Help with 4k Monitor

I recently purchased the Benq SW 320. It is a 32 inch 4k monitor. Screen is really nice and I very much like the features. The problem I am having is the following and not exactly sure what to do about it.

Many sites and photos look amazing on it. It seems to make what were already really nice photos into just perfect photos. Sharpness and colors are just great. But many other photos look bad. For instance just about every photo posted to BPN does not look good on the monitor. When I check them on my phone or other devices they look good. So not sure if this is a 4k issue. If maybe the 1200 x 800 photos are just too small when viewed on a 32" monitor or what? When I view my photos in PS they look great as well but the issue seems to be with web based photos that are not high resolution. Anyone else experience this? I don't think it is an issue related to the monitor as photos on Arash's site just look outstanding. Wondering if others have had this issue and what you do about it. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. I am still in the timeframe where i can return the monitor if I decide to do so.

Second issue. For those that have 4k monitors, do you leave it in Adobe RBG, process in RBG or in SRBG?

Have you check to see if your browser is zoomed in at all ? In google chrome ctrl + zooms in just like in photoshop and I had a similar thing happen. Hope its something simple.

not zoomed in. But that is a good thought. Unfortunately not that simple.

" If maybe the 1200 x 800 photos are just too small when viewed on a 32" monitor or what?"

I think that is exactly the case Isaac. When I first got my 5K monitor I had the same perceived problems. Im pretty sure it is just that the web based smaller files aren't detailed enough to fill the 4k screen and they look crappy.

Same thing with files that aren't totally sharp. They look much worse on a large 4k monitor. It was disappointing at first but in the end it made me more critical and culled many more moderately sharp images that I might have kept with a smaller less detailed monitor.

Same thing happened to my friend when he first got his 5k monitor. He called me right away and couldn't believe how crappy a lot of his images looked. I laughed and mentioned my same findings. But I will tell you when you have an image that is razor sharp on your monitor, you know it as sharp as can be!!

Enjoy your new monitor. I looked up the specs. Looks really nice.

David

Yeah this is a real problem for me. Not sure how to deal with it David. Don't even know how to comment on pictures when I am not sure exactly what I am seeing. The other thing is that on this monitor every one of my photos appears over sharpened. I mean 100% of them. The few new photos I have processed have all had a major reduction in my sharpening and look great now on this thing. But I guess they may look bad on a monitor with less resolution. So how do you comment on things, etc. when the image quality is just off? Also how do you determine that your photo looks good to post at that size if it is not looking correct on your screen? I take it you have an imac?

That's kind of weird. Not sure why you are having the precived sharpening issues. Sounds like it's gonna make it really tough for you especially posting on the Web and not knowing what it's really gonna look like.

Yes I do have an IMac and I love this thing more than you can imagine!! I'm sure there are many different ways to go but I feel for me and my photography there is nothing better than one of these units. Fast as lightning with our larger files and the resolution and color rendering are awesome!!
I have been a PC guy for years and never owned a Mac but I have been into the video production industry since the 80s and noticed that all the pros used macs for Post production work for years and years. Now I know why, these things are tailored for photography and videography.
Not only is the 5K monitor fantastic but the computer itself rips through DPP, Lightroom and photoshop even with 30 and 40 meg files. Also unlike my PC's this thing never freezes up and always works perfectly.
I thought long and hard before I made the jump and I am super happy that I did. Probably the best money I've spent on my photography besides my 600 lens
Since I purchased mine about two years ago I have shown it to many other friends and many of them have made the change also. I can honestly say there is not one of them that doesn't love their IMac.
Others may chime in with a different perspective but all I can say is it works awesome for me and I feel my photos are
as good is anything out there. My IMac makes it much easier for me to produce great images. Just sitting in front of the screen at night viewing my work or checking out the web is a pleasure. I'm not a sales rep and I am not promoting this unit for any other reason than I am ultra satisfied.
I drive over 40,000 miles a year and I just purchased a Lexus GS350 about a year ago and it was the best money I think I have ever spent in my life. My IMac is in a close second!!
Oh yeah and it's an all-in-one unit so one plug and you're good to go. My desk is nice and clean and I have 2- 3TB hard drives connected to the time machine program that comes with your IMac so backing up is never an issue, it's automatic and never even thought of. I ordered mine pretty much fully loaded from Apple with every option you could put on it.
I even got the trackpad that I love along with the mouse that it comes with, I use them together. Trackpad with my right hand and mouse with my left and I can move through Lightroom and photoshop quickly and efficiently.
Well as you can tell I really like my IMac and if you would be asking my opinion I would tell you not to think twice.
Just noticed your new thread so I might copy this to there.
Hope this helps and good luck.

