The second-gen Mac Pro is going to rock. You guys need to chill a bit. Don't go crazy with spending this Christmas and save your pennies for an amazing upgrade (and companion screen) in the New Year.
The second-gen Mac Pro is going to rock. You guys need to chill a bit. Don't go crazy with spending this Christmas and save your pennies for an amazing upgrade (and companion screen) in the New Year.
I have a rule with Macs. I buy what I need now, not what I desire. It pays for itself fast enough that it works out, and if it doesn't I should not have bought it in the first place.
I have a rule with Macs. I buy what I need now, not what I desire. It pays for itself fast enough that it works out, and if it doesn't I should not have bought it in the first place.
I hope this means you take advantage of CTO options if you need them. For example, if you're going to get a few years out of this iMac I would at least recommend the M295X at minimum as well as flash storage though that is not required.
I hope this means you take advantage of CTO options if you need them. For example, if you're going to get a few years out of this iMac I would at least recommend the M295X at minimum as well as flash storage though that is not required.
Actually, Memory and Flash seem like bad bets to me. I get fast enough responses from my current iMac that the Mac Book Air doesn't seem blazing fast, nor even my sister's Mac Book Pro. Of course, the Mac Pro is quite another story, but I'd guess the processors play a higher role in this.
So it's all about the video card option, and the processor upgrade to an i7 which seems... why would you want an i5 on a top end machine anyway?
I have the Samsung 470 which is a SATA II SSD despite the fact that the 2011 Mac mini has a SATA III interface and I can tell you I would never ever go back to HDDs.
I had a flounder around on the base model 27 iMac. Beautiful display. Opened up Pages with the blank A4 template, changed it to A3 at 100%. Used the default of 11 point text. A little small for my old eyes but legible and smooth as. Changed the zoom to 150, 165, fit to width (which zoomed it in to about 360% F me ! Wow)The text rendering is fantastic. Beautiful.
In a proper page layout program you'd get 2 A3 pages side by side at 100%. Full length in portrait. With some wriggle room on the side, for palettes etc Very, very impressive. Great job Apple.
edit: I'm going to flog some of my old video gear and get one of these once DDR 4 ram finds its way to the iMac.
I had a flounder around on the base model 27 iMac. Beautiful display.
Opened up Pages with the blank A4 template, changed it to A3 at 100%.
Used the default of 11 point text. A little small for my old eyes but legible and smooth as.
Changed the zoom to 150, 165, fit to width (which zoomed it in to about 360% F me ! Wow)The text rendering is fantastic. Beautiful.
I also had a play with one in the Apple Store on Friday. The screen does look beautiful as everyone says. One thing that was very noticeable to me also was, what people have been saying about how "close" the screen appears. That is, normally the lights which are the pixels look like they're under a piece of glass, but with this computer it's like the pixels are right there with no (or very thin) glass covering.
One of the other things I fooled around with was in Display prefs>Colour Tuning this display using expert mode, ahem, was giving my eyes a better result than in the past. Default gamma of 2.2 - but really a nice picture. Hit 1.8 and it blows out. I wish they'd reverse that and put the gamma and white point at the beginning of the tune process. I would like Apple to beef that old girl up (Display Colour) - the flexibility in this display almost demands it - wait no, it's crying out for it.
They had to make a custom timing controller to get enough bandwidth. Anand suggests it's the same 5K panel as the Dell but the Dell was rumored to use two tiles and the iMac uses one.
It would have been easier if they'd just used 4K and I doubt anyone would tell the difference on a 27". I also think they could have split the data across multiple refresh cycles because the whole display doesn't get changed every time and added some compression.
Still, these things always work themselves out over time. Once you're at Retina quality then you don't really have to go further. Once the external IO catches up, I'm sure they'll add the functionality back in later revisions. Displayport 1.3 should allow a MP to drive a 5K TB display but it may only do it via pass-through so no data on top. They could perhaps add a second TB port for data.
