2690 wuxi2 sharpness vs 23" ACD

[TiX]

My new 2690wuxi2 has been up and running for two days, and I absolutely love it. Either I had no idea my Apple Cinema Display was that bad, or had aged that much, even with regular calibration, or the technology has obviously improved that much. Regardless, my library of 1Ds Mark III photos looks like I bought a Phase back. Suddenly my stored sharpness settings for many files are too sharp when viewed on the 2690, compared to the old ACD. The NEC is at the factory default of 26.3% sharpness, which seems reasonable for text and photos, but now how do I determine how much is too much sharpness for the other viewers in the world who are not fortunate enough to have such a wonderful display for viewing? Do people run two or three systems in order to check? I do have a Dell laptop I could cross check with, but that is time consuming. Would I over-sharpen on the 2690 and assume ~90% of viewers are using a inferior display technology? How do you manage?

[TiX]

Four days, 93 views and no replies?!

[dkeyes]

Never heard of a sharpness setting for an lcd monitor. I have the 2690 (first gen) and have never seen this setting. How do you access this?

[Josh-H]

Never heard of a sharpness setting for an lcd monitor. I have the 2690 (first gen) and have never seen this setting. How do you access this?

You need to get into the factory settings - which from memory you hold down the input button, whilst turning on the monitor - then push the menu button to access it. The Sharpness setting is in there.

The original posters question is a good one - I dont know the answer however. Seems to be trying to guess what sharpening to apply for someone elses monitor when its an unknown entity is folly.

In terms of how to set sharpness correctly on any display device - you need to use a test pattern (such as this Test Pattern ) and look for edge halos. When you see them you know you have applied too much sharpening with the monitor controls. That is the correct way to do it - but I dont know anyone (myself included) with a 2690 Wuxi monitor who has actually changed the default setting.

Its very easy to actually apply to mush monitor sharpening - which is a bad thing as it obscures fine detail.

Unless there is very good reason I would leave the 2690 at factory default. I find images properly sharpened on my 2690 looks ever so subtly softer on my 17" mac book pro - but its nothing to worry about.

[TiX]

You need to get into the factory settings - which from memory you hold down the input button, whilst turning on the monitor - then push the menu button to access it. The Sharpness setting is in there.

The original posters question is a good one - I dont know the answer however. Seems to be trying to guess what sharpening to apply for someone elses monitor when its an unknown entity is folly.

In terms of how to set sharpness correctly on any display device - you need to use a test pattern (such as this Test Pattern ) and look for edge halos. When you see them you know you have applied too much sharpening with the monitor controls. That is the correct way to do it - but I dont know anyone (myself included) with a 2690 Wuxi monitor who has actually changed the default setting.

Its very easy to actually apply to mush monitor sharpening - which is a bad thing as it obscures fine detail.

Unless there is very good reason I would leave the 2690 at factory default. I find images properly sharpened on my 2690 looks ever so subtly softer on my 17" mac book pro - but its nothing to worry about.

Thanks Josh-H, I have left it at the factory default. My original question was directed toward monitor viewing, and I guess for display output sharpening, the one thing I do not have to worry about is over-sharpening, because most likely the image will always be "subtly softer" than what I see. Which is a good thing.

[dkeyes]

You need to get into the factory settings - which from memory you hold down the input button, whilst turning on the monitor - then push the menu button to access it. The Sharpness setting is in there.

The original posters question is a good one - I dont know the answer however. Seems to be trying to guess what sharpening to apply for someone elses monitor when its an unknown entity is folly.

In terms of how to set sharpness correctly on any display device - you need to use a test pattern (such as this Test Pattern ) and look for edge halos. When you see them you know you have applied too much sharpening with the monitor controls. That is the correct way to do it - but I dont know anyone (myself included) with a 2690 Wuxi monitor who has actually changed the default setting.

Its very easy to actually apply to mush monitor sharpening - which is a bad thing as it obscures fine detail.

Unless there is very good reason I would leave the 2690 at factory default. I find images properly sharpened on my 2690 looks ever so subtly softer on my 17" mac book pro - but its nothing to worry about.

Lagom site is interesting, fortunately, the NEC software takes care of all these adjustments. I would assume since the software is adjusting the gamma that it would also adjust sharpness somehow before doing this. Regardless, it's impossible to know how much sharpening to apply to an image for on screen viewing. I tend to do more for smaller images, less for larger ones and assume my monitor is better than most so will always look mushier on others screens.

[Josh-H]

Lagom site is interesting, fortunately, the NEC software takes care of all these adjustments. I would assume since the software is adjusting the gamma that it would also adjust sharpness somehow before doing this. Regardless, it's impossible to know how much sharpening to apply to an image for on screen viewing. I tend to do more for smaller images, less for larger ones and assume my monitor is better than most so will always look mushier on others screens.

The NEC software doesn't touch the sharpness setting - ever. The sharpness setting is a matter of personal taste - or rather, there is a correct way to set it with the appropriate test pattern. But.. my advice is leave it at factory default. If anything - factory is a little on the conservative side (even though it appears sharper than other monitors). Fairly extensive testing with various test patterns has led me to beleive the 2690 Wuxi can actually go a little higher with sharpening settings before showing halo's - however, its better to err on the side of caution and leave at factory default.

If I sharpen optimally for capture at 100% - then output sharpen for print in Lightroom at 'normal' I get tack sharp prints - so leave it at default and make sure you capture sharpen optimally.

BTW: You cannot use a RAW file to set any monitors sharpness setting - you need to use a proper test pattern and you need to know what you are looking for. The factory setting is very very good - I would want to see a strong argument for changing it before I mucked with it. I tried a large number of different test patterns over the last week (including patterns from Digital Video Essentials) - all of which led me to believe the factory setting is pretty optimal.