Monitors for the photographer: models with accurate color reproduction | Articles | Computer technology

Whether you’re a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er or an ama­teur, it’s always impor­tant that your shots look their best. The first step to this is edit­ing pho­tos on a mon­i­tor with accu­rate col­ors. There is noth­ing worse than send­ing pic­tures to a print­er or a client and find­ing out that the col­ors on them are wrong because your mon­i­tor can­not dis­play them cor­rect­ly.

We will talk about mon­i­tor mod­els that are well suit­ed for pho­to edit­ing in dif­fer­ent price cat­e­gories.

A cal­i­brat­ed mon­i­tor with suf­fi­cient col­or gamut is essen­tial for cor­rect col­or grad­ing. Source: topmonitorov.ru

Read also:

How to cal­i­brate the mon­i­tor and which cal­i­bra­tor to choose for this

Bud­get Mon­i­tors for the Pho­tog­ra­ph­er
Mon­i­tors for a pho­tog­ra­ph­er on an aver­age bud­get
The Best Mon­i­tors for a Pho­tog­ra­ph­er
Com­par­i­son table of mon­i­tors
Con­clu­sion

Budget Monitors for the Photographer

Xiaomi Mi Desktop Monitor 1C 23.8″

Res­o­lu­tion 1920x1080 is the most com­mon among bud­get mod­els. With a diag­o­nal of 23.8 inch­es, the mon­i­tor does not take up much space on the table. Source: gadgetren.com

Xiao­mi Mi Desk­top Mon­i­tor 1C is an ele­gant mon­i­tor with good col­or repro­duc­tion and bright­ness.

The screen has a mat­te fin­ish that reduces glare for bet­ter view­ing in bright light.

Despite the low price, the mon­i­tor is very thin — only 7.3 mil­lime­ters. True, in the low­er part, where the inter­nal com­po­nents are locat­ed, the thick­ness is greater.

Advantages of Xiaomi Mi Desktop Monitor 1C:

• pre­mi­um min­i­mal­is­tic design;
• thin stand.

Disadvantages of Xiaomi Mi Desktop Monitor 1C:

• no DVI con­nec­tor;
• no VESA mount for brack­ets.

AOC 27″ 27B1H

The AOC 27B1H is one of the most afford­able 27-inch mon­i­tors yet has a three-sided bezel-less design. Source: nix.ru

The man­u­fac­tur­er AOC, although not as well known as Xiao­mi, spe­cial­izes in the pro­duc­tion of mon­i­tors and has estab­lished itself well in this area around the world.

The res­o­lu­tion of the mon­i­tor is 1920x1080, for this diag­o­nal it can be con­sid­ered low. There­fore, the pix­el den­si­ty is low, the image when viewed up close will be quite grainy. If you need to, for exam­ple, often work with text, the mon­i­tor does not fit well.

Built-in speak­ers allow you to remove the speak­ers from your com­put­er desk while still enjoy­ing the sound of your work.

The AOC 27B1H fea­tures Flick­er-Free Tech­nol­o­gy to reduce flick­er­ing and Low Blue Light Tech­nol­o­gy to block harm­ful blue rays with­out com­pro­mis­ing col­or repro­duc­tion. These tech­nolo­gies reduce eye fatigue while work­ing and pro­tect your eye­sight.

Advantages of AOC 27B1H:

• large diag­o­nal for its price cat­e­go­ry;
• built-in speak­ers;
• three-sided frame­less design;
• tech­nolo­gies that reduce eye strain.

Disadvantages of AOC 27B1H:

• 1920x1080 res­o­lu­tion, small for this diag­o­nal.

Philips 23.8″ 241V8LA

Bud­get mon­i­tors can be used not only for work, but also for games. Source: irecommend.ru

Philips 241V8LA dif­fers from pre­vi­ous mon­i­tors in the tech­nol­o­gy by which the screen works. It uses the so-called VA matrix, the advan­tage of which is high con­trast due to deep blacks. This makes the pic­ture more vivid, and also sig­nif­i­cant­ly improves the expres­sive­ness of dark scenes in pho­tos and videos, espe­cial­ly when viewed in the dark.

Benefits of Philips 241V8LA:

• deep black col­or;
• high con­trast;
• refresh rate 75 Hz;
• good, accord­ing to reviews, work­man­ship for its price.

Disadvantages of Philips 241V8LA:

• worse than IPS, view­ing angles.

Monitors for a photographer on an average budget

Monitor AOC 27″ U27P2

If in mon­i­tors of the bud­get cat­e­go­ry the choice of res­o­lu­tion was uncon­test­ed — 1920x1080, then this mod­el uses 4K res­o­lu­tion. There­fore, the 27-inch AOC U27P2 has four times as many pix­els on the screen. That is, with a 100% view­ing of pho­tos, you will already see four times more infor­ma­tion com­pared to pre­vi­ous mod­els.

The mon­i­tor hous­ing is made of black mat­te plas­tic, in a sim­ple style. Source: zoneofgames.ru

The AOC U27P2 also has the abil­i­ty to rotate 180 degrees rel­a­tive to the table, so it is suit­able not only for pho­tog­ra­phers, but also for type­set­ting.

Advantages of AOC U27P2:

• high res­o­lu­tion and pix­el den­si­ty;
• excel­lent ergonom­ics;
• built-in speak­ers and USB hub.

Dis­ad­van­tages of AOC U27P2:

• small col­or gamut.

