Seeing Your Work: Achieve True Color with the Best Photography Monitors

Why Display Quality Matters

In order to edit photographs well, you need to be able to see what you’re doing. Whether you use a desktop computer, a laptop’s built-in display, or a laptop connected to an external display, there are great options out there. You want a well-calibrated wide-gamut display, either DCI-P3 or, better yet, Adobe RGB. We’ll look at a few of the options in displays, calibration, and an oddball display device before diving into image editing. Let’s look at some of the best display monitors for photography and why.

Importance of Wide-Gamut Displays

This is why you don’t want to edit photos on an sRGB display. Notice how much more space there is in the greens, blues, and yellows in Adobe RGB. Your camera can capture all of Adobe RGB and more.

For a desktop monitor, most photographers should be aiming for full (98% or greater) Adobe RGB coverage, with a similar level of DCI-P3 coverage as a secondary possibility. For a laptop display, most good ones will be DCI-P3, while inexpensive ones will be sRGB or even not capable of full sRGB. Adobe RGB laptop displays are rare, although there have been a few over the years.

Whether you are using a desktop monitor or a laptop’s built-in display, you want a display capable of displaying a wide color gamut, but also one that can do so accurately. There are displays (including many high-end gaming monitors) that display a huge gamut, with fantastic brightness and contrast, but that are wildly inaccurate.

Even full sRGB coverage, let alone sub-sRGB, is not a good alternative for photographic work. sRGB is a very small color space—almost every camera can capture many colors which sRGB can’t represent, and most photographic printers can print well outside of sRGB. Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 can both represent around 25-35% more colors than sRGB, with Adobe RGB slightly larger than DCI-P3.

sRGB was intended to capture the gamut of an average (old CRT) monitor to make images look good online. DCI-P3 was intended for cinema applications (you’ll sometimes see the term “Display P3”—it’s just a slight Apple variant of DCI-P3, better suited to computer monitors), and Adobe RGB was meant for photo editing. Since Adobe RGB is over 25 years old, most cameras and printers can use colors well outside of Adobe RGB, but there are very few monitors that can show those “beyond Adobe” colors.

Desktop Monitors

An Eizo CS2740, a very high-grade full Adobe RGB monitor. A bit chunky, a bit expensive—but absolutely rock-solid.

Full Adobe RGB desktop monitors are easy to find at prices ranging from a few hundred dollars to many thousands. Compared to a decade ago, there are many more options, some of which are quite a bit cheaper than good monitors of the past. Eizo’s ColorEdge monitors stand alone at the top of the class, with the best color available short of a Hollywood-grade reference monitor (which Eizo also makes, but those start around $6000 and range well into five figures).

I have used an Eizo ColorEdge CS2740 for years —it’s not cheap at $1800 or so, but a good monitor will last through two or three computers. The more expensive CG2700X ($3400) offers built-in calibration, somewhat better contrast, and a very clever feature for laptop-toting photographers—an Ethernet port. Plug it into your laptop via USB-C, and you’re on a wired network through the monitor. Unfortunately, most of the extra money goes to features most useful in the film industry. I had a review unit side by side with my personal CS2740, and it’s better, but not worth twice as much for still photography.

Short of an Eizo, a number of manufacturers make photographic-grade 24” and 27” Adobe RGB monitors. BenQ’s SW242Q (24”, 2560×1600) is under $500, and their top-of-the-line 27” 4K SW272U is a direct competitor to the Eizo for a few hundred less. Asus’ 27” ProArt PA279CRV offers 4K resolution and claimed 99% Adobe RGB for under $500.

Innovative Display Technologies

Is this where things are going? These Asus ProArt OLED displays will have much darker blacks, therefore higher contrast than ANY LCD. Will they have colors as accurate as a comparably priced Eizo?

Asus has introduced ProArt OLED monitors, such as the 27” PA27DCE-K ($1800) and the 32” PA32DC ($3300), offering full Adobe RGB coverage and built-in calibration. OLED technology provides deeper blacks and higher contrast, enhancing image quality.

Dell’s UltraSharp line emphasizes DCI-P3 capabilities. The 27” UP2720Q offers full Adobe RGB and built-in calibration for under $1300. Dell’s UltraSharp 3218K is the only 8K monitor not originally designed as a TV, although it requires dual DisplayPort cables for connection, limiting its use. This limits its use to desktop PCs with graphics cards that can drive one monitor with dual connections, or to Macs with multiple Thunderbolt ports on different buses.

Laptop Displays

Most newer Mac laptops (since 2018) and some models back to 2015 or so support DCI-P3 on their internal display.

Most modern Mac laptops and some earlier models support DCI-P3. Wide-gamut displays are increasingly common on PC laptops, particularly models geared toward photographers. HP’s DreamColor displays are top-tier for laptops, but some models offer sub-sRGB displays as options—choose carefully.

Calibration Tools

The new Spyder X2 Ultra will calibrate weird modern monitors!

Once you have a quality display, calibration is essential. Most displays use calibration pucks like Datacolor’s Spyder or Calibrite’s (formerly X-Rite) models. The latest calibrators handle high-brightness and HDR displays, which older models cannot. The Datacolor Spyder X2 Ultra and Calibrite’s latest models support modern displays, including OLEDs.

I just got a new Spyder X2 Ultra to calibrate my modern MacBook Pro (high-brightness, variable backlight displays that confuse calibrators). It works. If you’ve ever used a Spyder, the X2 Ultra is familiar, and it produced a very nice profile that showed the Mac display as almost perfectly DCI-P3. The calibrated result is slightly different from Apple’s factory profile. 

Pen Tablets with Displays

If anyone told me a couple of years ago that I could get a 16” antiglare OLED monitor with full Adobe RGB coverage for $1000, I would have been amazed. This one is also a high-end graphics tablet.

Pen tablets with built-in displays offer direct interaction with images. Early Wacom Cintiqs were expensive and complex, but newer models are more affordable and user-friendly. The Xencelabs Pen Display 16, for example, offers a full Adobe RGB, anti-glare OLED display for around $1000, combining display accuracy with tablet functionality.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the right display and maintaining accurate calibration are crucial for high-quality photographic editing. Whether opting for a desktop monitor, laptop display, or innovative OLED technology, ensure your equipment meets the demands of wide-gamut color spaces. By investing in reliable displays and calibration tools, you can achieve consistent and accurate color representation, enhancing your photographic work.

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