Choosing a good monitor for photography

With digital photography, one of the nice aspects of shooting is that the post-processing is entirely left in your hands. Some people hate this, but others love it – since it allows for more control when working with images. In the old days, when you dropped your film off at the store, the post-processing was handled by the lab technician. They color corrected the first image of the set, and (hopefully) the rest of the images fell in line with their initial calibration. Often times, this wouldn’t happen, and you would end up with a roll of poor pictures.

Nowadays, you download your pictures and the control is entirely up to you. You can manipulate them however you like – but the printed results will only look as good as the data that’s sent to the printer. In other words, if you computer monitor isn’t properly calibrated or isn’t giving you the detail you need, the print may not look good.

Most computer monitors will let you work with photography, but for the discriminating eye, certain monitors will be better than others. Generally speaking you want a big monitor (I typically recommend 20″ or larger). Also generally speaking, I recommend LCD screens. CRT screens allow you to see pixel definition better, which is great for designers, but this doesn’t matter as much as color and tone to photographers.

The pixel count (resolution) of the monitor will impact how sharp they look on the screen. In other words, a 20″ 1600×1200 monitor will look sharper than a 24″ 1600×1200 monitor. Typically larger monitors have a larger resolution – but look into it.

The refresh rate isn’t too important unless you’re playing video or games, but the contrast ratio will dictate how much tonal range the monitor is capable of handling. This is the ratio of the luminosity of the brightest color (pure white) to that of the darkest color (pure black) that the system is capable of producing. A 2000:1 contrast ratio is better than a 1000:1 ratio.

Also important is the type of connector – you’d prefer a DVI connection as opposed to the older VGA connection, assuming your video card has a DVI input.

Last but not least is the finish on the screen. High gloss screens tend to have more vivid, brilliant color… but they also reflect a lot of light. Matte screens may not look as saturated, but are easier to work with in an environment with windowed lighting or that is heavily backlit.

While we’re on the topic – monitor calibration is also important. Most monitors will come with a CD that carries a monitor color profile. This profile will let your operating system know how best to translate color to the monitor itself. If you’re not using the profile that came with the monitor, the color may look “off” and your resulting prints may be dark, bright, or color skewed. There are also devices that can help you manually adjust the monitor, but mostly I find these do nothing but create problems – as they are subject to environmental variables and are somewhat biased to the developers eye.

Again, no matter which monitor you get – it will let you work with your photographs. If you work with photographs a lot, however, it’s worth investing in a good monitor (or two!) because you’ll notice the results.