NEC 2690 First Impressions
Sometime during the last year or so, I came to the conclusion that it was time to buy a new display for my desktop computer. Monitor technology has moved on since I bought my 23" Cinema Display 4 or 5 years ago and as I've become more serious about both my photography and color management, I've wanted something a bit more capable. Something with a wider color gamut. A few years ago when we were stuck with 8-bit color in Photoshop, it didn't make sense to step outside the sRGB box. Now that we're working with more bits from RAW files with tools like Aperture and Lightroom, not to mention 16-bit mode in Photoshop, it makes sense to start working with monitors that can represent a larger gamut.
I didn't jump quickly, however. My trusty 23" Cinema Display was still getting the job done. As well, when you get into the realm of really good displays, the price point moves up a bit. So, I bid my time doing a bit of research here and there. And I spent way too much time reading through Internet forums.
The NEC LCD2690WUXi on my desk.
After reading as much as I could online and checking out the displays where I could—they don't tend to carry wide-gamut displays at Fry's—I narrowed down the possibilities to the Eizo ColorEdge CG241W and the NEC LCD2690WUXi. Both are very capable displays with the Eizo specifying that it can reproduce 96% of the Adobe RGB color space and the NEC specifying 93%. They both feature programmable LUTs, allowing adjustments for calibration to be made in hardware rather than only in the video card. And they both feature calibration software that knows how to set these LUTs and which can be used with the iOne Display 2 calibration tool I already owned. The Eizo includes the software in the box, while the NEC's is an additional purchase.
The biggest difference between these displays (other than a bit of a size difference) is that the Eizo display uses a S-PVA panel and the NEC uses and IPS. In short, IPS panels generally provide for a wider viewing angle than a S-PVA panel does. The panel in the Eizo, however, looks to be outstanding and I didn't see any viewing angle issues that were bothersome. Both panels, in fact, are pretty amazing. I finally came to the conclusion that either display would be a good addition to the stable.
In the end, I ordered the NEC to try out. There were two reasons for this choice. First, the NEC is quite a bit less expensive, even factoring in the extra bit for the SpectraView II calibration software. Second, I found myself liking the "look" of the NEC a bit better. This was a bit hard to characterize as I never was able to put them side by side and compare them directly. But, based on what I'd seen of each display, I placed my order and crossed my fingers for the best.
Display Quality and Ease of Use
Out of the box, the display quality is outstanding. I'm pretty impressed. I'm seeing outstanding matches between prints I've made in the past and the monitor. As well, in a few test prints, I'm seeing extremely good matching between soft proofing an image on the display and how the finished result looks out of the printer.
Maybe the nicest thing about this display is the process of calibrating it. Using the SpectraView II software makes the process about as drop dead simple as I've ever seen. Pick your white point, gamma, and intensity and the software does the rest, adjusting brightness automatically by using the calibration hardware. Some other software packages approach this level of ease of use, but most leave you having to twiddle brightness of your display to reach the target level. The NEC software communicates with the display and takes care of everything.
The user interface of the calibration software is clean and, while not as sexy as it could be, it's certainly a lot nicer to look at than the user interfaces of several other calibration packages I've used.
The real beauty of the SpectraView II software goes beyond simple one-shot calibrations. You can calibrate multiple settings—all set to different intensities and what not—and then switch between them on demand. For example, you can have one group of settings with a luminance set to 190cd/m2 for when there's daylight streaming in through a window, and another for nighttime conditions when you want your display to run at a lower brightness. When you switch to a different setting, the monitor spends a bit of time changing its LUTs and brightness to the new settings and then you're ready to go. In the past, when I've tried to do this, I've had to manually adjust the monitor to about the setting I remember it being at and then switch profiles. Now, it's point and click and looks to be quite accurate. Very cool.
Speaking of calibration, here's the gamut plot of my profiled display as reported by SpectraView II:
The rainbow filled triangle is the display gamut. The yellow triangle outline is the Adobe RGB color space. And the barely visible light blue triangle outline is the sRGB color space. All things being equal, I'd love to be working somewhere on the outside of that yellow line. But, this monitor is definitely a step up from my 23" Apple Cinema Display which just barely eeked out the sRGB gamut on a good day.
