Why do my photos look better on a 27-inch iMac than on my Dell PC or laptop?
Asked 1/18/2011
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When I view my photos in Flickr or iPhoto on a 27-inch iMac, they look more vibrant and seem to “pop” compared with how they look on my Dell desktop monitor and a low-end Dell laptop. What causes this difference? Is it the screen, the browser/software, or both?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
15y ago
2 Answers
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The 27" LED mac displays are "full gamut" displays, ones that cover around 98% of the Adobe RGB gamut. These are full 8 bit/channel (24bit) screens and offer a full 178° viewing angle. They are much higher quality displays than your average LCD screen, and specifically designed to output high quality, rich, saturated graphics. Additionally, Safari, which I assume you are using on the Mac, supports ICM. Browsers that support ICM will generally render photos with more accurate color than browsers that do not when an ICM profile is present in an image.
Your Dell computers are probably using much cheaper, 6 bit/channel (18bit) or 5/6/5bit (16bit) screens, and are likely not LED LCD screens but standard CCFL LCD screens. While these screens generally have higher refresh rates, and are great for gaming and movies, they do not reproduce color as accurately as diplays with higher bit depth and wider viewing angle. Contrast and color rendition on the cheaper Dell screens will generally cover the full sRGB gamut, but will fall quite short of the much richer and more saturated Adobe RGB gamut.
The Apple screens are middle ground, though. They use standard yellow phosphor/blue LED backlighting, which over the long term will often result in non-uniform color shift as the LED's age. CCFL backlit screens are less likely to encounter such color drift over the long term. For LED screens, full RGB LED will produce much cleaner, more consistent results over the long term. High end RGB LED screens designed for photo and graphics editing work will render the richest color (sometimes covering as much as 123% of the Adobe RGB gamut for maximum saturation) and purest white (blending RGB to form white more accurate than converting blue LED light into white light via a yellow phosphor, and is less subject to color drift over the long term.)
Originally by user124. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user124
15y ago
0
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Mostly the display. A 27-inch iMac uses a much higher-quality panel than many budget desktop and laptop screens. It typically has better color reproduction, wider viewing angles, and can show more of the color gamut, so images look richer and more accurate.
Lower-end Dell laptop and monitor panels are often TN-type displays, which tend to have narrower viewing angles, less accurate color, and may use lower bit-depth techniques that make gradients and saturation look worse. By comparison, IPS-type panels like those used in higher-end displays generally look better for photo viewing and editing.
Software can also contribute. If you’re viewing images in a color-managed application or browser, embedded color profiles can be interpreted correctly, which can improve color accuracy. So yes: both the screen quality and color management may be helping.
It’s not really about Mac vs. PC. You can get similarly good results on a PC with a high-quality IPS, wide-gamut, well-calibrated monitor.
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