I figured they would be using the displayport 1.2 protocol internally anyway, as it has specified behavior for that circumstance. It seems that may not be the case. The only reason I can think of to go for 5K over 4K at this time is use the retina doubling, so each pixel is replaced by 4 pixels occupying the same approximate area. I thought they might do something like that with 4K using doubled dimensions from 1920x1200, but I've been wrong quite a bit lately. Part of that is that they have used greater levels of customization than I anticipated. I tend to expect these things more in the iOS based devices and possibly notebooks than anything resembling a desktop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RobM
One of the other things I fooled around with was in Display prefs>Colour
Tuning this display using expert mode, ahem, was giving my eyes a better result than in the past.
Default gamma of 2.2 - but really a nice picture. Hit 1.8 and it blows out.
I wish they'd reverse that and put the gamma and white point at the beginning of the tune process.
I would like Apple to beef that old girl up (Display Colour) - the flexibility in this display almost demands it - wait no, it's crying out for it.
Display hardware as it is set up isn't a very good match to 1.8. It's not something you should ever change, because it doesn't describe the hardware or its encoding.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ascii
I think 1.8 was the default gamma on the Mac up to OS 10.5, then from 10.6 onwards they changed it to 2.2. Don't know why.
They changed it because 1.8 made absolutely no sense outside of a few specialized workflows with very specific hardware. I typed up a bit more, but I didn't really like my own explanation.
They changed it because 1.8 made absolutely no sense outside of a few specialized workflows with very specific hardware. I typed up a bit more, but I didn't really like my own explanation.
Yeah - I know a lot of it is subjective and it gets messy as hell without getting super specific. I'm not suggesting LUts or anything that sophisticated - although that would be fantastic.
I'm not sure of the specs on this panel ( should dig around) but it would appear to me that it is very responsive to adjustments.
When I grade for video or for press or whatever the first thing you want to have control of is your gamma. I was suggesting that the whole colour prefs needs a work over and that those critical parameters should be at the beginning of the process not at the end.
Most users won't or don't ever go there - I'm one of the ones that do. Call it a character fault, lol.
Yeah - I know a lot of it is subjective and it gets messy as hell without getting super specific. I'm not suggesting LUts or anything that sophisticated - although that would be fantastic.
LUTs just work with what's available in terms of the underlying hardware. Even then you aren't going to reach such a gamma value without omitting certain encoded device values.
Quote:
I'm not sure of the specs on this panel ( should dig around) but it would appear to me that it is very responsive to adjustments.
When I grade for video or for press or whatever the first thing you want to have control of is your gamma. I was suggesting that the whole colour prefs needs a work over and that those initial parameters should be at the beginning of the process not at the end.
Most users won't or don't ever go there - I'm one of the ones that do. Call it a character fault, lol.
Err.....where did you get that? This is a sticky subject, and I'm not that great at explaining it, but there's a lot more to it. What should be noted is that your display may not precisely match your target space in either scenario. The color preferences should be what matches the native response of the hardware. Otherwise you end up throwing out a portion of the encoded range. That does not have to align with your working space, as spectral alignment between hardware devices isn't even remotely feasible, at least not in the near future. When you say you want to have control of your gamma, I expect you mean that you want control over linearized data to make sure it aligns properly with whatever will eventually display it without sacrificing the ability to easily edit that data. I don't think you genuinely want gamma sliders to be a control method for your display with current hardware limitations.
Yep - that's why we always monitor output with a broadcast monitor for video.
It's why PS has had a CMYK preview for years for soft proofing. It's why fcp and other video editors have over on whites, chroma and under on blacks. It's why there's a host of software scopes monitoring output. If you can get your computer monitor close to the output of your workspace it makes life easier. Display prefs offers options to save different profiles. Which we can use for different output
I'm also not all that concerned that the display prefs profile I'm using may not accurately represent all images other than it is close to the output. I'm useless at explaining it as I don't have the tech background in the science behind it all. I don't think it matters. What does matter is that you or me as users have the degree of control we need.
To be able to set gamma at the beginning of a profile would be a good thing. Yes I want to be able to do this, rather than at the end.
Yep - that's why we always monitor output with a broadcast monitor for video.
