4k tv for video editing

DMKAlex • Veteran Member • Posts: 5,624

Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

Jan 27, 2016

4K monitors are extremely expensive. The cheapest 28" is about $400 on sale. And that may not be a good one. I've seem Samsung or Dell at around $6-800.

At the meantime, 4K 42" TV is around $530 and 48" is $670. Can these TV be used as photo editing monitor? What's the drawback, or why is monitor so much more expensive?

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MOD Austinian • Forum Pro • Posts: 11,568

Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

In reply to DMKAlex • Jan 28, 2016

DMKAlex wrote:

4K monitors are extremely expensive. The cheapest 28" is about $400 on sale. And that may not be a good one. I've seem Samsung or Dell at around $6-800.

Yes, a 4K (UHD) TV can work fine as a photo monitor IF you're willing to do some research to make sure the TV has the capabilities you want, AND you have the video output TVs need; which means HDMI 2.0.

Today, that usually means an Nvidia GTX 9xx series graphics card, but soon we should see the next-gen cards from AMD and Nvidia that will also include HDMI 2.0

I also think a photo monitor should support 100% of sRGB and be capable of 60 Hz refresh with 4:4:4 color subsampling.

One site I've found that has tested a lot of UHD TVs is rtings.com , and there are other sites that have good reviews of particular models and suggestions for setting them up as PC monitors.

I have a Samsung 40JU6500 I'm very happy with, and there are many others.

At the meantime, 4K 42" TV is around $530 and 48" is $670. Can these TV be used as photo editing monitor? What's the drawback, or why is monitor so much more expensive?

I think it's mostly because they make a lot more UHD TV sets than UHD monitors. Plus the need for HDMI 2.0 raises the effective cost of the TV unless you have a suitable card already.

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OP DMKAlex • Veteran Member • Posts: 5,624

Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

Austinian wrote:

DMKAlex wrote:

4K monitors are extremely expensive. The cheapest 28" is about $400 on sale. And that may not be a good one. I've seem Samsung or Dell at around $6-800.

Yes, a 4K (UHD) TV can work fine as a photo monitor IF you're willing to do some research to make sure the TV has the capabilities you want, AND you have the video output TVs need; which means HDMI 2.0.

Today, that usually means an Nvidia GTX 9xx series graphics card, but soon we should see the next-gen cards from AMD and Nvidia that will also include HDMI 2.0

I also think a photo monitor should support 100% of sRGB and be capable of 60 Hz refresh with 4:4:4 color subsampling.

One site I've found that has tested a lot of UHD TVs is rtings.com , and there are other sites that have good reviews of particular models and suggestions for setting them up as PC monitors.

I have a Samsung 40JU6500 I'm very happy with, and there are many others.

At the meantime, 4K 42" TV is around $530 and 48" is $670. Can these TV be used as photo editing monitor? What's the drawback, or why is monitor so much more expensive?

I think it's mostly because they make a lot more UHD TV sets than UHD monitors. Plus the need for HDMI 2.0 raises the effective cost of the TV unless you have a suitable card already.

I am not aware of the HDMI 2.0 requirement. So, you're saying, my 2 year old Toshiba laptop with HDMI is not compatible with the 4K TV?

Do they make any adapter for that?

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MOD Austinian • Forum Pro • Posts: 11,568

Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

In reply to DMKAlex • Jan 28, 2016

DMKAlex wrote:

Austinian wrote:

DMKAlex wrote:

4K monitors are extremely expensive. The cheapest 28" is about $400 on sale. And that may not be a good one. I've seem Samsung or Dell at around $6-800.

Yes, a 4K (UHD) TV can work fine as a photo monitor IF you're willing to do some research to make sure the TV has the capabilities you want, AND you have the video output TVs need; which means HDMI 2.0.

Today, that usually means an Nvidia GTX 9xx series graphics card, but soon we should see the next-gen cards from AMD and Nvidia that will also include HDMI 2.0

I also think a photo monitor should support 100% of sRGB and be capable of 60 Hz refresh with 4:4:4 color subsampling.