Super helpful David. So here is a funny story. Before I bought the PC that I am currently using I bought a 5k imac. Guess I didn't have enough in the machine because it was horrible with DPP. Literally took like 10 secs for every adjustment I made. I was forced to return it and bought a powerful HP. Computer works great and is super fast, but my monitor sucked. And didn't come close to how much I loved the imac screen. Then I got this Benq and it is really nice but this sharpness thing with certain sites is driving me nuts. And it is only certain sites. Others look fantastic. For instance everything on BPN and naturescapes look like crap. Every shot. While if I go onto Arash's site this thing looks fantastic. Photos look great in Photoshop as well. We have 2 other older imacs in the house also. My wife has one and my dad who retired and moved in downstairs has one also. I am very much leaning towards returning the benq and buying another imac. Will keep the PC for my work (banking) computer. They come with i7 processors now which I would get. Would you get the solid state drive or a fusion drive? I have a 3TB back up drive and just purchased on sale an 8TB one that I haven't opened yet. So no problem for me to get a smaller solid state I think. How much RAM do you have? I know with the newer imacs you can get 3rd party ram for a fraction of the cost of having apple putting it in for you.

Pretty funny that you already had one. Sounds like it was Just not enough Horse Power for what we do. With the increased Horse Power these things Rip. I did the 1TB Fusion drive as the SSD at the time was 256GB Max. Probably should have done the SSD but the fusion drive works beautifully and I have no issues whatsoever. They do have the SSD at 2TB now but a pretty pricey upgrade so I would do what you mentioned and get the 256 or 512 SSD and use your external storage. I have 32Gigs of RAM and as you mentioned I bought the additional RAM from a 3rd party. The I7 is a no brainer. DPP is not a problem at all and I work in PS quite a bit and with the trackpad and mouse together I move pretty fast from adjustments to cloning to saving files in seconds without any delay. My PCs even with i7s and lots of RAM still would run slower and hang up a bunch. A real bummer when you are 15 minutes into a technically processed file.

Thats what I do is pretty much use my IMac for my photography and my PC for work.

I am pretty critical of my images and my IQ and my IMac has really made it even easier to critique my own work to the gnats ***!! Order one, I guarantee you won't regret it.

the images that are small will not look good on a 4K display. They are just too small. What the OS (windows and Mac) does is that it scales the image to fill a larger portion of the screen, think about it as zooming passed 1:1 or up-sizing a photo in PS, it won't look good. The photos just look like cra*p on my 15" Mac book pro's Retina display in safari for example unless I press command and - a few times to make it "zoom back" to defeat the scaling. When displayed natively 1:1 a 1200 pixel images is about 1/3 of the length of my 15" MBP screen which makes it hard to see anything.


in order to get the best out of the 4K these three conditions must be satisfied

1) you have to disable scaling in Windows or Mac OS. Windows 10 allows you to adjust font size independent of scaling but it doesn't work very well with bugs here and there. Mac OS does not allow you to adjust font size at all. This means if your screen is smaller than 30" the fonts and text will become tiny and hard to see if you run it nativelyl. That's why I don't recommend buying a 4K screen that is smaller than 30". Go as big as you can with 4K. Most pro 4K screen are only made in 32" size only for this very reason.

2) you need a bit less sharpening because of the high DPI

3) you need to save your files at 2K or higher resolution (at least 1920 pixels wide) to show details on a 4K screen which means the original should have higher quality, less cropping, etc.


I am not sure I understand that your problem is, but it sounds like OS scaling. you can google this well known issue to learn more, or contact the tech support for the monitor and they should be able to guide you through any settings

And of course you want Adobe RGB with any monitor, but you also need to calibrate the screen. The calibration software will then take over the color profile

hope this helps

I called the company and they didn't help at all. This confuses me even more. So to view images on BPN I need to lower to zoom to see them? Do this every time I view something? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of having a large screen? Also if I need to save at 1920 then how do I know what a 1200 image will look like?

also I find the font size very small on the 32" screen.

no as I said you need to disable scaling in control panel.

Ok. Will try when I get home and see if that makes a difference.

So I just got home and went into the display and set it to 100%. It was on 150%. That made a huge difference for the photos on this site as now they look much better. But of course now the text on everything is super tiny. Don't see anyway in the control panel to adjust the font size only. It says adjust the size of text, apps and other items. Only one way to adjust. Is there a way to have the photos show smaller but the text larger? Or do I have to hit control and scroll in and out every time I want to be able to read something? For instance on this site at 100% I can not even see the tabs at the top of the page to choose forum, etc.

