MacBook Pro with Retina display nearly perfect for photography
Apple’s MacBook Pro with Retina display was expected to be a hit with professional users — especially photographers. It appears that it’s living up to the hype.
ZDNet recently profiled photographer David Tobie and his evaluation of the ultra-sharp display on the new MacBook Pro, which was released last month.
In general, the MacBook Pro hasn’t quite lived up to its full potential quite yet, as it’s still waiting on a bevy of important apps to update and take advantage of the millions of additional pixels. However, the screen is absolutely superb.
The photographer writes that the retina gamut is “impressive,” and very close to sRGB, and much improved over the previous MacBook Pro screen.
“When combined with its other features, the Retina makes a big difference for photography.”
Not only does the new MacBook Pro feature an ultra-sharp Retina display, it also is completely redesigned with a much thinner body. That was made possible for solid-state flash drives, which is considerably faster than traditional spinning hard drives.
With more pixels and more detail, photography applications like Adobe Photoshop (which hasn’t released it’s Retina update yet) and Aperture (which has), will eventually bring even more photo editing control to users.
To get the most accurate colors, calibrating your Retina display is a must, but don’t worry — it’s quite easy.
“The Retina display is a good citizen, allowing accurate readings of colors for gray balancing, and accurate readings of luminance for tone response mapping,” ZDNet writes. “So calibration is very effective on the Retina display, and the results ‘before and after’ demo in the Spyder4 software will show that the uncalibrated state is not bad, but that the calibrated state is indeed better, both in terms of white balance, and densities in images.”
If you’re a photographer waiting to get your hands on the new Retina MacBook Pro, you may have to wait a few weeks. Estimated ship times are still three to four weeks, but if you’re a diehard photographer who wants the best — I’m sure it’s worth the wait.
July 9th, 2012
I know that many of my friends who are still waiting for their Retina MacBook Pro are looking forward to gaming on it. It makes sense with all those pixels that they would have a better screen to play on.