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MacBook Pro, Thousands of Colors

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Re: MacBook Pro, Thousands of Colors

#61

Post by [deleted] »

tedunangst wrote: post #42
TrevorJ wrote: post #6

Surprising hardware spec choice given the the market penetration Apple has in the design profession.

Is there an output device other than a "pro" monitor with the same range? If the consumers of your work don't have 8 bit displays, how will they know the difference? It sounds like he was happy with it until he took it apart. If you only discover it's not good enough after checking the part number, I think maybe it is good enough. Anyway, is there a picture somewhere I can download that will show me how awful my shit…

[deleted]

Re: MacBook Pro, Thousands of Colors

#62

Post by philwelch »

lallysingh wrote: post #58
axod wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can the human eye seriously tell the difference? I'd be interested in some stats...

The eye can see lots more than 262,144 colors. What's the number, 10 mil? Quick googling gave varying results, depending on what's counted as a distinct color (e.g. differences in luminance).

Yes but a 6 bit display accomplishes millions of colors through dithering, and your answer says nothing about whether that kind of dithering could fool the eye.

Since all colors on a LCD screen are dithered between red, green, and blue anyway, and the human eye has no trouble handling that, the question is whether a higher level dithering would be similarly undetectable.

Re: MacBook Pro, Thousands of Colors

#63

Post by joshwa »

fortybillion wrote: post #51
lutorm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Color accuracy isn't so much color resolution. That's like the difference between precision and accuracy, you can have something accurate with poor precision, and vice versa.

When dealing with digital content, isn't accuracy what you're looking for? Properly calibrating a display would take care of the precision. (Unless I'm confused here, which is entirely possible.)

Situations when you need all 8 bits of color resolution:

-- performing color matching against a sample - fabric, print, etc -- soft-proofing for print output (spot colors) -- when performing any color/contrast adjustments on photographs or art that have fine color/value gradients. A common example is a grey sweep backdrop--zoom in past a certain point and you can see visible banding

That said, anyone doing prepress on a laptop is stupid. Get thee to a color booth and a 10-bit LUT Eizo (or even better to your cache of discontinued Sony Artisans you keep in a closet somewhere and replace as they age).

Re: MacBook Pro, Thousands of Colors

#64

Post by anigbrowl »

jimboyoungblood wrote: post #49
SwellJoe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professionals in any creative industry need to be able to see or hear exactly what they are actually creating. This is why audio monitors for recording studios cost a lot, and don't "sound as good" to the untrained ear. Accuracy is what you are paying for. If it is inaccurate in any one direction, the potential for problems during reproduction on client machines (which could be inaccurate in the other direction; doub…

I don't buy the accuracy argument for a second. By working only on the most expensive, rarified equipment, the only thing you're ensuring is that your own experience will be drastically different from 99.9% of end users. Imagine if the guy responsible for developing new recipes for McDonalds insists that his "creative work" only be done with organic Niman ranch beef.

Yes, your experience will be different from that of most end users. But it will be minimally biased - you won't be baking in the settings that sound good on one set of cheap speakers but which would sound like total ass on other ones where cost has been saved in other ways.

For example, many hifi and computer speakers come with some kind of bass boost. If I edit something using speakers like that there will be little or no bass on speakers which don't have that 'feature'. Or if I go in the other direction and finish on speakers that sound rather thin, the result will be an unmerciful honking noise on anything with a bass boost. Using a pair of (moderately) expensive speakers means I can split the difference, and know that while it will never sound as good as I'd like on consumer speakers, it will never sound too awful either.

If you still don't think it matters, watch some short films or videos on YouTube. Then take even a modest Hollywood movie and notice how vastly, enormously better it sounds. Obsessing over sound and color seems trivial to those who don't have to work on content, but the very fact that most people take these things for granted is what fuels that obsession: because people are so sensitive they notice very quickly if the quality is off, even if they can't articulate why.

Re: MacBook Pro, Thousands of Colors

#65

Post by wenbert »

padmapper wrote: post #16
eli wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. They don't owe you anything beyond a refund.

I'm not sure about this - if false advertising (millions of colors) caused him to sell his old laptop with a better screen, then he's still worse off, as a result of Apple's actions. Then again, I think the whole MBP line has had 6 bit displays for their whole history, so I'm not sure why he's complaining now.

I thought that the 13" inch Macbook Pro had the 6 bit display while the others had 8 bit :-/

If the entire MBP line has 6 bit displays, then why complain?

I am a bit concerned of Apple's false advertising though. So my 2006-ish 17 Macbook Pro is not able to display millions of colors? That is sad...

