LCD resolutions
One thing that has started to get to me is that the resolution of Apple's LCD screen is low, for their size. I have a friend who bought himself a Toshiba laptop recently and its the size of the pixels were that much smaller than the top of line PowerBook.
When doing photography editing on the road two things matter to me when it comes to the screen: dot pitch & colour range.
I am I the only one who feels that Apple is missing something here?
When doing photography editing on the road two things matter to me when it comes to the screen: dot pitch & colour range.
I am I the only one who feels that Apple is missing something here?
Comments
I love being able to see pixels.
A higher resolution gets you more workspace, sure.
But looking at actual photo detail, it is an absolute pain to have the dot pitch be too small.
I'm of the opinion that 16:9 or other widescreen ratios are rubbish (although realizing that they are here to stay for a long time to come).
Ideally we'd have square screens. IMAX anyone? (But I digress, we aren't talking about aspect ratio)...
Anyway, unless you are looking at a picture at 100% you are getting a reduced view, which is not showing the actual pixels. If we're talking print resolution, we'll always be looking at reduced versions on screen, so there is no direct image-pixel to screen-pixel correlation until we are at 100%.
Editing pixels, I want to see the pixels better. A larger dot pitch is great for that.
Over all there is a balance each of us needs to make.
1. Super high resolution (1600x1200), very low dot pitch, very wide 'workspace'
2. High resolution (1440 by 900), low dot pitch, wide 'workspace'
3. Medium resolution (1280x1024), medium dot pitch, medium 'workspace'
4. Low resolution (1024x768), high dot pitch, small 'workspace'
(Today I would consider/concede that 1024x768 is 'low' resolution)
To me, the iBook 14.1" is ideal if ignoring 'workspace' issues.
Its a very large screen and considering in Photoshop I spend all my time zooming in and out anyway, actual resolution doesn't matter to me aside from liking being able to see pixels more clearly.
But if I was to get a new laptop I'd still rather the ridiculously large Powerbook 17" over a smaller PC with a finer dot pitch.
There is such as thing as too fine a resolution for my tastes. (If we're talking HDTV, that's a different story).
Originally posted by johnq
I'm of the opinion that 16:9 or other widescreen ratios are rubbish (although realizing that they are here to stay for a long time to come).
Ideally we'd have square screens. IMAX anyone? (But I digress, we aren't talking about aspect ratio)...
try editing a long video in FCP on a square screen. It sucks balls.
Originally posted by ipodandimac
try editing a long video in FCP on a square screen. It sucks balls.
No, what sucked was the fact that you were on a smaller horizontal resolution than you prefer. (I'm assuming you mean going from some widescreen Powerbook to some 4:3 screen at 1024?)
I'm talking "what if" the height also matched your preferred horizontal resolution.
Any non-1:1 resolution is inherently limiting. I don't even like 4:3.
I just am anti reducing the vertical just to increase the horizontal.
I want 1024x1024, 1280x1280, for laptops and 1440x1440 and 1600x1600 for tablets or displays. (I know that on laptops there would be a point where the keyboard part wouldn't want to be as deep as the screen part).
It's a lost battle I'm sure...but it's my preference anyway.
Originally posted by ipodandimac
try editing a long video in FCP on a square screen. It sucks balls.
Yep.. it's pretty much a given that widescreen rocks in media editing. On the other hand, if you're editing text and printed documents, you really really want at least a certain amount of vertical space, and before you have that space, you will sacrifice any horizontal space and give your firstborn to get one layout page, one code object or whatever to fit in your screen. This is why I think on a general purpose computer, screens up to roughly ????x900 should be shaped to get at least that much vertical pixels and widescreen is only good after that.
(when that magical vertical measurement has been reached, I think widescreen is actually much better since it then lets you have two tall-enough documents side by side sooner than an equivalent square or whatnot display would allow.)
None are "right" over the others, of course.
Widescreen is reliant on the industry-espoused myth that 16x9 better matches the combined visible area of both human eyes. True "but"...
This is only true if one is staring straight ahead and not moving the eyes. But the eyes can pan up and down and further extend the visible range (although still only being conscious of roughly 16x9 at a given moment). Stationary viewing is unrealistic. Our eyes flit about a screen constantly. If we have screens closer to 1x1 (if not 1x1) we'll have more data to choose to look at. It is more immersive.
Widescreen is like seeing the world from inside a WW2 tank.
And it's also a bit of a cop out since they technically wouldn't be able to make high resolution at 4:3 or 1:1 as easily/cheaply (if they even tried which they aren't).
Aside: (Since when is 4x3 "square"? I'm hearing this more and more....)