What Tablet to buy for viewing HQ photos for painting from

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RebekahCodlin

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#171053 3-Apr-2015 14:53

Hi there, I am a hyper realism portrait artist needing to buy a tablet for viewing HQ photos to paint from. The tablet needs to hold thousands of photos, show great detail and accurate natural colours, and have a bright and non reflective screen for use in a sunny art studio. The bigger the screen the better. I would like to spend as little as I have to (say under $400), but if this isn't going to get me what I need then I'm willing to pay more. Also an expandable memory would be great if possible. Are Ipads and Galaxy tabs the best of the best or are there others who have better screens for what I'm wanting it for? I'm not great with tech talk so I'm sorry if I describe things the wrong way! Thank you so much for your time and help!

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#1276756 3-Apr-2015 14:59

Ideally something like a Surface 3 or even better a surface Pro 3. But they're both out of your price range. The Pro 3 have a very good screen, Expandable memory and can run photoshop etc.

I wouldn't go for an iPad as the hassels of syncing them with iTunes if you want to add / remove photos frequently can be a pain.

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#1276759 3-Apr-2015 15:15

Perhaps take a look at the Samsung Tab S. OLED screen has amazing black. Might be a bit over saturated in colours. Maybe put some photos on a micro SD down to Noel Leeming or similar and see how they look.

Cheers, Matt.

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#1276761 3-Apr-2015 15:33

Surface 3 starts at $799 but includes expandable storage. You can also buy a pen that can let you draw/write on the tablet. 64GB storage out of the box and screen colours are really good.

Do whatever you want to do man.

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#1276822 3-Apr-2015 17:31

Possibly wait until beginning of May and get a Surface 3 instead of the Surface 3 Pro?

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#1276894 3-Apr-2015 20:39

I agree about surfaces/surface pro, but not the old surface (ARM/ Win RT).
If you want to get fussy about colour, then Win 8.1 (presumably upgrade to win 10 in a few months) should allow calibration with an external colorimeter (spyder etc). With android or iOS, at best it's going to be a kludge, regardless of screen quality alone.

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#1276907 3-Apr-2015 21:09

There's a lot in favour of Surface esp if you might run some desktop apps you have a full desktop platform. But I peeked at some benchmark results which showed far better skin tone reproduction on sgs10 tab. (Surface Pro tested but not Surface)

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#1276926 3-Apr-2015 21:44

Lots of information here: http://gizmodo.com/which-smartphone-and-tablet-displays-show-the-most-accu-1660275228

But to put it short: Best tablet in this test was the Microsoft Surface Pro 3.

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#1276927 3-Apr-2015 21:53

Just buy an iPad, the thing you are doing isn't that complicated and you will be happy with an iPad. Preferably get an iPad Air 2, but anything after the 3rd generation you will find suitable.

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#1276966 4-Apr-2015 00:26

macuser: Just buy an iPad, the thing you are doing isn't that complicated and you will be happy with an iPad. Preferably get an iPad Air 2, but anything after the 3rd generation you will find suitable.

The problem with the iPad is that for thread starters specific requirements, she needs accurate colour reproduction under $400. She might get an iPad Retina Mini in that price range (refurb?) but one of the criticisms of the iPad Retina Mini is the colour reproduction.

http://www.cnet.com/news/is-apples-ipad-mini-retina-display-problem-serious/

Not an issue with the iPad Air 2, but perhaps a little out of her price range.

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#1276967 4-Apr-2015 00:33

You can pick up an iPad Air 1 referb for just over the $500 mark. I would have thought Samsung OLED screens would not be giving a very accurate colour representation, they always seem way over saturated to me.

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#1289513 22-Apr-2015 16:15

Hi, as others have alluded to colour and accurate will be a problem for you. But it is a little more complicated than that.

Firstly I'd break your search into 2 groups,
1. colour reproduction
2. All the other requirements

#2 is fairly easy, as most transportable devices can do what you require and you will find one at an affordable value. But don't forget about backup, you should have atleast 2 copies of important stuff, stored on different media like a separate harddrive a copy of your work.

Colour reproduction, it's difficult to make this short. Your field could make you highly sensitive to visual and memory of colour. Displays of the mass market kind have a tendancy to be sales driven, make it perceptually brighter and over saturated to stand out from the crowd to sell the product.

