[Brian Tao]

[Walter Soyka] “I’d argue that your requirements are really deceptively complex.”

The frustrating part is that most of that complex work has already been solved. Figuring out how to display to a second monitor of a different size/orientation/depth/profile has been done. “N” has been solved. Now all I want is “N+1”. I suspect that the combination of a triple-headed display and colour-critical photo presentation makes it a corner case. Among the general computing public, how many even run a dual-monitor setup? 10%? I imagine that three displays would be on the order of 0.1%, if you don’t look into niche markets. Not enough demand for the authors of software aimed at consumers to really take note.

[Walter Soyka] “That’s a really good idea — and you can’t beat the price!”

It feels ugly to me, but it might do the trick! I’ll try approaching the developers of PhotoMechanic, BreezeBrowser, FastStone, XnView, Irfanview, etc. to see if they have any comments on how difficult it would be to add this functionality to their software.

[Brian Tao]

Hi, Walter! Having two separate laptops could be a workaround, but this particular Thinkpad T420 has the hardware to drive two external displays in addition to its own LCD. The ideal situation would be to have everything contained in one laptop. As I mentioned in my previous post, the requirements are extremely simple. If I go the dual laptop route, I know the client would be fine with having the operator simply tap the spacebar on both laptops at the same time! 😉

Another compromise would be to have Windows itself configured to mirror the two external displays. Since the NEC PA271W monitor is the colour-critical one, the desktop settings would be set to 2560×1440, with the appropriate colour calibration profile. It would then be up to the projector to take the 2560×1440 signal and scale it down to 1024×768 (or 1024×576 in this case). However, that may not work as not all projectors will even accept such a high-resolution signal. Nor will it work when the NEC monitor is rotated into portrait orientation, while the projector remains in landscape mode.

A third method would be to simply launch two instances of any colour-managed image viewer (e.g., XnView), drag each window to their respective monitors, toggle them to full-screen, and advance the image in each viewer separately. I could probably write something in AutoHotKey to allow the operator to control both instances entirely with single keypresses. Sort of a Macgyver chewing-gum-and-wire solution, but it would meet the client’s needs…

[Brian Tao]

Thanks for the detailed reply, Thomas!

I don’t think there is much budget left now, since the original assumption was that software already owned by the organization (mostly Adobe products) that supported dual monitors would logically also support three or more monitors. For instance, Adobe Lightroom can display the thumbnail library view on one monitor, with a full-screen, colour-corrected image on a second monitor. However, it does not scale beyond two displays. Similarly, one can download freeware like FastStone Image Viewer that allows the operator to work from the laptop’s main display, while showing the current image on a secondary display. But again, it has no facility for selecting a third display.

I’ve looked into the aforementioned presentation suites, and they are all vastly overkill for this organization’s requirements. Literally, they just need to be able to hit the space bar to display the next JPEG or TIFF image in the folder. That’s it. Software is plentiful that supports dual monitors, but none that I can find for three or more monitors. So close, yet so far!