Other Niceties
A nice feature in use that I hadn't expected would matter is the adjustable stand the display comes with. The Apple displays which I've long used let you just adjust the tilt of the screen, but not the height. The NEC, on the other hand, lets you drop the height of the screen almost to desk level, or raise it up 8".
Also nice for a change from the Cinema display is that there are a set of input ports on the back, one DVI-I, one DVI-D, and one VGA. Why anybody would need VGA these days is beyond me, but I appreciate having the option of hooking another computer up to the display on an as-needed basis without disconnecting it from my primary system.
The last bit of niceness that I've run into so far is that the unit comes with an internal power supply. You hook it up directly to AC with the same standard cable that your Mac or PC uses. This means that there's one less thing tucked away under your desk. If you take the display with you to some other location, you have one less thing to carry or to forget. I can tell you from experience that trying to scare up a power supply for an Apple Cinema Display isn't the quickest thing to do. You can't just walk into an Apple Store and walk back out with one 5 minutes later.
Downsides and a Big Suprise
One downside of this display compared to the Apple Cinema Display is the lack of built in USB and Firewire hubs. Having two Firewire and two USB ports on the screen is handy for plugging in a keyboard and mouse, attaching a colorimeter, and hooking up card readers. When setting up this display, I had to go hunt down both USB and Firewire hubs to have these ports nearby and handy.
Another feature of this display that may (or may not) be considered a downside is its resolution. At a max resolution of 1900x1200—the same as the 23" Cinema display—the NEC sports a resolution of 89dpi. I've personally gotten used to 100dpi displays and it feels a bit odd to roll this backward. On the other hand, the sheer size of the display is big enough that I have to sit a bit further back from it than the 23" Cinema in order to see the entire image comfortably which means that perceptual resolution probably works out to be about the same. It remains to be seen if I like working with editing long text documents on this screen.
The big suprise about this display is related to its huge color gamut. Anything that has a ICC profile attached to it renders beautifully. But items that don't have a profile, such as application icons and quite a bit of web content, display very, very vibrantly. For example, the unread message count on the Mail icon in the dock is a screaming red that is seemingly twice as punchy as the same icon on my MacBook Pro sitting next to it. When an application says "Give me pure red", this display definitely complies and gives a very bright and pure red like you've never seen before on an sRGB display.
I knew that this was going to be a side effect of using a wider-gamut display, but the sheer punch of the greens and reds on the display is quite amazing. It's something that I hadn't noticed while playing with the monitors at stores and on trade show floors, possibly because I was paying more attention to the photographs displayed on them than anything else. I'm getting used to it, and I am more than willing to exchange this for the extra headroom with which to edit images with, but it definitely will throw you for a loop the first time you see this effect in action.
Buy the Software
I noted above that the SpectraView II calibration software doesn't ship with the display. Well, that's not totally true. There is a version of this display that comes with an NEC-branded iOne Display2 colorimeter and the SpectraView II software, but it's very hard to find in stock, at least it is right now in March, 2008. Search for LCD2690BKSV to find all the places where it's out of stock. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to find the version of the display that doesn't contain the SpectraView II software.
The thing is, you want the SpectraView II software to go with this display for two reasons. The first is the wonderful integration with the display. This is the best monitor calibration experience I've ever had. And being able to switch profile settings on the fly is quite nice. The second reason is that while you can use other calibration software to make a profile for this display, third party software can't access the hardware LUTs and therefore has to make all of its adjustments on the video card.
To get the software, or to get the complete kit with the software and calibrator, go to NEC's online store and dig into the Accessories section. I ordered the software from them at the same time I ordered the display from Amazon and everything arrived at the same time.
I'm going to take NEC to task a bit here on two points. First, it is silly to have to buy the software separately. I can see selling a different monitor SKU with the colorimeter included, but the software disk should just come with every display in the box. Second, it's silly that you can't buy the standalone SpectraView II software as a download. All I got in the box was a CD and a serial number. NEC should save the physical bits and provide an online distribution option.
The Big Brother
As I write this, NEC has a 30" version of this display that's just starting to ship called the LCD3090WQXi. It's rated to cover 97.8% of the Adobe RGB color space and 102% of NTSC. It sports a resolution of 2560 x 1600 giving a 89dpi resolution. In every way, the 30" display looks to be the bigger brother to the 26" version.
Who is it For?
