How to get the BEST quality image to your monitor
You've decided your photo editing machine needs more grunt.. after all, you've got the latest operating system, the latest version of Photoshop all installed on your latest brand spanking new machine, so what can you do?
You've spoken to the guy at the computer shop and he tells you need a new, top end video card with more RAM to speed things up, but which one?
Let's stop right there and talk about video cards.
Video cards used to do one thing - take the output from a computer and send it down a cable to your monitor where it is displayed. No tricks, just show us the picture.
They come with differing abilities regarding refresh rate, basically how many times the image is 'changed' per second. This is important - if it's set around 50-60 Hz (cycles per second) it'll conflict with any local electrical lighting causing flickering which will drive you NUTS! You wouldn't believe how many computers I've 'fixed' for people by merely changing the refresh rate to 70, 72, 80 or 85 Hz!
They come with the ability to display different colour depths - 16 colours, 256, 16 bit, 24 bit, 32 bit* - obviously the more colours the better - if you see banding on your monitor - images seem to be made up of 'bands' of colour rather than a smooth range, chances are your colour depth is set too low.
And they have the ability to set different resolutions, ie 640 x 480 pixels, 800x600 etc. This IS the DPI (dots per inch) issue people talk of when they mistakenly say monitors display at 72dpi .. which happens to be rubbish. It depends on your display. OK it's true that Apples for years displayed at 72 dpi, but almost all windows machines at that time could display at higher dpi resolutions.
Let's put it this way, say I have a monitor that's 15 inches wide and is set at a resolution of 1600 x 1200 then the resolution is 106ppi (that's 1600 horizontal pixels divided by 15 inches).
� or if it were set to 1280x1024 then it's 85ppi
� or 1024 x 768 - 68ppi
� or 800 x 600 - 53ppi
� or 600 x 480 - the last is 40ppi (yuck!)
whatever you set my resolution at determines how many pixels are displayed on the monitor, if it were 1500 x whatever then I'd have 1500 pixels across the width. Divide that by the number of inches (15) and I'd have a resolution of 100 ppi. There are limits though, for the monitors have a set number of pixels.
Games
But then it was found games demanded a lot more of graphics cards and in time a processor was added, a GPU, with the ability to process commands sent to it about what to display.. these are designed to take 3d object information and turn it into pixels, use Direct3D, OpenGL and the like (core component information included in games) to render textures, shading effects and so on.. and MPEG decoders were added to render video faster and smoother
Also added was Anti-aliasing, Shader functions (for illumination and atmospheric game effects) High dynamic range rendering, Texture mapping allowing adding of details to surfaces, Motion blur, Lens flare, Fresnel effect, Anisotropic filtering.
How can all this be used in rendering 2D images? well, it can't. There is not one single benefit from using a high end 3D card to render bitmapped images on your computer monitor.
That's a shame, but at least it means you can play a game if you want, and there's no downside, right?
Wrong! almost without exception, 3D cards made for games are not as good as 2D cards for 2D imaging and in many instances they're downright poor!
Some like the high end Radeons, as stated on their own web site, achieve their high speed frame rates by sacrificing colour fidelity (accuracy) and sharpness. Another downside - power consumption. High end cards draw a lot more power. But there's another side -
Were you to use a current Matrox 2D optimised card with Photoshop, you'd also have the benefit of 10 bit colour! Other cards are 8 bit - like all inkjet printers - so that's 256 shades of red green and blue compared to Matrox's 1024 shades. These are HIGH FIDELITY 2D cards..
Sadly though if you use an LCD monitor you won't get the full benefit - from Wikipedia:
*"32-bit colour" is a misnomer when regarding display colour depth. A common misconception is that 32-bit color produces 4,294,967,296 distinct colours. In reality, 32-bit colour actually refers to 24-bit colour (Truecolor) with an additional 8 bits, either as empty padding space or to represent an alpha channel. Considering red, green, and blue use the same amount of bits for their respective colour (with the exception of 16-bit color), the total bits used will be a multiple of 3: like 15-bit colour (5 bits each) and 24-bit colour (8 bits each). The reason for using empty space is that all but the newest modern computers process data internally in units of 32 bits; as such, using this amount for each pixel can allow speed optimisations, albeit increasing the required video memory."
Also from Wikipedia:
"(LCD's) can approach 24-bit colour using a dithering method which combines adjacent pixels to simulate the desired shade" but they are poor at rendering colours accurately. Sure they look vibrant and crisp, but fidelity - wise, being 'true' to the image, they can only hope to approach CRT's.
The fact it, if your video card is pumping 8 bits out to the monitor, you can't change that - wide dynamic range monitors can't be utilised to their full capacity and nothing can change that other than having a better video card. It's like audio stereo hi-fi reproduction, a low end amplifier will cripple the sound just as low quality speakers will - you need the best of both to get the best at the experience end. Matrox cards are high fidelity visual cards. Think of these cards as high fidelity visual tools. Things have moved on since the GeForce 4 and Radeon 8500 of course, but not to a degree that would match the Matrox offerings.
But ATI and nVidia claim really high 2D standards and colour fidelity - well since they still use 8-bit colour, and probably always will, there's a limit to their 2D colour fidelity. The difference with Matrox's 10-bit colour really is there... but you need a visually demanding task like photo editing and a good CRT to even perceive it. The average LCD/TFT user isn't going to get a full colour gamut even at 8x8x8, anyway...