It's why PS has had a CMYK preview for years for soft proofing. It's why fcp and other video editors have over on whites, chroma and under on blacks.
It's why there's a host of software scopes monitoring output.
If you can get your computer monitor close to the output of your workspace it makes life easier.
Display prefs offers options to save different profiles. Which we can use for different output
I'm also not all that concerned that the display prefs profile I'm using may not accurately represent all images other than it is close to the output.
I'm useless at explaining it as I don't have the tech background in the science behind it all.
I don't think it matters. What does matter is that you or me as users have the degree of control we need.
To be able to set gamma at the beginning of a profile would be a good thing. Yes I want to be able to do this, rather than at the end.
Well the thing about CMYK is that some well engineered displays can get reasonably close on colors that are within gamut. You'll still have a higher deviation for colors that are out of gamut, which encompass a lot of maroons and certain cyanish colors assuming we're talking about a high quality stock. That doesn't change anything about the monitor profile. The gamma slider shouldn't be on there at all, because the underlying hardware can't be tuned in a meaningful way in reference to that parameter. I wouldn't feel this way if it in any way resembled a viable tool for adjustment.
Yea - all I'm saying is that given the impossibilities that are there from the technical side, that we as users can get close to accurate colour. 15 years ago it really was a pig in a poke, a lucky dip with the crts These days we can get damn close.
Display prefs calibration interface hasn't changed in what heck jeez it's prolly been the same for 15 years as well. I think I rember the same back on old Mac OS 9, maybe even 8 - (Alzheimer's here)
Display prefs calibration interface hasn't changed in what heck jeez it's prolly been the same for 15 years as well.
I think I rember the same back on old Mac OS 9, maybe even 8 - (Alzheimer's here)
Ahh I was either in high school or middle school at that time. I didn't really start using macs until the G4s, but from what I understand at that time, it was even more heavily output referred. The way it is now, you have certain groups that outline loose specifications for communication between devices and various viewing conditions. Those commonly used in video are are quite difference from those used in typical preparation of graphical elements, illustrations, still photography, etc with the latter primarily influenced by the ICC. In both cases it's still a mess. I think years from now it's going to look quite archaic, because there is adequate research to implement quasi scene referred color engines and less restrictive profile connection space implementations. For example the use of unsigned values is absolutely archaic, because it can't properly represent certain color stimuli that result from certain reflective behavior in real objects.
Anyway I don't think you are missing much through a lack of gamma adjustment slider. The underlying hardware typically does a terrible job of approximating different gamma values, which is why I typically just suggest people invest in a quality display with some calibration features, then don't drift any further from its native values than necessary. Broadcast displays are a different matter, but I wasn't really addressing those.
Anyway I don't think you are missing much through a lack of gamma adjustment slider. The underlying hardware typically does a terrible job of approximating different gamma values, which is why I typically just suggest people invest in a quality display with some calibration features, then don't drift any further from its native values than necessary. Broadcast displays are a different matter, but I wasn't really addressing those.
A good monitor with its own controls is always a great place to start, totally agree.
But not to drift too far OT - these new displays appear to be a lot more flexible. Purely subjective on my part of course.
If you haven't had a geek around with one I suggest you or anyone wanders into a store. They really are stunning and very responsive.
I'd love to have a go with Da Vinci/Resolve on one of these, unfortunately I was in a shop and had to make do with Pages and Display Prefs.
And I also had a salesperson leaning over my shoulder hassling me to buy it. Normally I don't respond well to that type of pressure lol, but man I was weakening. Heh, no worries though, I steeled myself and said, "Nope, not today thank you." All the while being blown away by the text rendering in Pages.
A good monitor with its own controls is always a great place to start, totally agree.
But not to drift too far OT - these new displays appear to be a lot more flexible. Purely subjective on my part of course.
If you haven't had a geek around with one I suggest you or anyone wanders into a store. They really are stunning and very responsive.
I'd love to have a go with Da Vinci/Resolve on one of these, unfortunately I was in a shop and had to make do with Pages and Display Prefs.