If you're a photographer or designer working with color managed applications, and the best display you've ever used is an Apple Cinema Display, this monitor will rock your world. Its ease of calibration and color quality is outstanding. Most especially, if you are going to print your work on a high-quality printer, you'll appreciate being able to see what you are going to print that much more accurately.
On the other hand, if your main order of business is working with a lot of text and you want to sit with your nose right up to the display, or you spend most of your time surfing the web, then you probably should save the bucks and get a Cinema display.
As for me, I'm happy with it so far. Give it another few weeks and I'll be ready to say whether it should get a recommendation or not. Is the NEC is better or worse than the Eizo? I simply can't say. I do hope to be able to perform a side-by-side comparison sometime just to see what the differences are.
One final note: The state of monitor reviews online is terrible. Most of the information that's not in the forums are rehashed press releases. And the information in the forums is characteristically hard to sort out, especially since places like DPReview and Luminous Landscape don't have a separate set of forums for monitors. I wish there was a site like Printerville for monitors.
Updated 3/29 PM: I added a paragraph to the downsides and surprise section mentioning the lack of USB and Firewire hubs on the display. Also, I pointed out that it's silly that you can't buy the standalone SpectraView II software with online distribution.
38 Comments
Duncan, congrats to your new purchase.
Btw. also like the new design of your website. Very slick and elegant ... Any plans to provide a printing css?
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Your article about this monitor comes at the right time!
A bit losely related to your preview, I'm struggling to properly calibrate my MBP 17" 2,16 GHZ to the Aperture recommended 2.2-6500K target.
Tried to calibrate with a Sypder2 and a Spyder3 and the results are devastating: Bluish whites and pink greys. However, when calibrating to 2.2-Native, the result is looking quite natural and very acceptable.
When I check in System preferences > Monitor "Show profiles for this display only", the target 2.2-6500K and few more options vanish. This obviously means my machine cannot display the Aperture recommended 2.2-6500K target.
Now, I'm really puzzled how to edit my images? How did you do before? Maybe you can enlighten me on this.
Thank you for your informative blog. Always interesting to follow your posts.
Best
Bernt
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Did you look at the new Dell 24" True Color?
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Monitors/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&cs=19&sku=320-6272
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mkamp: Thanks! The design is one of the Universal Template Sets from SixApart that I'm kicking about. I'm slowly modding it to be my own. As far as a printing CSS, I should look into that at some point.
Brent: I've seen some difficulty with profiling the MBP screens, especially under Leopard. For profiling and calibrating my laptop screens, as well as my Apple Cinema Display, I've been using the ColorEyes Display Pro software.
I have also seen many cases where selecting "Native" gamma in a the profiling software will give better results. If that works, then I'd go with it.
As far as System Preferences, if you don't see the profile for your display when you click the "Show profiles for this display only", that's a bit odd. Maybe the Spyder software isn't properly tagging the profiles? I've not run into that before.
oodude69: I didn't look at the Dell. Since Dell works mail order, I didn't have a chance to check it out in person. The specs certainly look good. This is one of those cases where it'd be nice to see a side-by-side review.
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Follow the link below for a very informative review on the Dell. Additionally, the review is generally very informative on what makes a good / great monitor.
The reference monitor in this review is a NEC.
http://monitortest.blogspot.com/
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Claudio: Thanks for providing the link! Much appreciated.
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Greets Mr. Davidson! Good to see that the NEC is a good hit. I'll be leaning that way soon.
Just one comment on what a VGA port would be useful for:
I have a KVM switch so I can use the same stuff for Mac, Windoze and a Linux box. The KVM is a bit dated, and only has VGA for the monitor. SO - I could hook the KVM VGA monitor cable to that port, and the lower res would be fine for Win XP and Linux, and the Mac would be running via the DVI port.
=Alan R.
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Not sure if these questions are welcome here but some pretty knowledgeable people seem to hang out here. Just ignore if not welcome.
My current setup is a MBP 17" as my main machine (I travel a lot) and when I'm home I plug in an Apple 23".
I have a Spyder2 Pro but I'm unsure how to deal with both the laptop screen and the Apple. If I profile them individually is the MBP smart enough to use the respective profiles for the respective dual monitors?