Accurate displays tend to cost more. But the term accurate has a caveat for you as accurate is with reference to a standard like sRGB which is only a portion of your total visual system and more importantly does not include some pigments and dyes. If you twigged to what I just said, when you try and recreate a colour from a display you might achieve it or might not, infact arguably not is more likely.

Anywhoo, I've waffled on to much, at your price point concentrate on the media, transport, storage etc. If you want greater accuracy you have to factor in windows/apple OS that can support calibration software and tools which have a cost to them aswell. Xrite tools are in the range of your budget alone.

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#1289567 22-Apr-2015 16:49

I have a Surface 3 review unit here and with the digital pen it is a great tool for digital imaging... I can load Adobe Cloud o it if you want me to try something.

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#1289648 22-Apr-2015 18:26

Just thinking off the top of my head if one had no constraints and lots of funds, I would tend to lean towards a Surface Pro 3, or the new MacBook air 2 as an apple alternative. To both of these I would consider adding a secondary monitor that gives the fine-grained needed for true colour reproduction.

I am thinking that software such as Adobe Light room is probably an ideal software package for being able to display an image and calibrate it with regards to lighting (both image and environmental). I think from memory it has the ability to support different devices and platforms but one would need to check up on this.

I am not familiar with apple machines and the quality of their monitors from a personal usage point of view, so I would not be able to give any feedback on having an apple laptop and monitor combo, however, their stuff is worth consideration

The next option I would consider (but would take a look at first) if just photo-viewing is a requirement (rather than creating the realistic drawing) would be a tablet - The new IPad Air and Surface 3 are options - I have not used an android tablet enough to offer an opinion on those.

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#1289765 22-Apr-2015 20:41

http://www.displaymate.com/Surface_Pro_ShootOut_1.htm

Based on our extensive Lab tests and measurements on the display for the Surface Pro 3, Microsoft has produced an excellent professional grade high performance display for Windows. In fact, the Surface Pro 3 has one of the very best and most accurate displays available on any mobile platform and OS. It joins near the top of a small set of Tablets that have excellent Top Tier displays – ideal for professionals that need a very accurate high performance display for their work, and for consumers that want and appreciate a really nice and beautiful display.

The Surface Pro 3 delivers uniformly consistent all around Top Tier display performance: it is only the second display to ever to get all Green (Very Good to Excellent) Ratings in all test and measurement categories (except for Brightness variation with Viewing Angle, which is the case for all LCDs) since we started the Display Technology Shoot-Out article Series in 2006, an impressive achievement for a display. See the Shoot-Out Comparison Table for the detailed test and measurement results. Comparisons with the other leading Tablets are examined below.

Most Accurate Colors:

The Surface Pro 3 also has the most accurate on-screen colors of any Tablet or Smartphone display that we have ever measured for all standard consumer content (sRGB/Rec.709). That is another impressive achievement because everything in the display has to perform just right in order to produce very accurate colors – it is the single most challenging and important performance characteristic for a display. The Absolute Color Accuracy for the Surface Pro 3 is an Excellent 2.1 JNCD. See the Color Accuracy section and Color Accuracy Figures for measurements and details.

Color Accuracy is especially important for professional imaging applications when you must be sure of the on-screen image colors, when viewing photos from family and friends (because you often know exactly what they actually should look like), for some TV shows, movies, and sporting events with image content and colors that you are familiar with, and also for viewing online merchandise, so you have a very good idea of exactly what colors you are buying and are less likely to return them.

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#1289817 22-Apr-2015 22:25

http://www.displaymate.com/Surface_Pro_ShootOut_1.htm

It's a great review for the surface 3 pro. Two important points from the review:

1. Consider aspect ratio
2. Brightness

Aspect ratio might not matter much unless you tend to paint from perfectly framed 4/3 shots but good to consider any impact on total effective resolution to avoid surprises.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_(image)

Brightness is way less than the Samsung so less effective for outdoor or bright light use. There may have been something about reflectivity as well. I did not spot a skin tone comparison in there at all but may have missed it.

But remember that all these things are relative and they are all excellent machines and screens compared to even the best a few years ago.

Can't go wrong really. How is the hunt going?

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