{"id":1441,"date":"2011-01-08T15:24:22","date_gmt":"2011-01-08T14:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/?p=1441"},"modified":"2012-12-23T15:26:09","modified_gmt":"2012-12-23T14:26:09","slug":"dell-u2711-macbook-pro-for-web-or-ui-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/archives\/2011\/01\/08\/dell-u2711-macbook-pro-for-web-or-ui-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Dell U2711 + MacBook Pro for web or UI design"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re a print designer or a photographer, this post is probably not very useful, but stick around and see if provided links can help.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dell U2711<\/a> is significantly cheaper here in Croatia than 27-inch LED Cinema Display<\/a>. It\u2019s a smart alternative, especially if you don\u2019t like glossy screens. <\/p>\n

But are there any caveats?<\/p>\n

Color-spaces for web design<\/h2>\n

Internet is all in sRGB<\/a><\/strong>, i.e. a relatively small color-space<\/a>. This standard was invented by Microsoft and HP back in the days, to create a common denominator for consumer grade systems and it\u2019s a default for Windows PCs. <\/p>\n

I found this article a good starting point to understand differences between various color-spaces: Setting a Work Color Space in Digital Photo Professional<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you are designing for the web exclusivelly, it\u2019s best to work in sRGB. Learn how to set up Color Management<\/a> for web design.<\/p>\n

Oversaturated colors issue<\/h2>\n

Macs output colors in Apple RGB, so if a monitor can handle it, it will display colors more vivid, and somewhat truer to the real colors.<\/p>\n

Apple\u2019s displays do not support wide-gamut<\/a> color space, but probably only Apple RGB. At the time of this writing I haven\u2019t found exact technical specs. <\/p>\n

Apple displays are calibrated to Apple RGB color space and for an average PC user the picture on Apple devices is richer in colors than they are used to. Apple\u2019s products are also evenly calibrated to keep consistent experience across platforms, but that also gives you troubles once you pair an Apple product with a hardware from other manufacturers.<\/p>\n

Dell U2711 is a wide-gamut monitor, which means out-of-the-box colors will look too saturated than you probably used to<\/a> using your laptop\u2019s display or regular (lower-gammut) LCDs.<\/p>\n

The U2711 has quite a lot OSD controls, which was in my case miss-leading. There\u2019s an option to set gamma for a PC or for a Mac and also some handy color-space presets, but as you will see, you don\u2019t need to mess around with those settings.<\/p>\n

In Snow Leopard, default gamma is 2.2 (like the rest of the World) and not 1.8 like in Leopard (read how to make your display\u2019s gamma in Leopard match Snow Leopard<\/a>). So, selecting Mac option for the monitor gamma would create over-saturated picture. In addition, if you tried different OSD presets, you\u2019d probably notice that nothing changed, even though you were switching between sRGB and Adobe RGB color space which should \u2014 at least in theory \u2014 render significantly different results.<\/p>\n

To make Dell U2711 display proper sRGB colors<\/strong>, set gamma back to PC and choose sRGB from the presets menu. This gives you the most accurate colors for web design and general use via built-in OSD.<\/p>\n

At this point you might want to calibrate your display with OS X calibration software under System Preferences – Displays – Color – Calibrate. In my case Dell\u2019s default .icc profile was a little greenish (Dell\u2019s profile was already in there when MacBook Pro detected the new display). I was not happy with the results, so I calibrated mine using Spyder3Pro<\/a>. Download .icc profile<\/a> and see if this suits your particular display.<\/p>\n

The created profile is more or less accurate. Spyder3Pro is a calibration tool for photographers and from what I learned on the internet forums not very accurate with spot colors, so I\u2019m interested to give ColorMunki Design<\/a> a try sometimes in the future, just to make sure this is true (Belgian graphic and web designer Veerle Pieters wrote a ColorMunki review<\/a> back in 2009.).<\/p>\n

Connectivity<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m still working on a MacBook Pro with DVI port, so it was a breeze for me to connect the display with included Dual-Link DVI cable.<\/p>\n

Newer Apple laptops are being shipped with Mini DisplayPort, which means you\u2019ll have to buy either Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapter<\/strong> or Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable<\/strong> (Dual-Link DVI and DisplayPort cables are included with the monitor). However, I didn\u2019t try them, so I suggest you investigate more about Dell U2711 + MacBook Mini DisplayPort<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The former is available in Apple Store, but costs $99 or $75 in OWC<\/a>, and the later is $25 in OWC store<\/a> (I\u2019m not affiliated with OWC, but they ship items almost anywhere in the World). A cable is usually a better option than an adapter, but it might not suit your particular setup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re a print designer or a photographer, this post is probably not very useful, but stick around and see if provided links can help. Dell U2711 is significantly cheaper here in Croatia than 27-inch LED Cinema Display. It\u2019s a smart alternative, especially if you don\u2019t like glossy screens. But are there any caveats? Color-spaces […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,17],"tags":[26,30,64,65,44],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}