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I have a MBP 17" 2,16 GHZ Machine and I am thinking of getting a NEC LCD2690WUXi will the graphics card present in the Macbook Radeon X1600 be sufficient enough to dive that monitor and get the sort of results you talk about in your article ?
I noticed the imac 24 inch machines are using the same spec graphics card although macbook pro is using a mobile version of the processor any advise you would be gratefully received.
Simon.
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Hi. When you developed your criteria for choosing a new display (including considerations of the panel), did you know about (and if so did you consider) the Lenovo L220x? The reason I ask is that, though I'm not a photographer like you, I was also interested in getting a new flat panel at the tail end of 2007 to replace a Cinema Display 22 incher (that's right, the original 22" Cinema from Apple!). I ended up getting the L220x and it looks just great, once calibrated, when connected to my MacPro 2008 machine. Its also a 22 inch and Lenovo claims its the first to put 1920 x 1200 into a 22 inch display. Apparently they made their own panel (or perhaps they did actually outsource it but perhaps Lenovo got special terms of exclusivity). I didn't intend to turn this into a plug for the L220x but I thought your blog readers might be interested to know about it and as I mentioned, I've been using one since Nov. 2007 on a Mac and loving it (and the MacBook Air connects to it over micro dvi just fine too). Anyway, there are a gazillion monitors to choose from these days. Perhaps the next upgrade will come 10 years from now when OLED is made in larger displays, larger quantities, and lower cost?
Cheers,
Eddie
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Harrzack: Indeed, I know that the VGA port would be useful. I was trying to have a bit of wry humor come through there as I've not had a computer with a VGA port on it for a while now. Seems I failed :)
oodude69: Indeed, as long as your software can profile both monitors—some do this by having you move the software to the other monitor, others do it differently—then you can make profiles for both. The system takes care of the rest and associates a profile with each monitor. It even remembers them. For example, there's a 20" Apple Cinema Display that O'Reilly rents for my use at conferences and, since it's the same display each time, my laptop automatically uses the last profile I made for it.
Simon: You're laptop will drive the display just fine. I believe all of the MBPs made can drive even the massive 30" display, but I don't know that for sure. I do know that I've had no trouble at all driving 1900x1200 from my laptops for a while.
Eddie: I didn't check out the Lenovo display you mention. Once again, the dearth of high end monitors in brick and mortar stores means that all the good ones have to be bought blind these days. And with the lousy state of monitor reviews online... Anyway, with 1920x1200 in a 22 display, that should be pretty high DPI and a sharp display.
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Thanks for the advise and actually the entry above regarding Lenovo display was very useful too - I did some checking around and it looks like a good deal so I am thinking of buying two side by side the resolution and price are two factors that swayed me from the NEC and I plan to use it with a Dual G4 I have.
However I'm not sure yet exactly how it dose on Adobe RGB Color Space front but looks like an excellent deal anyway compared to the NEC.
http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/?s=lenovo+monitor
I am also ordering a 'ColorMunki Photo' to deal with the calibration side of things that too looks excellent value for money the recently purchased Spyder 3 Studio but that is disappointing.
It was a replacement to the Spyder 2 dose not work either the Spyder 2 failed within a year to calibrate my MBP and the Spyder 3 also has software issues calibrating on a MBP running Leopard.
I do not recommend any DataColor products and there after service is appalling not to mention the hoops of testing they put customers though before they admit there is a problem.
The NEC comes with its own dedicated calibration equipment and that is a good thing but in my case the Xrite route looks good and slightly cheaper $499 than the Spyder 3 Studio which I am returning unused to DataColor also got to say it's more compact and can easily travel with.
http://www.colormunki.com
I will post here my findings on the 'ColorMunki Photo' Calibrator as soon as I receive it but I have a feeling it will do well.... I also have a Canon Selphy ES1 which has no printer profile so printing from it is 'hit and miss' but the quality is excellent for small prints better than you could achieve from a std lab anyway.
If anyone has anything so say I would appreciate any advise or comments here.
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James, I enjoyed your review. As a new owner of the LCD2690WUXi myself, I believe you've hit the nail on the head with your comments, (especially in regard to NEC's stingy policy regarding the SpectraView software). Right at the moment I'm awaiting delivery of the SpectraView software, which I'll be using with my Monaco Optix XR calibrator. In the meantime I've managed to calibrate using Monaco software and have gotten the white Point luminance down to about 120 cd/m2. I'm looking forward to the added capabilities of the NEC software.