That could be practical as long as you have some means of quantifying how far off they are visually from the desired response. If they're popular enough I'm sure someone will do some real testing on them. I just say visually because I know enough about the bases for most of these color models.
oh for sure that's going to happen. At 5k the film crowd are going to be all over these ! The testing is prolly underway right now in fact. I'd say we'll start to see some results within the next week.
Comments
Thunderbolt 3 announced early.
5K controllers made in-house.
DisplayPort 1.3 is finalized.
USB 3.1 Type C is finalized.
DDR4 in production and double density.
The second-gen Mac Pro is going to rock. You guys need to chill a bit. Don't go crazy with spending this Christmas and save your pennies for an amazing upgrade (and companion screen) in the New Year.
Thunderbolt 3 announced early.
5K controllers made in-house.
DisplayPort 1.3 is finalized.
USB 3.1 Type C is finalized.
DDR4 in production and double density.
The second-gen Mac Pro is going to rock. You guys need to chill a bit. Don't go crazy with spending this Christmas and save your pennies for an amazing upgrade (and companion screen) in the New Year.
I have a rule with Macs. I buy what I need now, not what I desire. It pays for itself fast enough that it works out, and if it doesn't I should not have bought it in the first place.
I hope this means you take advantage of CTO options if you need them. For example, if you're going to get a few years out of this iMac I would at least recommend the M295X at minimum as well as flash storage though that is not required.
I hope this means you take advantage of CTO options if you need them. For example, if you're going to get a few years out of this iMac I would at least recommend the M295X at minimum as well as flash storage though that is not required.
Actually, Memory and Flash seem like bad bets to me. I get fast enough responses from my current iMac that the Mac Book Air doesn't seem blazing fast, nor even my sister's Mac Book Pro. Of course, the Mac Pro is quite another story, but I'd guess the processors play a higher role in this.
So it's all about the video card option, and the processor upgrade to an i7 which seems... why would you want an i5 on a top end machine anyway?
Opened up Pages with the blank A4 template, changed it to A3 at 100%.
Used the default of 11 point text. A little small for my old eyes but legible and smooth as.
Changed the zoom to 150, 165, fit to width (which zoomed it in to about 360% F me ! Wow)The text rendering is fantastic. Beautiful.
In a proper page layout program you'd get 2 A3 pages side by side at 100%. Full length in portrait. With some wriggle room on the side, for palettes etc
Very, very impressive.
Great job Apple.
edit: I'm going to flog some of my old video gear and get one of these once DDR 4 ram finds its way to the iMac.
I had a flounder around on the base model 27 iMac. Beautiful display.
Opened up Pages with the blank A4 template, changed it to A3 at 100%.
Used the default of 11 point text. A little small for my old eyes but legible and smooth as.
Changed the zoom to 150, 165, fit to width (which zoomed it in to about 360% F me ! Wow)The text rendering is fantastic. Beautiful.
I also had a play with one in the Apple Store on Friday. The screen does look beautiful as everyone says. One thing that was very noticeable to me also was, what people have been saying about how "close" the screen appears. That is, normally the lights which are the pixels look like they're under a piece of glass, but with this computer it's like the pixels are right there with no (or very thin) glass covering.
Tuning this display using expert mode, ahem, was giving my eyes a better result than in the past.
Default gamma of 2.2 - but really a nice picture. Hit 1.8 and it blows out.
I wish they'd reverse that and put the gamma and white point at the beginning of the tune process.
I would like Apple to beef that old girl up (Display Colour) - the flexibility in this display almost demands it - wait no, it's crying out for it.
I think 1.8 was the default gamma on the Mac up to OS 10.5, then from 10.6 onwards they changed it to 2.2. Don't know why.
They had to make a custom timing controller to get enough bandwidth. Anand suggests it's the same 5K panel as the Dell but the Dell was rumored to use two tiles and the iMac uses one.
It would have been easier if they'd just used 4K and I doubt anyone would tell the difference on a 27". I also think they could have split the data across multiple refresh cycles because the whole display doesn't get changed every time and added some compression.
