CRT or Flat Panel?

I am currently using a 17" CRT monitor and I am thinking about upgrading it to a 19" Flat Panel.

Which do you'll prefer using to edit your photo's on and why?

Kevin

It was my understanding that CRT's were superior to flat panels to use in editing images and graphics.

I believed that until I bought my Dell Ultrasharp monitor.

I can "see" things on the Dell Ultrasharp monitor that simply were not visible to me on my CRT. I design graphics for a living, so I need to be able to see clearly right down to the one pixel level.

I won't go back to a CRT now.

I'm no color management expert (Far from it in fact), but from what I've read, the issue with LCD minoitors is that they tend to be too bright, which makes it's more difficult to accurately calibrate them. Again, just from what little I've read about it, many LCD's cannot have their brightness level adjusted downward enough without adversely affecting other characteristics.

I have just enough knowledge on this to be dangerous, so don't take this too literally; instead use this info as a starting point to just check further into it.

I agree with Bill. I work on two 19" LCDs and they tend to make everything seem good concerning brightness then when I print it turns out dark. I have tried calibrating with no success and then just "free adjusting" and nothing seems to get the accuracy I would like. That's just experience no real technical knowledge. But if you have space issues on your desk, like I do, its hard to go back to the large bulky CRT.

A good LCD can easily be calibrated and will provide splendid results. I've been using a calibrated LCD for 2 years now and I'd never go back to CRT. Prints come out perfectly and match my LCD like a gem.

I get a good match with my LCD as well. (And on my laptop even - given that the viewing angle is good.) I did get the best LCD Dell offered at the time, which will do 1680x1050. Not that the max resolution means it's good, but it's an indication that it's a higher quality one since many 15.4" laptop LCD's will only do 1280x800. Anyway - I think that's the problem with LCDs - lower end ones are really bad, while the upper ones are just fine. I'd rather have a good 15" or 17" than a cheap 19" that won't calibrate at all.

Well, I'm glad we all have different points of view!
CRTs and LCD's are two completely different animals in the way they produce color, and they naturally have different pluses and minuses. It's a little amusing to see that "too bright" is a problem. It used to be that professional color people would work in a darkened room (a "cave") to be able to view the shadow detail on their CRT monitors. LCDs actually allow people to "come out of the cave" and still see their shadow detail because of the extended brightness.

But if your ambient lighting is not very bright, and you are trying to match your monitor to your prints I can see where you would have trouble getting the luminance down. A better solution might be to add more daylight-balanced lighting if you can, even if you only turn it on for the critical "screen-to-print" matching. More technical details here.

A whole bunch depends on calibration and what you use a monitor for. Calibration was as easy for us as any other. On the plus side (and it's very important for us), if you're showing your work to others on the monitor, they respond much better to images on LCDs than CRTs. We do most of our proof reviews and print sales with clients directly from the monitors in our studio. There was a marked jump in both the size of prints ordered and the total size of individual sales when we went to LCDs. The increase paid for those big Apple monitors really quickly, as a matter of fact.

As an added plus those big monitors are lots wider than tall. If you have the capacity to rotate the monitors to vertical when displaying vertical images, they can be displayed full screen just like a horizontal, rather than reduced to the limited height of the monitor in its "normal" position.

Whether or not you are doing sales from your monitor, I think you will find benefits in many of the points that I and others have raised.

I use 23" and 30" Apple Cinemas that are absolutely splendid displays. The brightness does have to be turned down quite a bit (120 out of 300) to get the proper match to prints. Get an Eye One kit no matter what monitor you choose because it will measure your work areas ambient luminance and color cast, and set your monitor's luminence correctly so your brightness matches your prints.

Now when I do color corrected work in studio, I have to shut the blinds and turn off the fluorescents. The Eye One didn't like the greenish cast of the beige wall behind the monitor, so we painted it a neutral gray.

I doubt that you'll be able to find a high quality CRT anymore. I tried a year ago and ended up having to buy a used one. I'm happy with my CRT but I do agree that today's high quality LCD's are the way to go.

Thanks for the input..... any specific technical info I should be looking for when selecting a Flat Panel? That way I can narrow down the good ones from the not so good.

The really really good ones

http://www.eizo.com/

I'm about as far as you get from being a pixel peeper, so take this at face value: We bought our Apple LCDs because it was easy to get them at the same time on the same order as our CPUs. I couldn't tell you how they compare to others, except that they are probably more expensive- a price we were willing to pay for convenience and warranty.

But I will say that they have proved to be outstanding for our uses. In your shoes, I'd pixel peep the Apple specs and use that as a baseline. If you can find LCDs that meet or exceed those specs while saving you lotsabux, then I know you'll be very happy with the performance of whatever you buy. If you're willing to trade the price difference for the Apple name and convenience, I know you'll be happy there, too.

I have been using a Samsung LCD for about a year and a half. I find that I had to upgrade my color calibrating system to EyeOne to get accurate calibration. Since then the colors correspond well in the final print. The only adjustment I had to make mentally is that the translucent quality of the monitor compared to the reflected quality of a print has to be taken into account when judging the final output.