One thing you failed to mention is the ability to rotate the 2690 display by 90 degrees! That's a cool feature for someone like me who takes a high percentage of portrait oriented images. Finally I can get impressively large display of my non-landscape images. One click on an Applescript icon gets all the work done to toggle the OS X Display preferences between the two orientations.
Phil
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Thanks, an excellent review I just found from trying to research monitors after my CRT (sitting next to my Apple 23" Cinema) died with lots of sparks.
Really looking forward to seeing the aRGB gamut capabilities. I use the Monaco Optix XR like yourself so plan to pick up the non-SV version ($1224 at Amazon) and pick up the $99 s/w which I found here on the NEC site:
http://www.necdisplay.com/Products/Accessories/?product=1713e080-c8e3-4aab-9447-73dacb301b84
Any comments from those of you using the Optix XR? I would continue to use Monaco's EZ Color software on the Apple LCD but use NEC's SV software on the NEC, correct?
THanks,
Kevin Steele
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James, thank you for such a valuable review.
I'm an advanced amateur photographer so I want to use this monitor as a good photographer's monitor just like you are. But, most of the time (80%), I spend my time working within Word, Excel, Powerpoint and browsing the Internet.
Since you say that we can calibrate easily and rapidly to different settings and switch from one to the other quickly my question is this: can we calibrate to sRGB in one settings and Adobe RGB in a second one and avoid using the preset sRGB calibration which I've read doesn't seem to do a good job?
Also, when you say "the monitor spends a bit of time changing its LUTs", can you be more specific as to how long? Are we talking under 1 second, 3-4 seconds or more? In your view would it be annoying to switch back and forth between calibration settings depending on the type of work one would like to do, be it photography or business applications, and therefore avoid the "big surprise" mentioned in your review above?
thank you!
Michel Plante
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Apparently, the Optix XR is a really good spectro. The ColorEyes Display folks (Integrated Color) seem to prefer it for their software.
Michel: You can't calibrate to sRGB. The sRGB mode in the display is some sort of canned mode that pretty much mutes all the colors down to sRGB, but it's not something that you profile for. As far as the switch, it's like 5-10 seconds or something.
If you're going to spend 80% of your time not working with photographs, I'd pick a non-wide gamut display right now.
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Hi James, thanks for the review. I too am a serious amateur photographer looking closely at this monitor. I mostly work in the sRGB space and post photos onto the web. I am wondering if I use this monitor will I get a very different view of what the photos look like to others in their browsers when they view the same photos with an sRGB gamut screen? I would like to have the best of both worlds, I'd like to be able to work in adobe and also export to jpeg and see what others will see once in their browsers. Put another way, if I shoot in sRGB in camera will the photo look the same on the NEC to me and to anyone else with a calibrated (sRGB gamut) screen?
Hope the question makes sense.
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Gerald, if you shoot sRGB in the camera, yes your image will look about the same on your NEC compared to anyone else with an sRGB screen as long as your images are tagged sRGB. They may be some slight absolute differences depending on whether or not those other displays show all of sRGB or not and because the NEC display is so outstandingly good, but practically speaking, that workflow will be just peachy. But you won't be using the full capabilities of the display.
The display comes into its own when working when you step up to using Adobe RGB (even though it doesn't do all of AdobeRGB, it does much more than most monitors), or when working in Aperture or Lightroom which each use huge gamuts internally. Of course, you need to make sure that images that you export are in sRGB for general web usage.
Did that hit your question?
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Yep, that pretty much answers it for me. I want the NEC for the full AdobeRGB gamut but I also want to be sure that what others with reasonably good and calibrated monitors (but not such a wide gamut as the Nec) will see will be the very similar to what I see on the NEC when I convert to sRGB for web publication. And that seems to be what you're saying.
Have you had any issues with buzzing noises coming from the power supply, I read somewhere that some people have experienced this?
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I am planning on getting the 24" version of the same monitor. PArtially because the majority of my work ends up in offset printing rather than output to an inkjet or lightjet (to traditional photo paper). Some think having all the gamut of Adobe RGB might not be the best for offset printing (CMYK) as it has a much lower gamut. I suppose one could use the 26" model and switch to sRGB when working on files that are going to offset. Does this make sense?