One site I've found that has tested a lot of UHD TVs is rtings.com , and there are other sites that have good reviews of particular models and suggestions for setting them up as PC monitors.

I have a Samsung 40JU6500 I'm very happy with, and there are many others.

At the meantime, 4K 42" TV is around $530 and 48" is $670. Can these TV be used as photo editing monitor? What's the drawback, or why is monitor so much more expensive?

I think it's mostly because they make a lot more UHD TV sets than UHD monitors. Plus the need for HDMI 2.0 raises the effective cost of the TV unless you have a suitable card already.

I am not aware of the HDMI 2.0 requirement. So, you're saying, my 2 year old Toshiba laptop with HDMI is not compatible with the 4K TV?

It cannot drive the 4K TV at full 3840x2160 @60 Hz refresh; it might possibly drive it at 30 Hz, I don't know.

But if your laptop only has HDMI 1.x, and not DisplayPort, I don't think it can drive any 4K monitor to full resolution @60 Hz.

Do they make any adapter for that?

HDMI 2.0 has to carry much more data than HDMI 1.x; I don't think such an adapter is possible.

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Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

Errors in the prior response if your goal is photo editing.

For a Nvidia video card, you need a Quadro and not a GeForce. GeForce is for gaming. For ATI, the FirePro and not a Radeon. There is a good write up on Wikipedia.

While one might be happy using a 4K TV for photo editing, the best are significantly worse than a monitor designed for photo editing. And 4K is way too large for "only" 4K resolution.

For a good 4K (much better than any TV) monitor, expect to spend $3-500 for 24", $6-750 for 27" and about $1300-2000 for 32".

The IPS panels used for monitors are much higher quality than those used in TVs.

Now it is possible that some of the newly announced (at CES) HDR TVs might be suitable but they will be expensive and not available in smaller sizes. I personally wouldn't go above 32" for 4K.

Also keep in mind that the goals for a TV are very different than for a computer monitor. Hence they can be very difficult to calibrate.
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MOD Austinian • Forum Pro • Posts: 11,568

Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

TwoMetreBill wrote:

Errors in the prior response if your goal is photo editing.

For a Nvidia video card, you need a Quadro and not a GeForce. GeForce is for gaming. For ATI, the FirePro and not a Radeon. There is a good write up on Wikipedia.

While one might be happy using a 4K TV for photo editing, the best are significantly worse than a monitor designed for photo editing. And 4K is way too large for "only" 4K resolution.

For a good 4K (much better than any TV) monitor, expect to spend $3-500 for 24", $6-750 for 27" and about $1300-2000 for 32".

The IPS panels used for monitors are much higher quality than those used in TVs.

Now it is possible that some of the newly announced (at CES) HDR TVs might be suitable but they will be expensive and not available in smaller sizes. I personally wouldn't go above 32" for 4K.

Also keep in mind that the goals for a TV are very different than for a computer monitor. Hence they can be very difficult to calibrate.

"Oh, of course one simply must have workstation graphics cards to do any real photo editing; ordinary graphics cards or (shudder) integrated graphics can't possibly produce quality images."

"Errors", heh, heh.

What I see in this post are mostly questionable but oh-so-firmly-stated opinions that would be a waste of my time to attempt to discuss.

My Spyder4 calibrated this TV/monitor just as easily it did my previous Dell 3007WFP-HC, and reported it is 100% of sRGB. That's all I want.

Every photographer should decide their own priorities, needs and desires, and configure their system appropriately.

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bmoag • Senior Member • Posts: 2,977

Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

The Dell 27 inch 4k monitor is probably being closed out as I have seen it at sub $400 prices. All 4k monitors in that price class apparently use the same panel and electronics and are rated at near sRGB. Presumably their replacements will bump back to the $600 range. Any video card that supports display port should be able to run 4k although, as in the case of MacBooks, it can be tedious. The vanilla drivers in Windows 10 and OSX support 4k resolutions. In Windows current inexpensive video cards, particularly from Nvidia, will easily run 4k for everything except gaming.

