small that they have built a keyboard where every letter is a small OLEP screen so gamers can have keys changed to game controls when playing (I have seen photos of this keyboard, really cool). OLEP is starting small with portable devices and cameras and will work its way into laptops and possibly into massive screens in the future.
My guess is not to stress to much over what LCD's reproduce color like because their time is very limited since they most directly compete with OLEP.
I've been reading about that technology for several years, every year it's supposed to be coming out, and every year something makes it not happen, not sure what it is now, maybe it's price alone.
It will be great when it does finally get released, but, like lcds for the last years, until recently, the price will be too high for average users. So I'd guess it will be lcds until around 2010 or so, then it will start to switch over to that technology, unless something goes wrong with it, lifespan, failure, whatever can happen.
But no matter what happens, crts are no longer going to be in the picture, so to speak.
[samsung.com...]
[walmart.com...]
and, like the sony link I posted, its already hitting the digital camera market.
From the samsung page,
Moreover, the OLED uses Amorphous Silicon (a-Si) technology; thus can be mass-produced within Samsung's existing TFT-LCD lines
Anyway, high quality lcds kick butt over average quality crts, that's all I can tell anyone. And high quality is costing less and less.
I forgot to mention glare, there is almost none in lcds. That alone made it instantly worth it for me. Not to mention true flat screen display.
