Philly's University of the Arts Outfits Digital Imaging Lab with NEC Displays

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 06/10/09

The University of the Arts in Philadelphia has outfitted a new digital imaging lab with NEC MultiSync 90 Series desktop monitors, built for professionals in the visual arts. The 2,300-student university in Philadelphia is dedicated to the visual, performance, and communication arts.

The lab was designed by Jeannie Pearce, an adjunct professor and photographer, who developed the first digital imaging class required for photography majors in 1991. Her latest endeavor includes a facility with 13 student work areas, an instructor's work station, and a printing "depot."

Among the displays in use are the 26-inch NEC MultiSync LCD2690WUXi, 30-inch NEC MultiSync LCD3090WQXi, and 21-inch NEC MultiSync LCD2180WG-LED. The 30-inch displays were first introduced by the company in January 2008.

The NEC hardware was recommended by Pearce's colleague, Associate Professor Harris Fogel. "We wanted to create something unique for students to inspire them and stoke their imaginations," Fogel said. "This new lab offers a wonderful environment for learning, exploring, and pushing the limits of digital imaging. NEC's reputation for delivering monitors with accurate, easy-to-use calibration, and consistent light output insures that our students are working with the high-end tools they'll be using as photographers, animators, fine-art printers, digital imaging specialists, and filmmakers."

Fogel added: "We also love using NEC ECO Mode to save energy in the lab and reduce our carbon footprint. NEC's displays are superb tools for us to teach and work with."

The MultiSync 90 Series displays include ColorComp, which digitally compensates individual pixels for slight variations in the white and color uniformity levels of the displays, to achieve greater image accuracy; X-Light Pro technology, which allows brightness and color settings to be held constant over the life of the displays; and 12-bit internal lookup tables (LUT), which allow precise adjustments to be made to the displays' tone response curves without reducing the number of displayable colors.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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