Still, these things always work themselves out over time. Once you're at Retina quality then you don't really have to go further. Once the external IO catches up, I'm sure they'll add the functionality back in later revisions. Displayport 1.3 should allow a MP to drive a 5K TB display but it may only do it via pass-through so no data on top. They could perhaps add a second TB port for data.
I figured they would be using the displayport 1.2 protocol internally anyway, as it has specified behavior for that circumstance. It seems that may not be the case. The only reason I can think of to go for 5K over 4K at this time is use the retina doubling, so each pixel is replaced by 4 pixels occupying the same approximate area. I thought they might do something like that with 4K using doubled dimensions from 1920x1200, but I've been wrong quite a bit lately. Part of that is that they have used greater levels of customization than I anticipated. I tend to expect these things more in the iOS based devices and possibly notebooks than anything resembling a desktop.
One of the other things I fooled around with was in Display prefs>Colour
Tuning this display using expert mode, ahem, was giving my eyes a better result than in the past.
Default gamma of 2.2 - but really a nice picture. Hit 1.8 and it blows out.
I wish they'd reverse that and put the gamma and white point at the beginning of the tune process.
I would like Apple to beef that old girl up (Display Colour) - the flexibility in this display almost demands it - wait no, it's crying out for it.
Display hardware as it is set up isn't a very good match to 1.8. It's not something you should ever change, because it doesn't describe the hardware or its encoding.
Quote:
I think 1.8 was the default gamma on the Mac up to OS 10.5, then from 10.6 onwards they changed it to 2.2. Don't know why.
They changed it because 1.8 made absolutely no sense outside of a few specialized workflows with very specific hardware. I typed up a bit more, but I didn't really like my own explanation.
Yeah - I know a lot of it is subjective and it gets messy as hell without getting super specific. I'm not suggesting LUts or anything that sophisticated - although that would be fantastic.
I'm not sure of the specs on this panel ( should dig around) but it would appear to me that it is very responsive to adjustments.
When I grade for video or for press or whatever the first thing you want to have control of is your gamma. I was suggesting that the whole colour prefs needs a work over and that those critical parameters should be at the beginning of the process not at the end.
Most users won't or don't ever go there - I'm one of the ones that do. Call it a character fault, lol.
Yeah - I know a lot of it is subjective and it gets messy as hell without getting super specific. I'm not suggesting LUts or anything that sophisticated - although that would be fantastic.
LUTs just work with what's available in terms of the underlying hardware. Even then you aren't going to reach such a gamma value without omitting certain encoded device values.
When I grade for video or for press or whatever the first thing you want to have control of is your gamma. I was suggesting that the whole colour prefs needs a work over and that those initial parameters should be at the beginning of the process not at the end.
Most users won't or don't ever go there - I'm one of the ones that do. Call it a character fault, lol.
Err.....where did you get that? This is a sticky subject, and I'm not that great at explaining it, but there's a lot more to it. What should be noted is that your display may not precisely match your target space in either scenario. The color preferences should be what matches the native response of the hardware. Otherwise you end up throwing out a portion of the encoded range. That does not have to align with your working space, as spectral alignment between hardware devices isn't even remotely feasible, at least not in the near future. When you say you want to have control of your gamma, I expect you mean that you want control over linearized data to make sure it aligns properly with whatever will eventually display it without sacrificing the ability to easily edit that data. I don't think you genuinely want gamma sliders to be a control method for your display with current hardware limitations.
It's why PS has had a CMYK preview for years for soft proofing. It's why fcp and other video editors have over on whites, chroma and under on blacks.
It's why there's a host of software scopes monitoring output.
If you can get your computer monitor close to the output of your workspace it makes life easier.
Display prefs offers options to save different profiles. Which we can use for different output
I'm also not all that concerned that the display prefs profile I'm using may not accurately represent all images other than it is close to the output.
I'm useless at explaining it as I don't have the tech background in the science behind it all.
I don't think it matters. What does matter is that you or me as users have the degree of control we need.
To be able to set gamma at the beginning of a profile would be a good thing. Yes I want to be able to do this, rather than at the end.
