Laptop, External Monitor Question

[Bradley DeWald]

I've heard that laptop displays aren't very good at color management--that an actual LCD display is better. My question is that if I hook up an LCD monitor to a laptop, would that fix the problem? In other words, am I just exporting an image with diminished color accuracy to a new screen, or is the new display now able to handle the colors effectively? I just don't know if it has to do with drivers or the video card or the actual display...just confused all around on the issue, I guess. Thanks in advance.

[Jeff Mottle]

I've heard that laptop displays aren't very good at color management--that an actual LCD display is better. My question is that if I hook up an LCD monitor to a laptop, would that fix the problem? In other words, am I just exporting an image with diminished color accuracy to a new screen, or is the new display now able to handle the colors effectively? I just don't know if it has to do with drivers or the video card or the actual display...just confused all around on the issue, I guess. Thanks in advance.

What you are dealing with here is the gamut of colors that the output device (the display) can display. Laptops generally have quite small gamuts and thus are not good for accurate color editing. It's not that they are not good for color management it's that they just can't display enough colors to see all the colors you want to edit. At an absolute minimum you want a display that is at least capable of displaying a gamut closely approximating sRGB. Many laptop displays can not do this from my experience. If you hook up an external display to a laptop, you are now outputting the RGB signal to the external display. You are now bound to the color gamut of the external display, not the video card. Hope that explains everything.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Bradley DeWald]

Thanks, Jeff. I do have one more question: If I was considering ditching a laptop for a desktop with a nice LCD, would it make more sense to just get the nice LCD and hook it up to the laptop? Would that do the trick?

[Jeff Mottle]

Thanks, Jeff. I do have one more question: If I was considering ditching a laptop for a desktop with a nice LCD, would it make more sense to just get the nice LCD and hook it up to the laptop? Would that do the trick?

From a color management standpoint either way is fine. Typically unless you have one of those desktop replacement laptops, they are not really meant for rendering, but if what you have works for you, then I would just get a display, a docking station and a keyboard. Perhaps you can explain what you are trying to do/fix by upgrading or adding an external display.

[Bradley DeWald]

Thanks. That's the info I was looking for. I do have another question, if you don't mind: what do you look for when buying a monitor? I see some that look just as good as others but one costs $1,000 and the other $300. What's the deal there? What's a good bet for the least cost? Thanks again, Jeff.

[Jeff Mottle]

The bit depth, manufacturing process controls, built in LUTs, color gamut, backlight type and uniformity and on screen controls are the main differences between displays. The more expensive displays output more accurate color with larger gamuts. The best displays are ones like Eizo, NEC's 90 series etc. If you are wanting to ensure accurate color, you'll want to steer away from the cheap $300 displays. You don't need to spend a fortune to get a good display though. I have a Dell 30" and it is more than capable of outputting accurate color, although if you are really picky it's no where near as good in terms of even color and luminosity across the screen or really strong gradients compared to the $2-3K displays.