I use that Dell 4k side by side with my full RGB Dell ultrasharp. Side by side, and by measurement, there is a difference in gamut displayed. The added resolution of a 27 inch 4k panel can be stunning and so it has become my primary image processing monitor. Resolution trumps gamut.

Once you start looking at your images in 4k pixel peeping on a lower resolution monitor will seem last century. When 8k comes out if I can possibly afford one I will get one. The downside of high resolution monitors is that no one can see what you see unless they are also looking at that high resolution monitor. Perhaps that will change when 4k becomes more ubiquitous. Another caveat is that it requires at least a 27 inch panel to really see that added resolution (check out a 13 inch Macbook pro or other hi res small notebook for a useless image editing experience).

It should not surprise anyone that images processed on a calibrated sRGB monitor and a calibrated RGB monitor in the same wide color space and 16 bit depth print essentially identically. At least when I let them dry and shuffle them I cannot tell which print was made via which monitor: the printer be what the printer be.

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Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

In reply to bmoag • Jun 9, 2016

Does it seem ridiculous to pay $2K or more for a 55"+ 4K TV for photo editing? There could be a few cases where it's not as nonsensical as it would seem at first glance. My spin on this question goes like this:

How would a 55"+ 4K TV compare to a sub-$1K monitor such as a Dell or BenQ for the purposes of photo editing?

I've researched monitors and, for my needs, (beginner, wanting to move into a career in photography) I wouldn't need to get anything above the $1,500 price range, and could be very content with something less than $1,000 for quite a while.

My main concern would be color accuracy. Can a television even be calibrated to be as accurate as a monitor? Televisions are designed to entertain, which may not always mean accurately displaying the data provided by the source. It may want to make colors more saturated and vivid, blacks more black, contrast that's sharper and more contrasty... idk...

The philosophies behind televisions has changed a bit recently, with a bit more of a concern for a more "realistic" image. Years ago, some sets had problems with "the soap opera effect" and some looked like reverse 3D like you were looking into an image with depth. Some were overly bright, or only looked good with still or slow moving images, etc etc. Besides the curved display, manufacturers seem to want to dispense with gimmicks and over wrought effects and return to the basics of a more natural, true-to-life visual. I hope that means there's hope for using a television for editing photos.

That's my post, no need to read further. The next comments are only for those who wonder why anyone would even want a $2K+ product instead of something half the price and half the size.

In my home, for many years now we've had a pc and normal monitor sitting very near to our home theater tv. For over 15 years I've had my pc connected to the tv as well as a monitor. Lots of fun advantages to that set up. Our current pc monitor is more than good enough for general web browsing, YouTube, etc. But it's horrible for photo editing. It's old and impossible to calibrate but it won't die. The television that the pc is connected to is not long for this world, and will need to be replaced soon. Due to our schedules and viewing habits there's no concern about there being a conflict between me doing my photo editing while someone else wants to watch tv. Therefor, I'm wondering if a 55"+ television, priced less than $2,500, could give me an image that's reasonably comparable to a $1,000 - $1,200 pc monitor with a high Adobe RGB %.

I could imagine other scenarios, especially if an individual lives alone and wants a decent home theater set up and connects his pc to a television.

I know some will wince at this, but sometimes I intentionally switch over to use my ancient 1080p Insignia television to do photo editing because I understand that it's probably more similar to the displays that my photos are likely to end up getting viewed on when others upload them to Facebook or look at Instagram on their laptops, etc. At least relative to my current pc monitor which, I can't overstate, is really pretty bad, lol.

Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

You may be better served on some AV forum for opinions on this. There is a blinkered mindset here where myths are propagated: only IPS are suitable for photo editing, Photoshop does not use more than 4 cores, and so on. IPS besides being expensive is probably not all that suitable to a television with its low contrast ratio. I have been fairly impressed with VA TV (aquos) that just about gave wide enough viewing angle. From experience I know that you can do photo editing on VA. The black shades might be slightly less distinguishable than IPS and you might need to sit more centrally to the monitor, but it is worthwhile for the extra contrast and vibrancy you can get. In practice the question will tend to be ergonomics: can you find the right place in a room to sit with your computer in front of this huge panel?

