GETTING THE picture hasn't always been as easy as it should be for imaging pros who use expensive color monitors. The colors you see on your monitor often aren't what you see in your output, and calibration can be a hit-or-miss proposition. Until now, that is. The display experts at Radius have come up with two new monitors that are sure to win applause, especially from prepress and Photoshop users. The Eddy Award-winning PressView 17 SR features top-notch color and unprecedented sharpness and brightness for a 17-inch monitor. The PressView 21 SR is the latest iteration of Radius' top-of-the-line 21-inch monitors. What makes each monitor stand out -- in addition to its image quality -- is Radius' new software, which provides the most sophisticated level of control over a display you can find, bar none.
At $2,499 for the PressView 17 SR and $3,999 for the PressView 21 SR, Radius' new monitors are pricey. But after we saw the quality of the image (especially impressive on the 17-inch monitor) and put the control software through its paces, we concluded that if you make your living using Photoshop to prepare press-ready color files, the new monitors are worth every penny.
Capable of displaying resolutions of up to 1,600 x 1,200 pixels, each system uses a specially manufactured premium aperture-grille monitor from Mitsubishi. Radius houses the monitors in neutral-gray cases and equips them with light-shielding hoods to minimize reflection. You even get a special black "stealth" robe to wear while using the monitors, which eliminates reflections from your clothing. In addition to the software, each monitor comes with its own display calibrator.
There's much more to setting up the new PressView monitors than simply connecting a video cable. For starters, you need to connect a cable between your Mac's serial port and the monitor, to enable the Radius PressView application to control the display. You also have to attach the ProSense calibrator to your ADB chain -- the unit has two ports and a short cable, so you can add it in-line with other devices.
Then there's the software. The PressView application lets you adjust the monitor by controlling size, position, convergence, pincushion, tilt, moire, and more, while the ColorSentry software runs in the background and makes sure all saved settings remain correct when you change resolution or shut down. The PressView-application controls are the most sophisticated we've seen for any software-controlled monitor. However, even experienced users will need some time to master them. Fortunately, the software comes with good Apple Guide support to help you learn the controls.
You can use the ProSense calibrator and accompanying software to adjust the monitor's red, green, and blue output levels as well as the color tables in your graphics card's or built-in video circuitry's DAC (digital-to-analog converter). Worth noting is that the ProSense software is compatible with Radius graphics cards that feature 30-bit DACs, such as those in the Radius Thunder 30 family. That means you can calibrate the white point and gamma of your PressView display without losing any of the available colors.
Another big plus for color-conscious users is ProSense's support of all the popular color-management systems, including Apple's ColorSync II, EFI's EfiColor, Kodak's KCMS, and Agfa's FotoFlow. ProSense also comes with Radius' ColorMatch Photoshop separation tables for creating a monitor profile, which ensures that files are accurately translated from the CMYK to the RGB color space. Radius provides ColorMatch separation tables for SWOP coated 3M Matchprint, SWOP coated DuPont proof, Euroscale coated 3M Matchprint, and Toyo coated press output. The combination of ProSense's color-management support and the ColorMatch separation tables goes a long way toward delivering print-to-display color matching, especially for Photoshop users.
By the time this review appears, Radius will offer a ProSense upgrade with a "Teach and Learn" feature, which will let you measure the current calibration settings of your PressView display, save them to a file, and then use that file with another Press-View monitor to achieve the same display performance.
During our setup of the PressView 17 SR, we found the monitor's image positioning to be good and its geometry excellent, right out of the box. To calibrate the monitor, we launched ProSense, set a white point of D50 (the print-proofing standard) and a gamma of 1.0 to get the best match for our monitor-testing gear (a gamma of 1.8 is recommended for print proofing), and clicked on the Calibrate button. The entire process from launch, including the automatic calibration-accuracy measurements, took less than two minutes.
When you quit the ProSense application, your monitor's calibration settings are written to the color-management system you've specified and a Photoshop monitor profile is created, if you've selected that option. Then you'll probably want to go back to the PressView application and tweak the red, green, and blue levels to get the monitor's white point to exactly match your paper stock as it appears under your lighting conditions.
The PressView manuals do an OK job of explaining the calibration process, and they provide a few helpful hints. We found ourselves referring to them often. Unfortunately, some of the instructions aren't quite complete. For example, the manual tells you how to start using your monitor profile in Photoshop, but it neglects to mention that you must first quit the ProSense application to save the file and make it available to Photoshop.
To get an objective view of how the new PressView monitors compare to others in their class, we ran the MacUser Labs standard suite of monitor tests. Using our Power Mac 7100's built-in VRAM-based graphics, we tested the 17-inch monitor at 832 x 624 pixels and the 21-inch at 1,152 x 870 pixels.
In our MTF (modulation-transfer function) sharpness test, the 17-inch monitor achieved a very impressive score of 70-percent contrast between single-pixel white and black lines (a score of 50 percent is acceptable). The 21-inch monitor achieved a score of 61 percent -- a very good showing, but not as impressive as the 17-inch monitor's.
When calibrated, each monitor had a brightness reading that was lower than that of other monitors we've tested. However, that's by design -- because they're less bright, they can achieve higher-quality color matching. If you disable calibration, the PressView monitors are very bright.
In our color-tracking tests, which measure how accurately the monitor displays subtle shades of gray, the 17-inch monitor achieved an excellent 99-percent accuracy (a score above 90 percent is considered acceptable) and the 21 SR scored 95 percent. In our misconvergence test, which measures how well a monitor's red, green, and blue beams align with each other, the 17-inch monitor once again rated an excellent and the 21-inch monitor rated a very good.
Although the PressView 17 SR is a top-notch performer, it may not be for everyone. At a 1,600-x-1,200-pixel resolution, the image displays at about 136 pixels per inch, or about twice the resolution of a standard Mac monitor. At this resolution, type is downright tiny, so if you frequently work with type in page-layout programs, the 21-inch display may be a better choice. However, for power Photoshop users on a budget or with limited work space, the 17-inch monitor is a great deal. At an 832-x-624-pixel resolution, it's capable of displaying razor-sharp WYSIWYG images.
The Bottom Line
Billed as Color Reference Display Systems, the Radius PressView 17 SR and 21 SR each offer obvious advantages to prepress users who require the ultimate in color accuracy and consistency between display image and printed output. Although it takes some time to master the monitors' sophisticated software controls, the results are well worth the effort. Our only caveat is this: Once you get used to the exceptional display quality of the PressView systems, you'll have a hard time looking at other monitors. Compared to the PressView monitors, they simply look, well, wrong. / Jeff Pittelkau
Radius PressView 17 SR
Rating: Very Good/Outstanding (4.5 of 5 mice)
Price: $2,499 (list).
Pros: Exceptional image quality. Excellent color calibration. Powerful software controls. Support for all popular color-management systems. Radius ColorMatch separation tables for on-screen print proofing.
Cons: Steep learning curve for software controls. Some inaccuracies in manual.
Company: Radius, Sunnyvale, CA; 800-227-2795 or 408-541-6100.
Radius PressView 21 SR
Rating: Very Good (4 of 5 mice)
Price: $3,999 (list).
Pros: Very good image quality. Excellent color calibration. Powerful software controls. Support for all popular color-management systems. Radius ColorMatch separation tables for on-screen print proofing.
Cons: Steep learning curve for software controls. Some inaccuracies in manual.
The PressView application that comes with the PressView 17 SR and 21 SR monitors from Radius offers an unprecedented level of control over the display. But the flip side of the controls' sophistication is their steep learning curve. Fortunately, there's Apple Guide support to help you master the software.