The 24" model shows 76% of the Adobe RGB. I'm working with a Dell LCD which uses the same screen as the Apple Cinema Display. Do you know what the Apple Cinema display covers regarding the Adobe RGB coverage? At any rate I'm sure either NEC will be better than my Dell.
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Gerald, I've not had issues with buzzing noises at all. I'm crossing my fingers now :)
Edward: Indeed, I know that the CMYK workflow is much harder to deal with than the all RGB workflow that we can get away with when we're working with inkjet printers. It may indeed be that you're better off with an Apple Cinema for CMYK workflow, but with modern color management, I'm not sure I'd fully buy that until I saw it for myself. I'd think that the wider profile on the NECs would help with the greens and cyans that sRGB displays just can't do. I'll know more about what a CMYK workflow feels like on the NEC in a few months.
In my experience, the Apple Cinema Displays I've used have just about the same gamut as sRGB, only falling just a tad short in the blues. That's just a rough observation on a 20" and 23" that I have the profiles for. YMMV, but probably not by much.
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This is a quick post to let people know that the Colormunki Photo by Xrite works very well with my 17'' MBP LCD although a little disappointed it could not deal with my Canon Selphy ES1 Photo Printer because of the size that it prints target patches at (A4) but in terms of monitor calibration and from what I have read ICC profiling it is fine.
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/profiling/colormunki.html
I use a D3 at the moment and the Colormunki Photo is a good solution for me not to mention a bit cheaper than the Spyder 3 Studio that was returned recently to Data Color as it could not calibrate my LCD turning it blue.
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I've had a long series of issues with ColorMunki - my ATI drivers apparently thwarted the application from communicating with my dual NEC 2190 displays, but it appears that the first device also had a hardware communication problem. I finally have ColorMunki display profiling working and I have to say the results are very poor. The whites on both displays came out pink, ColorMunki's advanced mode doesn't allow you to control the target luminance (calibrate in a darkened room and you'll end up with an unusable result in the daytime), and the advanced mode workflow fails to prompt you to set brightness and contrast at maximum before attempting to set measured levels. I also have i1 Display 2 and it produces much better profiles.
But I want to second the author's suggestion that SpectraView 2 is by far the superior tool for 90 series NEC displays. I bought the $99 software without colorimeter from NEC online, defeated the ColorMunki gamma loader, and noted the readme file indicated a problem with ATI's Catalyst drivers for FireGL that is fixed with the most recent version. I passed this information along to X-rite, who appear to be suffering after laying off a large block of technical staff back in the spring. Anyway, while the NEC software isn't pretty, it works extremely well and has an excellent toolset. My displays are now profiled using their own LUTs an I enabled an NEC feature that improves consistence of overal luminosity that is uniquely recongnized by SpectraView. My displays have a gamut closer to sRGB, and I'm considering using a 2690 as a replacement for a 2190. I've found using a pivoting display in portrait orientation very valuable for design work and editing portrait oriented images, so the 2690 couldn't replace both me displays. I don't know if any pivoting 90 series has the wider color gamut of the 2690.
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To every body interested in monitor reviews check out,
www.prad a site in Germany, the NEC 2690 monitor has a 16page review, absolutely first class,hope this helps.
Regards
Mike Rambo
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Hi James,
You wrote this: you can't calibrate to sRGB. The sRGB mode in the display is some sort of canned mode that pretty much mutes all the colors down to sRGB, but it's not something that you profile for. As far as the switch, it's like 5-10 seconds or something.
Could one not possibly use a calibration in the graphics card to get sRGB while running the NEC display with the wide gamut calibrated mode. Or is this kind of thing not possible?
Jörg
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These are the best posts I've read with respect to NEC displays. I purchased an NEC 22LCDWMGX display and was amazed that the display shipped without any software/drivers. Since I'm a photographer it's quite important that what I see is what I get when printed. I have been using Spyder3Pro and I have had horrible results after calibration. I have a GeForce 8600XT card with 512MB card. Post calibration results in a terrible greenish tint. I've been talking with NEC doing some testing and granted it's not a high end display my 19" ViewSonic calibrates very well using factory defaults. After calibration all I have to do is launch LightRoom 2.1 to see the terrible results. But, I'm still not sure if the problem lies with the display or the video card?