What got my interest in these televisions is that they really are mass-market consumer items in a very competitive field- which means you get better value for money. I've seen 4K 50+ inch televisions that rated amongst the best for color fidelity and have 1:3000 native contrast ratios for under the equivalent of $1000 (manufacturer refurbished outlet, admittedly). I like the idea of a screen that can render people at something like life-sized and give me a wider choice of how far I sit back from it.

One thing the televisions lack is being able to switch between landscape and portrait orientation. Because most of my photos are people photos, that is the main reason I do not use a TV on the computer.

Most AV review sites do tests on color fidelity and image quality and this is presumably that is what is encouraging manufacturers to concentrate on the panel nowadays.

MOD Austinian • Forum Pro • Posts: 11,568

Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

fishy wishy wrote:

You may be better served on some AV forum for opinions on this. There is a blinkered mindset here where myths are propagated: only IPS are suitable for photo editing, Photoshop does not use more than 4 cores, and so on. IPS besides being expensive is probably not all that suitable to a television with its low contrast ratio. I have been fairly impressed with VA TV (aquos) that just about gave wide enough viewing angle. From experience I know that you can do photo editing on VA. The black shades might be slightly less distinguishable than IPS and you might need to sit more centrally to the monitor, but it is worthwhile for the extra contrast and vibrancy you can get.

After using a S-PVA Samsung UHD TV for my monitor, I'd have a hard time going back to a lower contrast ratio monitor like my previous Dell. Even at minimum backlighting, it couldn't approach the blacks of this one. I guess choosing one technology over another would be a matter of the photographer's personal preferences.

I do suggest a visit to lagom.nl to optimize a TV's settings by eye before doing a final calibration with a hardware device.

What got my interest in these televisions is that they really are mass-market consumer items in a very competitive field- which means you get better value for money. I've seen 4K 50+ inch televisions that rated amongst the best for color fidelity and have 1:3000 native contrast ratios for under the equivalent of $1000 (manufacturer refurbished outlet, admittedly).

I like the idea of a screen that can render people at something like life-sized and give me a wider choice of how far I sit back from it.

One thing the televisions lack is being able to switch between landscape and portrait orientation.

The Nvidia video driver allows for a switch from landscape to portrait orientation. It would be a pretty exotic monitor stand that would allow a 55" monitor to do both orientations, but it should be possible.

Most AV review sites do tests on color fidelity and image quality and this is presumably that is what is encouraging manufacturers to concentrate on the panel nowadays.

For TV's, this site does a lot of testing and provides many useful measurements the manufacturers don't tell us, but are important for monitor use.

Also, I should mention that most UHD (4K) TVs require HDMI 2.0 outputs to drive them at 60 Hz; Nvidia 9xx and later video cards have this, and I've read there are DP to HDMI 2.0 adapters (but I've never used one). A few of the newest PC motherboards do too, I think.

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mclewis • Senior Member • Posts: 1,408

Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

Lucum Caeli wrote:

Does it seem ridiculous to pay $2K or more for a 55"+ 4K TV for photo editing? There could be a few cases where it's not as nonsensical as it would seem at first glance. My spin on this question goes like this:

How would a 55"+ 4K TV compare to a sub-$1K monitor such as a Dell or BenQ for the purposes of photo editing?

I've researched monitors and, for my needs, (beginner, wanting to move into a career in photography) I wouldn't need to get anything above the $1,500 price range, and could be very content with something less than $1,000 for quite a while.

My main concern would be color accuracy. Can a television even be calibrated to be as accurate as a monitor? Televisions are designed to entertain, which may not always mean accurately displaying the data provided by the source. It may want to make colors more saturated and vivid, blacks more black, contrast that's sharper and more contrasty... idk...

You can colour calibrate televisions as long as long as the sets have the required functions to allow you to change the required parameters. High end sets will allow you to do this. Cheap ones are likely to be less good. It is harder than calibrating monitors and you have to be aware that TV's will expect the video input colourspaces to be certain specified ones - HDTV, SDTV is rec709 (essentially sRGB) and 4K should be in rec2020 or DCI-P3 in a rec2020 wrapper.