Also do you always keep your monitor set to RBG? This monitor has multiple color spaces. The srbg looks great but the RGB is crazy bright and saturated. So I should change it to rgb and get a calibrator and use that for everything? Meaning do you use that to process photos in DPP and PS? Also for web browsing and posting?

As I said you can adjust font size independent of the scaling in Windows 10 pro, google it. set the font size to 12 or 14.


you want ADOBE RGB, it seem your Monitor is not calibrated out of the box. you need to purchase a hardware calibration tool such as X1 or Spyder, the software will then handle the color calibration. All of this should have been covered by your monitor's tech support, but I guess that's what you get with a Chinese company.

The calibration device will tell you what the real color gamut and the quality of the screen is, only then you will know if it is a quality panel or just cheap Chinese panel wrapped in a nice dress. You want 100% of more of Adobe RGB coverage plus a delta_E value below 0.3. you want all the four corners of the screen to read exactly the same.

good luck

So I just spent an hour trying to figure out why I can not find anywhere to change my font size. Turns out that in the latest version of windows 10 pro, version 1703 they took away the ability to actually change the font size. There seem to be some hacks around that you have to download to do it that I saw when googling it but I don't feel comfortable with that. So not sure where that leaves me really. If I can't change the font size then thats just bad.

Also if/when I buy a calibrator and run it, how will I know if the monitor is good or not? It comes with a calibration sheet will that tell you anything? Meaning what would I look for?

not true, my windows 10 (latest) has font size setting under advanced display setting -> advanced sizing of test and other items. it's right there and works just fine.

One of us is missing something. I imagine it's me but just trying to make sure of something. Do you have windows 10 professional or just windows 10. On my version of windows 10 pro I do not have that option at all. Or at least I don't think I have that option. I can show a screenshot later but that option is not there as far as I can see.

All windows 10's have that option unless something is messed up your instillation or some account privilege problem.. maybe add a scree shot of where you are looking for font size

Ok so I do not think I have that option. I scoured the computer and also got on remotely with the microsoft people who could not find it either. They were stumped and basically said look for future updates. When I go to SYSTEM > DISPLAY there are no advanced display settings. There is only one drop down menu that says change the size of texts, apps and other items. That is the only thing to adjust scaling and fonts. There are not separate options at all. I am at a loss.

If I go to CONTROL PANEL, ALL CONTROL PANEL SETTINGS > FONTS > FONT SETTINGS then this is what I get. I just took a pic of the screen with my phone which is why they look messed up. Nowhere in the rest of the font options does it have somewhere to change the font size independent of the scaling.

That's the wrong place, go to control panel (control panel is Not the same as settings) --> display it's right there.

Attachment 172504

What am I missing? Where is the link to Display from the all control panel items screen? This is what I see on my computer.

in addition I have seen tons of things online re this exact issue. That in the version of windows pro that that I have they removed the ability to adjust the font. There are actually downloadable REG files to get around this issue. See : https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html

my Windows 10 laptop still has it so go figure! Regardless when I had a windows desktop I ran windows at default font size on my 32" monitor the fonts were not too small. If I were reading something I used the mouse wheel to zoom.

At least I don't feel completely inept now! I knew I could not find it anywhere. So odd that they did an update and made things worse for people with high dpi monitors. It's not just web browsing but photoshop also. The font in there is beyond tiny. Thanks for all the help. That issue honestly makes me want to just buy an imac and forget about pc's. I'll just use it for work. Need to make a final decision soon as time is running out to return it. Also I went into B&H yesterday to check out the NEC. Of course they had it running at super low resolution and you really could not tell anything. So the decision is NEC and tiny print or just get an Imac and move on. Would cost me the same amount more or less.

you can adjust UI scaling in photoshop, it's in preferences.

I think you didn't read my response fully, as I said Mac has the same issu, with some iMac models you cannot even turn off scaling at all, at least windows lets you do that. The photos look like junk in safari and preview unless you manually zoom back every time. some people like it but it looks like cr*p to my eye. good eye

Could you please advise on the adjustment in PS. I see it is under preferences > interface. I set the fonts to large and the scaling to 200% Will that affect just the text or also the pictures as well? Meaning do I need to keep the scaling at 100% to see the pictures as they should look?

I'm so frustrated to be honest. Don't know what to do. Fonts are impossibly small and I can't adjust it. Don't know what options I have but to constantly zoom in and out. Seems like a pain.

What do you you think is my best option? What are you using now and how do you deal with this issue?