Re: MacBook Pro, Thousands of Colors

#66

Post by jonknee »

jm4 wrote: post #25
jonknee wrote: post #8

Alternate headline choice: Man with ability to research decides not to and is disappointed in purchase but offered full refund

That's not entirely fair. The specific information he was looking for is not made available to the public by Apple. He was only able to find the information after getting the model number for the display and checking with the vendor. There was no way of knowing exactly which display was used without access to a MacBook Pro because that's not information made public by Apple, either. It's an awfully roundabout way of…

He seemed to have very specific requirements, doing a bit of research isn't out of the question. I knew about the color situation (and don't care!), it has been well publicized.

A class action law suit about this issue was filed last year, it's not exactly breaking news.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=11348

Re: MacBook Pro, Thousands of Colors

#67

Post by lutorm »

fortybillion wrote: post #51
lutorm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Color accuracy isn't so much color resolution. That's like the difference between precision and accuracy, you can have something accurate with poor precision, and vice versa.

When dealing with digital content, isn't accuracy what you're looking for? Properly calibrating a display would take care of the precision. (Unless I'm confused here, which is entirely possible.)

Calibrating the display will give you accuracy, ie the colors match those in real life. It doesn't help with precision, which is how narrow the distribution is. (That said, we're not strictly talking about that here, since there's no randomness in the colors, just an inability to reproduce small enough changes.)

But I agree with the other comment, on a laptop I care more about things looking nice, ie no dither or banding, rather than about accurate color reproduction.

Re: MacBook Pro, Thousands of Colors

#68

Post by potatolicious »

philwelch wrote: post #62
lallysingh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The eye can see lots more than 262,144 colors. What's the number, 10 mil? Quick googling gave varying results, depending on what's counted as a distinct color (e.g. differences in luminance).

Yes but a 6 bit display accomplishes millions of colors through dithering, and your answer says nothing about whether that kind of dithering could fool the eye. Since all colors on a LCD screen are dithered between red, green, and blue anyway, and the human eye has no trouble handling that , the question is whether a higher level dithering would be similarly undetectable.

I'm no color expert but even I could tell the terrible banding issues with gradients on a MacBook's screen. It's extremely apparent as soon as you throw a smooth gradient on screen.

Re: MacBook Pro, Thousands of Colors

#69

Post by potatolicious »

anigbrowl wrote: post #64
jimboyoungblood wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy the accuracy argument for a second. By working only on the most expensive, rarified equipment, the only thing you're ensuring is that your own experience will be drastically different from 99.9% of end users. Imagine if the guy responsible for developing new recipes for McDonalds insists that his "creative work" only be done with organic Niman ranch beef.

Yes, your experience will be different from that of most end users. But it will be minimally biased - you won't be baking in the settings that sound good on one set of cheap speakers but which would sound like total ass on other ones where cost has been saved in other ways. For example, many hifi and computer speakers come with some kind of bass boost. If I edit something using speakers like that there will be little…

Also, cheap components have a ridiculous degree of variance. As a designer you need your work to look/sound the same on all of the tools you use. That shade of blue should not look blue-er on one monitor in your studio.

Re: MacBook Pro, Thousands of Colors

#70

Post by JimmyL »

jm4 wrote: post #25
jonknee wrote: post #8

Alternate headline choice: Man with ability to research decides not to and is disappointed in purchase but offered full refund

That's not entirely fair. The specific information he was looking for is not made available to the public by Apple. He was only able to find the information after getting the model number for the display and checking with the vendor. There was no way of knowing exactly which display was used without access to a MacBook Pro because that's not information made public by Apple, either. It's an awfully roundabout way of…

>>It's called a MacBook Pro and is marketed at more demanding users, i.e. professionals

Which "professionals"? 8bit color is important to pretty much one professional group: graphic artists/designers (maybe two, if you include people doing video work). For the vast majority of people - "professional" or otherwise - 6bit vs. 8bit color doesn't matter. It looks good, it's fast, it runs what they want. Those are the things that matter.

As a developer, I consider myself a "professional", and my life is fine with 6bit color. My roommate is a screenwriting "professional" and they're fine with 6bit color. Presumably an 8bit color display would cost more, and hence would reduce the number of people who could afford the machine, at the expense of pleasing one small market segment.

Bottom line is that if a feature (any feature) was important enough for me that it would make or break my decision to buy the underlying system, I'd explicitly confirm its existence (in a way more rigorous than "millions and millions", which sounds like marketing-speak), and I'd get reviews from my peers who would have the same interests. In this case, the author did neither.

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