.....what should I be looking on a monitor in terms of color?
Of course I'll be using it for CG work.
Define "terms of color" and we can write a book about this question:)
I will
oversimplify and consider that this monitor will be used only for CG work. In this case you want only a computer monitor (ie video monitors are excluded, no Flanders or Sony) and you don't care about HDR.
Scenario 1. Your job/life depends on how color accurate your renders are. You work for mr. Nolan on the next Interstellar movie. In this case is easy. You go and buy
- Eizo CG279X or CG319X depending on your wanted size.
- Klein K10-A colorimeter (or similar from CR)
- CR-300 spectroradiometer to calibrate your colorimeter. Alternate solutions are available. Don't bother with i1/2/3 Pro from Xrite they are not reference level. (8nm is too much)
- Calman/Lightillusion license for calibration.
- learn how to calibrate. Keep in mind that there are people who are making a living for doing only that. It's not rocket science but it's not trivial either.
Alternatively you can buy for the same money a nice brand new car. This solution is only for people who ask prices just to be polite. But you are in the top 0.01% in terms of color accuracy. You are the king of the hill. There is literally nothing better.
Why IMHO the monitors mentioned above are best in their class
for your intended use?
- proper 3D LUT implementation (grid volumetric) not the
--BS-- Asus, Benq and many others are marketing. I will talk about it later.
- best in class contrast
- best uniformity out of the box. All monitors are handpicked and verified for uniformity -
MANUALLY by a human.
- best uniformity compensation circuits. When using UC Eizo will drop contrast from 1300:1 (native panel) to 1050:1. Benq and other wannabe will drop to 600:1.Have fun working on your brand new monitor with 600:1 contrast.
- best color management software for the intended use. I consider Argyll to be better but it's open source and they don't have the license to write to Eizo 3D LUT slot. What a pity.
Did I mention that the Eizo has built-in colorimeter? I assume that 98% of users will use that instead of the combo I mentioned above. But make no mistake the built-in probe can not match the 15,000 EUR combo.
Second option could be NEC PA271Q and it's 32 inch variant (too lazy to google it). They are using the same panel as Eizo but it has some problems reported by users with calibration. So there is a long discussion there.
Third option? There is no third option. That's it.
Scenario 2. You want to sleep well and know you delivered a solution which is "good enough" in terms of color accuracy. Then there is this long list of monitors marketed by Benq/Asus (Proart)/Dell/LG/whatever as "professional". What their marketing and Youtube "reviews"
forget to mention:
- there is literally no manual QC involved. The only thing they do is probe the center of the monitor with a lab grade Minolta spectroradiometer and generate spec sheet which always passes QC. You can tweak a 200 EUR panel to pass that test. This test tells you nothing about uniformity. I tested such a monitor and half of it was green and the other half was magenta. You can't correct that.
- no uniformity test is done. Though I have seen lately some pathetic 3x3 grids mentioned.
- 3D LUT is mentioned as a buzzword. In reality in 95% of the cases the so-called 3D LUT is a 1D LUT with a 3x3 matrix (much cheaper). This implementation takes in consideration that somehow magically your monitor has a linear response from factory. HINT: most of the time it does not, This is not a real 3D LUT solution.
Observation: there are a few exceptions which have proper 3D LUT implementation. You can visit Lightillusion site to find out which are an exception. But this does
NOT mean they have proper QC or UC implementation.
- Uniformity compensation (UC)
DOES NOT work with custom calibration slots. WTF. See my quick review of Benq SW 320
https://liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php?threads/benq-sw320-very-short-review.10821/#post-108413- ultra cheap UC implementation destroys contrast when it's available.
Actually this is the most important problem.
DO NOT TAKE ME WRONG. In most cases this monitors are much better than zero color managed workflow. You will be in top 2% (my speculation, don't have statistics)
Scenario3. What is color accuracy? In this case any monitor will do.
PS. There is no such thing as ultrawide and color accurate simultaneously. Never happened.
Ok, take everything what I said with a a grain of salt, this is
ONLY my opinion.
LATER EDIT: Forgot to mention that in scenario 2 you need to buy an i1 Display Pro colorimeter. Whatever, discussion is already complicated. I mean you need to understand how to use it.