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Gary, indeed. The whole point of getting a display like this is to get repeatable and predictable results. It's hard to say at this point if its display or video card. I have to say that my experience is with the combo of Mac OS X, SpectraView software (which, I have to say again is silly that it's a separate purchase), and EyeOne or X-Rite DTP-94 colorimeters, so I'm a bit out of my league in trying to diagnose an issue. If at all possible, I'd get the SpectraView software and give it a spin. It's made my color management life miraculously easy. Then, at least if there's a problem, you know it's not the profiles or calibration software.
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Jörg, from what I understand, calibrating the sRGB mode isn't possible. It kind of makes sense too as I'm pretty sure the display is being fed signals in it's native profile and doing the sRGB conversion in hardware. Dinking with the profile that is feeding in signals would likely toss this out of whack.
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2560x1600 @ 30" is 101DPI not 89DPI
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I agree with Gary, these are the best post I've found regarding the NEC and color managment issues. James,thank you for your valuable time and insightful comments.
Recently, I purchased the 2690 (before finding your blog) and was unaware the sRGB setting could not be calibrated until after I made the purchase. I was terrified I made a poor decision since more often than not I export my images in sRGB.
For the majority of my editing I use Lightroom and still am a little confused about how to handle my work flow in hopes of delivering images as close to "what I see on the monitor" as possible. Should I switch the NEC to sRGB mode when correcting for color in Lightroom or simply use the calibrated RGB profile I created? Also, I'm unclear exactly what color space LR uses. If you could shed any light on this, I would be forever greatful.
-Christopher
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Christopher, the only reason to switch your screen to sRGB mode if if you're working with untagged color data--IE, images and the like without profiles. sRGB images that are tagged as such are rendered just fine on the display and look like they would on a sRGB native display.
Lightroom internally uses the ProPhoto RGB colorspace (HUGE) with an sRGB tone curve. This lets you see all the full glory of your photographs, modulo your display device. Practically speaking, this is the best way to work. You'll see the full subtlety and range of your photographs as you work.
When you export to sRGB, yah, you'll be potentially squishing the color range of your photo down, depending on the image. But, the Adobe ACE conversions are really good about doing this. In working up tens of thousands of images for client delivery in sRGB, I haven't run into a single problem. Yes, the images can be muted in bright color areas where they have data that blows past sRGB, but that's the nature of the beast.
Since the exported files come through with an sRGB profile, you can quickly check them yourself on your screen. Just make sure to use Preview or some other ICC aware app.
If you want to strictly edit in sRGB, you can do that too, just not in Lightroom. Leave your screen in full gamut glory and use Photoshop where you can push your image over into sRGB and fine tune it. Unless you're getting into a really critical area, however, this is overkill for most purposes. If, on the other hand, you really need to do it—this is the best way to do it.
Hope that helps.
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YES! That helps tremendously! THANK YOU!!! I think you've completely answered my questions and once again made me VERY happy with my decision with the 2690.... which is all I wanted. Thank you for your valuable time and wonderful insight.
Best Regards,
-Christopher
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James, I'm so glad I found your review and associated comments. I have a 2690WUXi2, the new model, on order and all those conflicting sRGB forum posts were driving me crazy. You have given me both guidance and assurance I made the right choice.
Do you use the display for any multimedia, e.g. QT, DVD, Blu-Ray and if so how are the colors?
Also for the Xi2's greater aRGB coverage do you think the sRGB issue would be problematic for my non-photo usage of this display?
Rich
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If you are looking for a very good monitor review website, go to http://www.prad.de/en/. It's a German site, but most of it is translated into English language. You find the 2690WUXi on http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/review/2007/review-nec-lcd2690wuxi.html
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Just purchased the 2690 and the spectra2 software.After calibration, the monitor now displays pink shade where it is suppose to be white. I have tried many fixes, but cannot get it right. Any suggestions? Thank You Joe
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Well, I found out what the pink screen problem was. I had a defective I1I unit. Replace it with a new one and the calibration is as perfect as it can be. Thank You Joe
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This below is something to now consider when purchasing this monitor since it states the colormeter is now "customized" for wide gamut.
"This display features the SpectraViewII Color Calibration Solution, which combines a customized wide color gamut measurement sensor with sophisticated software"
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