LG 27″ 27UP650‑W

The mon­i­tor has an orig­i­nal design with a cres­cent-shaped sil­ver stand. Source: rtings.com

The advan­tage of the LG 27UP650‑W is the extend­ed col­or gamut. There is already a matrix with a cov­er­age of 95% DCI-P3, which is much wider than con­ven­tion­al sRGB and is usu­al­ly used in video pro­cess­ing. Thus, the mon­i­tor is well suit­ed for video­g­ra­phers.

This mod­el sup­ports HDR tech­nol­o­gy, thanks to which the pic­ture when view­ing pho­tos and videos will look more con­trast. You can not only work with it, but also sim­ply get more plea­sure when view­ing var­i­ous con­tent.

Advantages of LG 27UP650‑W:

• 95% DCI-P3 col­or gamut;
• 4K res­o­lu­tion and HDR for mul­ti­me­dia fea­tures;
• Height, tilt angle and screen ori­en­ta­tion are adjustable.

Disadvantages of LG 27UP650‑W:

• low illu­mi­na­tion uni­for­mi­ty on a white field.

The Best Monitors for a Photographer

Apple Studio Display

The design and build qual­i­ty of the Apple mon­i­tor is top notch. Source: rtings.com

If you’re using a Mac­Book or Mac Mini, the best mon­i­tor for pho­to edit­ing is the Apple Stu­dio Dis­play.

Stu­dio Dis­play has a very accu­rate sRGB mode that can only be used with a macOS device. Thanks to this, the mon­i­tor does not require cal­i­bra­tion and is ready for use imme­di­ate­ly after con­nec­tion.

Apple Stu­dio Dis­play ful­ly cov­ers the sRGB and DCI-P3 col­or spaces, that is, it sup­ports all the col­ors need­ed to work with dig­i­tal pho­to and video con­tent.

The mon­i­tor has a res­o­lu­tion of 5K, or 5120x2880. There­fore, there is excel­lent clar­i­ty when work­ing with text, graph­ics and pho­tographs.

Apple is try­ing to pro­vide users with every­thing they need right out of the box, so the mon­i­tor can be found with a built-in web­cam, three noise-can­cel­ing micro­phones and speak­ers.

Benefits of Apple Studio Display:

• excel­lent res­o­lu­tion and col­or repro­duc­tion;
• high bright­ness and anti-reflec­tive coat­ing;
• wide view­ing angles.

Disadvantages of Apple Studio Display:

• there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty to rotate to por­trait posi­tion;
• no HDR sup­port;
• high price and spe­cial­iza­tion for the Apple ecosys­tem.

ASUS ProArt PA27AC

The ASUS ProArt PA27AC is a 27″ Ultra HD 2K (1440p) mon­i­tor designed for pho­to and video edit­ing.

The mon­i­tor has a four-sided frame­less design, after which oth­er mod­els may seem archa­ic. Source: gadgetmtech.com

ASUS has its own ASUS ProArt Cal­i­bra­tion pro­gram to adjust the col­or repro­duc­tion, which at the hard­ware lev­el allows you to cal­i­brate the mon­i­tor and cor­rect the uni­for­mi­ty of bright­ness and col­or bal­ance over the area. This con­tributes to a more accu­rate repro­duc­tion of each shade of the image.

Advantages of ASUS ProArt PA27AC:

• fac­to­ry cal­i­bra­tion and the abil­i­ty to cal­i­brate using a pro­pri­etary appli­ca­tion at the hard­ware lev­el;
• excel­lent ergonom­ics and build qual­i­ty.

Dis­ad­van­tages of ASUS ProArt PA27AC:

• low res­o­lu­tion and refresh rate con­sid­er­ing the price.

Comparison table of monitors for photographers

Conclusion

If you’re going to process pho­tos on a com­put­er, it’s best to do so with a good mon­i­tor. How­ev­er, you don’t have to spend a lot of mon­ey on it. Even inex­pen­sive mon­i­tors, being new, from the assem­bly line, do not have big flaws in col­or repro­duc­tion. Ide­al­ly, of course, prop­er­ly tune it with a cal­i­bra­tor.

The high­er the size and res­o­lu­tion, the more com­fort­able it will be to work on the mon­i­tor, all oth­er things being equal.

Bud­get mon­i­tors are 23 — 27 inch­es with a res­o­lu­tion of 1920x1080. For exam­ple, this is Xiao­mi Mi Desk­top Mon­i­tor 1C. The main dis­ad­van­tage of such mod­els is that man­u­fac­tur­ers do not pay enough atten­tion to qual­i­ty con­trol. On indi­vid­ual copies, there may be dif­fer­ent revi­sions (fac­to­ry ver­sions) of matri­ces, the fac­to­ry set­tings in them may be inad­e­quate. Also, mod­els with uneven illu­mi­na­tion are com­mon. This draw­back is notice­able when using the mon­i­tor in a dark room on a black image. Such a mon­i­tor, most like­ly, will not be able to be returned under war­ran­ty. There­fore, when buy­ing, it is bet­ter to con­nect the mon­i­tor to the com­put­er. After that, you need to turn on the black back­ground and exam­ine the pic­ture more close­ly.

Mon­i­tors of the mid­dle price range are more inter­est­ing because there is a wider choice of mod­els in terms of res­o­lu­tion, aspect ratio and matrix size. Here there are options with a wide col­or gamut, like the LG 27UP650‑W. If you plan to use such a mon­i­tor for seri­ous col­or work, we rec­om­mend that you cal­i­brate it with a cal­i­bra­tor your­self or entrust it to spe­cial­ists.

Expen­sive pho­to mon­i­tors are cal­i­brat­ed from the fac­to­ry. They have advanced cus­tomiza­tion options, high reli­a­bil­i­ty and build qual­i­ty, as well as addi­tion­al con­nec­tors for easy con­nec­tion of var­i­ous devices.