Decent television review sites such as the UK based AVForums have a section in their reviews about how colour accurate the sets are out of the box and how well they calibrate.

tkbslc • Forum Pro • Posts: 16,680

pixel density and working distance

In reply to DMKAlex • Jun 9, 2016

The pixel density of a 42" 4K monitor is no greater than that of 21" 1080p monitor, which means you will have little benefit in terms of "quality". The picture will not appear sharper or less pixelated.

Also consider that in order to be comfortable, you will naturally work farther away from larger monitors. If you put a 42" TV on your desk and sit the same 24" away from the screen, you will not enjoy the experience. It would be like front row movie seats. So you will naturally scoot farther and farther back, or use smaller windows on the screen to compensate. Consider how one uses a laptop, typically sitting very close, vs a desktop, sitting 2-3 feet away vs a TV, sitting 6-10 feet away.

I would say typically you would want to have a screen diagonal to viewing distance ration of 1:1 at most. That would put the horizontal viewing angle close to the max of your immediate field of vision.

MOD Austinian • Forum Pro • Posts: 11,568

Re: pixel density and working distance

In reply to tkbslc • Jun 9, 2016

tkbslc wrote:

The pixel density of a 42" 4K monitor is no greater than that of 21" 1080p monitor, which means you will have little benefit in terms of "quality". The picture will not appear sharper or less pixelated.

Right. You will just see more of it, assuming both views are set to 100% zoom and the image is higher-res than 1080p.

This also means that there's no significant size scaling problem of menus, fonts, etc. unlike a small monitor with UHD resolution may experience.

Also consider that in order to be comfortable, you will naturally work farther away from larger monitors. If you put a 42" TV on your desk and sit the same 24" away from the screen, you will not enjoy the experience. It would be like front row movie seats. So you will naturally scoot farther and farther back, or use smaller windows on the screen to compensate. Consider how one uses a laptop, typically sitting very close, vs a desktop, sitting 2-3 feet away vs a TV, sitting 6-10 feet away.

I would say typically you would want to have a screen diagonal to viewing distance ration of 1:1 at most. That would put the horizontal viewing angle close to the max of your immediate field of vision.

This will be a matter of personal preference; having a 40" monitor and computer glasses optimized for 24", that is my viewing distance.

I often have multiple windows with different applications visible, and move the ones I'm working with at the moment to near (but not at) the center of the screen. A click brings each to the foreground.

I also enjoy having an expansive view of the photo wallpapers on the various drives.

And for those who play games, it makes for a highly immersive gaming PC.

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Re: pixel density and working distance

In reply to tkbslc • Jun 9, 2016

tkbslc wrote:

The pixel density of a 42" 4K monitor is no greater than that of 21" 1080p monitor, which means you will have little benefit in terms of "quality". The picture will not appear sharper or less pixelated.

Also consider that in order to be comfortable, you will naturally work farther away from larger monitors. If you put a 42" TV on your desk and sit the same 24" away from the screen, you will not enjoy the experience. It would be like front row movie seats. So you will naturally scoot farther and farther back, or use smaller windows on the screen to compensate. Consider how one uses a laptop, typically sitting very close, vs a desktop, sitting 2-3 feet away vs a TV, sitting 6-10 feet away.

I would say typically you would want to have a screen diagonal to viewing distance ration of 1:1 at most. That would put the horizontal viewing angle close to the max of your immediate field of vision.

While it's good to take into account screen size for how far you tend to sit away from it, I see nobody applying such a hard and fast rule in practice. You only have to walk into a university library with the various display devices to see this. Try getting older people to focus closer than 12in away no matter how small the screen is! At 100 dpi people could begin to see into individual pixels at <18in distance, so a low dpi itself will tend to push people back to at least 32in on a 50in TV. Experience of televisions for old computers tells me one has to sit closer for computers than for television. I foresee people creeping in closer to a 50in monitor than 50in away.

The era of a computer screen at one end of the dinner table may be upon us.

Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

In reply to mclewis • Jun 15, 2016

fishy wishy, Austinian, and mclewis: thanks for your helpful responses. I will definitely check in with an AV forum. I'm not hearing anything that would stand as a major red flag, sounds like it's worth continued consideration. If I try it, I'll certainly report on the results.

Excellent web link for good 4k tvs as monitors

Kayw88 • New Member • Posts: 2

Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

In reply to DMKAlex • Jun 24, 2019

Hi. I have this same question and I've been asking everywhere and have had no luck. I'm starting my photography Busines and now looking for the right monitor Or tv for editing. I'll be using the song A7iii and my computer I've had built has a Nvidia gtx 970 ZOTAC graphic card with a AMD FX-8350 cpu processor. What type of monitor it TV should I use for best quality when editing?

Re: pixel density and working distance

In reply to tkbslc • Jun 24, 2019

tkbslc wrote:

...

Also consider that in order to be comfortable, you will naturally work farther away from larger monitors. If you put a 42" TV on your desk and sit the same 24" away from the screen, you will not enjoy the experience. It would be like front row movie seats. So you will naturally scoot farther and farther back, or use smaller windows on the screen to compensate. Consider how one uses a laptop, typically sitting very close, vs a desktop, sitting 2-3 feet away vs a TV, sitting 6-10 feet away.

I would say typically you would want to have a screen diagonal to viewing distance ration of 1:1 at most. That would put the horizontal viewing angle close to the max of your immediate field of vision.

Well argued. When I moved house recently I tried, just for fun, putting our 42" 4K TV on my desk in place of my usual 27" monitor. After a week of severe neck ache I put things back to normal.

I have a reasonably large desk so in my usual typing position the screen is about 30" (75cm) from my eyes. With the 27" monitor I can see the whole screen surface just by moving my eyes, but with the 42" screen it needed a lot of head movement. With a much deeper desk I could have got back to a comfortable viewing distance but then bang goes the advantage in screen resolution.

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CAcreeks • Forum Pro • Posts: 17,190

Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

In reply to Kayw88 • Jun 30, 2019

Kayw88 wrote:

Hi. I have this same question and I've been asking everywhere and have had no luck. I'm starting my photography Busines and now looking for the right monitor Or tv for editing. I'll be using the song A7iii and my computer I've had built has a Nvidia gtx 970 ZOTAC graphic card with a AMD FX-8350 cpu processor. What type of monitor it TV should I use for best quality when editing?

song A7iii? Oh, I guess that's a typo for Sony.

This is a thread from two years ago. UHD (4K) monitors are under $400 now, e.g. LG 27" or 32" UD60 models.

You'll have to do some research if you want to use an entertainment HDTV instead. Look on rtings.com etc. Austinian here uses one and is happy with it. I tried connecting our HDTV and the image was awful in any mode - no good for photo editing.

MOD Austinian • Forum Pro • Posts: 11,568

Re: Can you use a 4K TV as monitor for editing photos?

In reply to CAcreeks • Jun 30, 2019

CAcreeks wrote:

Kayw88 wrote:

Hi. I have this same question and I've been asking everywhere and have had no luck. I'm starting my photography Busines and now looking for the right monitor Or tv for editing. I'll be using the song A7iii and my computer I've had built has a Nvidia gtx 970 ZOTAC graphic card with a AMD FX-8350 cpu processor. What type of monitor it TV should I use for best quality when editing?

song A7iii? Oh, I guess that's a typo for Sony.

This is a thread from two years ago. UHD (4K) monitors are under $400 now, e.g. LG 27" or 32" UD60 models.

You'll have to do some research if you want to use an entertainment HDTV instead. Look on rtings.com etc. Austinian here uses one and is happy with it.

Plain HDTV, no thanks. 4K/UHD TV, maybe. As CAcreeks says, careful research is essential. Just like monitors in general, many TVs are unsuitable for photo use for a variety of reasons.

Even if the TV itself is good, many models require particular settings to work properly as a monitor. Rtings is a good place to start, and for even more details the user threads on avsforum.com for each particular model go into considerable depth.

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