Yep - that's why we always monitor output with a broadcast monitor for video.
It's why PS has had a CMYK preview for years for soft proofing. It's why fcp and other video editors have over on whites, chroma and under on blacks.
It's why there's a host of software scopes monitoring output.
If you can get your computer monitor close to the output of your workspace it makes life easier.
Display prefs offers options to save different profiles. Which we can use for different output
I'm also not all that concerned that the display prefs profile I'm using may not accurately represent all images other than it is close to the output.
I'm useless at explaining it as I don't have the tech background in the science behind it all.
I don't think it matters. What does matter is that you or me as users have the degree of control we need.
To be able to set gamma at the beginning of a profile would be a good thing. Yes I want to be able to do this, rather than at the end.
Well the thing about CMYK is that some well engineered displays can get reasonably close on colors that are within gamut. You'll still have a higher deviation for colors that are out of gamut, which encompass a lot of maroons and certain cyanish colors assuming we're talking about a high quality stock. That doesn't change anything about the monitor profile. The gamma slider shouldn't be on there at all, because the underlying hardware can't be tuned in a meaningful way in reference to that parameter. I wouldn't feel this way if it in any way resembled a viable tool for adjustment.
15 years ago it really was a pig in a poke, a lucky dip with the crts These days we can get damn close.
Display prefs calibration interface hasn't changed in what heck jeez it's prolly been the same for 15 years as well.
I think I rember the same back on old Mac OS 9, maybe even 8 - (Alzheimer's here)
Display prefs calibration interface hasn't changed in what heck jeez it's prolly been the same for 15 years as well.
I think I rember the same back on old Mac OS 9, maybe even 8 - (Alzheimer's here)
Ahh I was either in high school or middle school at that time. I didn't really start using macs until the G4s, but from what I understand at that time, it was even more heavily output referred. The way it is now, you have certain groups that outline loose specifications for communication between devices and various viewing conditions. Those commonly used in video are are quite difference from those used in typical preparation of graphical elements, illustrations, still photography, etc with the latter primarily influenced by the ICC. In both cases it's still a mess. I think years from now it's going to look quite archaic, because there is adequate research to implement quasi scene referred color engines and less restrictive profile connection space implementations. For example the use of unsigned values is absolutely archaic, because it can't properly represent certain color stimuli that result from certain reflective behavior in real objects.
Anyway I don't think you are missing much through a lack of gamma adjustment slider. The underlying hardware typically does a terrible job of approximating different gamma values, which is why I typically just suggest people invest in a quality display with some calibration features, then don't drift any further from its native values than necessary. Broadcast displays are a different matter, but I wasn't really addressing those.
A good monitor with its own controls is always a great place to start, totally agree.
But not to drift too far OT - these new displays appear to be a lot more flexible. Purely subjective on my part of course.
If you haven't had a geek around with one I suggest you or anyone wanders into a store. They really are stunning and very responsive.
I'd love to have a go with Da Vinci/Resolve on one of these, unfortunately I was in a shop and had to make do with Pages and Display Prefs.
And I also had a salesperson leaning over my shoulder hassling me to buy it. Normally I don't respond well to that type of pressure lol, but man I was weakening. Heh, no worries though, I steeled myself and said, "Nope, not today thank you." All the while being blown away by the text rendering in Pages.
A good monitor with its own controls is always a great place to start, totally agree.
But not to drift too far OT - these new displays appear to be a lot more flexible. Purely subjective on my part of course.
If you haven't had a geek around with one I suggest you or anyone wanders into a store. They really are stunning and very responsive.
I'd love to have a go with Da Vinci/Resolve on one of these, unfortunately I was in a shop and had to make do with Pages and Display Prefs.
That could be practical as long as you have some means of quantifying how far off they are visually from the desired response. If they're popular enough I'm sure someone will do some real testing on them. I just say visually because I know enough about the bases for most of these color models.
At 5k the film crowd are going to be all over these !
The testing is prolly underway right now in fact.
I'd say we'll start to see some results within the next week.
I don't doubt that. I suspect we'll see something on creativecow within a week or two.