Painting from a Monitor instead of a Print

[Garth Herrick]

Hi Michael,

Congratulations on your gorgeous new monitor! I think you made an excellent choice.

I have been painting from a monitor for four years. I got my Apple Studio Display two years ago which was a tremendous improvement over my old CRT monitor. I personally rate Apple Studio Displays as the best available, especially the new generation like your's. Since my monitor is of the previous generation, it is only compatible with a Macintosh computer.

Since mine doesn't tilt like yours, and I needed it to tilt, my solution was to attach it to a very heavy duty 1950's movie camera tripod, which is quite sturdy and portable. A great benefit is that I can adjust the height of the monitor from 3 feet (1 meter) to 8.5 feet (2.55 meters). This enables me to always have the monitor at a comfortable viewing height.

Actually I am returning to the use of reference prints in conjunction with the monitor. I can do a lot of work from the print and save the monitor from overuse. The prints are calibrated to the exact values I intend to use.

Pictured below is my setup on the tripod.

Allan: The round disk is my gray reference scale calibrated to Photoshop Lab Color. This is my way around the problem you just described.

Michael: As you can see, I have used your olive green studio paint recipe (but I forgot which thread it was that you mentioned it). Thanks for the tip! Also we can visually compare the Photoshop interfaces in both PC (in your photo above) and Mac (in my photo).

Garth