I think
@EricBowles brings it together for the criteria.
As I don't have a setup for image processing only - probably like most of us - I needed to find a good compromise. I made very good experience with the DELL Ultrasharp series and currently I have two workplaces running with them
. My computer is a mobile workstation sitting in a docking station when working stationary.
Workplace 1 is the one at home and equipped with two Dell UP2716D (2560x1440 native).
Workplace 2 is my mobile set fitting in a Peli Air Case completely including dock, keyboard, mouse and labelled cable set) and has two DELL U2413.
All monitors are getting close to 100% AdobeRGB and are calibrated with i1 DisplayPro plus corresponding software.
If I don't have a project requiring long term stay at the client's place the workplace 2 is usually set up at my girlfriend's place and the ambient lighting conditions between the two locations are quite different. Despite this and the fact that the monitors are quite different in age and from different series it works really well to process an image at workplace 1 and look at the result at workplace 2 or start processing a set of pictures at workplace 1 and complete the work at workplace 2. It all looks very consistent. That said, I don't have experience with doing this across different manufacturers, but only within a series of monitors of the same manufacturer it seems to work fine if the calibration is done correctly and is updated from time to time. To be on the safe side and to make sure that you reduce the risk of getting trapped by software issues around color management I would recommend getting two identical monitors if oyu decide to work with a dual monitor setup.
One thing that especially people working with mobile computers might come across (certainly with Windows, no experience with Apple - so far
) are difficulties in
having the right color profile allocated to the right monitor automatically .
The way the computer behaves in this respect is depending on the graphics card AND the connector you use on the particular card. My computer is using an onboard graphics interface when working mobile (i.e. with the notebook display) and with a separate PCIe graphics board when sitting in the dock. It took a while to make sure that whenever I plug in the computer to one of the docks (with the attached monitors) I get the color profiles right all the time. It can be very confusing and frustrating if this goes wrong.
In this respect I made the best experience with DisplayPort connections. Here the internal adressing and identification of the monitors seems to work slightly differet compared to other connections resulting in a reliable allocation of color management settings to the right device, including situations where
- the computer wakes up from energy saving or even hybernate mode and reanimating the displays with a delay (causing a delay in idetntifying them) or
- the notebook display is opened or closed during working (which changes the monitor setup) or
- the running computer is taken out of the dock and put back in later.
Regarding size, I pretty much try to avoid monitors that are too big or even bent. The bigger they are the more prone they are to small differences caused by your viewing angle even if it is a high quality display. The bent ones may cause funny effects when trying to adjust pictures. They are great if you have to handle big amounts of information like for the finance guys, process plant visualisation etc., but if it comes to images most the brains out there are conditioned to look at flat pictures. Adjusting the orientation or the perspective of an image on this kind of monitors can be a weird experience
. I actually tried to work with one of these for a while, because the client I was working for was so kind to hand one out to me for the duration of my stay. Despite the comfortable size and top noth display quality this thing was driving me crazy. Working on process flow graphics or processing images with the bent monitor combined with inevitable distortions of my glasses was making me sea-sick
.
Another criteria is the
display surface. From my point of view I would strongly recommend to use a matte display, because they make it much easier to set up the ambient lighting in a way not to be bothered by reflection or - to avoid these - to work in a darkened room with artificial background lighting, which can - if done wrong - cause significant stress on the eyes.
I find this so important that if I had the chance to change to Apple I would still pay the tremendous surplus charge for the nano texture glass display.
Talking resolution, I would - from a Windows perspective - put the limits to 1920 pixels horizontal for 24" and to 2560 for 27". The reasons is not image processing, but the fact that proper scaling and displaying of fonts still doesn't work perfect across all the applications out there. With a very high res monitor you might end up with reading and editing problems in one of you favourite applications.