SO why don't you see Matrox cards specified that often?
Well for one they 'seem' very low end with unimpressive statistics - hard to sell a 16Mb or a 32Mb card when a cheaper 256Mb card sounds a lot better .. and the Matroxes are very expensive!
From the Trinix Computing shop http://www.trinix.com.au/ Matrox prices:
an AGP G550 with 32Mb ram is $259
a 128Mb Parhelia $795
a 128 Mb quad (4 monitor) $1,109.00
PCI-E 128Mb quad is $1,249,00
then there's their video edit cards like the RT2500 for $1,940.00
Yup, these are PROFESSIONAL cards and are often going to cost more than the monitor or the computer that houses them - which is why they're not often found in over the counter PC's or even top end Macs.
But many people still believe more RAM on a video card is better, well to make things easier to understand why this isn't so you might want to think of it this way..
16.7million colours = 24bit
1680 x 1050 X (24 bits / 8 ) bytes = 7.056Million Bytes
7.056M / 1024 = 6.891MB
You only need 6.891MB of video memory to run your monitor for 2D graphics. Full stop. Period. No Argument! Essentially you only need at the VERY most 20mb of video memory for ANY 2D imaging applications.
Photoshop DOES NOT use your video memory in any way. it is PURELY for use by the GPU (also called a graphics accelerator ) and the GPUis only ever used by 3D applications like games! And If you're just doing normal stuff like surfing the net and reading emails you will notice ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE in any area using a $9 card or a $900 card. In fact, you won't be able to tell if you're using a 4Mb PCI card or a 256Mb PCI-E card, no difference at all.
Often found mentioned on pro imaging websites is the Matrox G400 as one of the all-time best for a single CRT's and I can swear that they are right. for comparisons you can visit this website: where you'll find
Best Computer Signal Source Awards
(The secret to high image quality begins with a high quality signal source)
Graphics Boards
top rated: CRT Analog Output - Best performance for CRTs : Matrox Parhelia and Millennium G400 MAX
top rated: Multiple Monitor Analog Outputs : Matrox Parhelia
From customers I hear the complaint that their monitors were no good on brand new machines, on having a Matrox card fitted they've reported a crisp, sharp image with more accurate colours than they've experienced before. Office workers who complain of headaches from working in front of a PC all day are amazed they can work all day with a Matrox card without experiencing the detrimental effects of 'better' cards.
So if you're a PRO or an aspiring pro who wants the BEST quality images, look at using the best quality video card and stop looking for speed where you can't use it.
If you want a true benefit at the viewing end also consider a dual monitor card - working with 2 monitors is an experience that cannot be described to single monitor users, it has to be experienced! Comments I hear are along the lines of "this is the best computer upgrade I've ever made"
So for speeding up your computer consider more RAM and a faster CPU (processor), eliminating unnecessary startup programs, and watch for inefficient software.
Inefficient software? yes - have a look at the contest between a 1986 Mac Plus Vs a 2007 AMD DualCore PC - and no, it's not a PC /Apple competition, it's an operating system & software comparison. Older, efficient code versus modern, bloated badly written code. We have screamingly fast modern machines being slowed down enormously these days by badly coded software - it's a fact! the web page is here but I can tell you the answer, the 1986 machine wins 9 times out of ten (!)
an example: which free software can do all of the following to 500Mb (50 x 10Mb) RAW images: resize to 800x600 pixels using the B Spline algorithm, rotate them 90 degrees, apply a 5% sharpening algorithm, alter the colour balance +5 Red, rename them, adjust the contrast, adjust the gamma, overlay copyright text and name and save as a tif, jpeg, PNG, BMP, GIF, ECW, EMF, FSH, ICO, JP2, JNG, JPM, LDF, LWF, PCX, PBM, PGM, PDF, PGM, PPM, RAW, TGA or TIF file - all in under a minute? ..only an efficiently coded one (my answer was Irfanview :)
Hey.. that sounds all a bit like all criticism and no goodies - sorry! Best then I point you to some more free stuff (aside from Irfanview above)..So here you go
Nokia Monitor Test
Nokia Test is a freeware utility by Nokia that will guide you through
testing and adjusting any monitor for an optimum display. There are test
patterns for Geometry, Convergence, Resolution, Moir�, Brightness,
Contrast, Focus, Readability, Color and Screen Regulation. You put up the
test pattern and then make the adjustments to your monitor.
Nokia Test runs under all versions of Windows and can be used on any computer display. There is nothing to install. Simply extract the zip file into a directory of your choice and a Nokia Test directory will be created. You can run the program directly from the directory... etc here's the link http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Other-VIDEO-Tools/Nokia-Monit
Monitor Calibration Wizard
Monitor Calibration Wizard is an easy-to-use tool for calibrating the
colors displayed by your monitor. Most monitors have flaws, they may be too
dark, too bright, or they may have a color tint like green or blue. All
these problems can be easily fixed through Monitor Calibration Wizard.
Support for an unlimited number of profiles. For people who use more than
one monitor with their computer, you could create a custom profile for each
monitor. The same goes for gaming. Many games are set in very dark
environments where a brighter profile can help you see the campers sitting
in the dark corners :)
the link is
here it is
And another
QuickMonitorProfile is a tool to create ICC / ICM monitor profiles to be
used for color management. Starting with Version 2, QuickMonitorProfile
supports multiple monitors
here
4:09 p.m. - 2007-12-11
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