Running PSE with a 4K monitor

PlayingwithPSE  wrote Thank you Arshla and Michel. The automatic setting looks just like the 200% which is too big. The 100% is too small. I need something in the middle. Michel - What do you mean by a real 4k monitor. What makes what I have not real? Just curious.

The '4' means 'four times' and 'k' means the number of pixels. Simple math. Twice as many pixels wide and height = four times more pixels in the same area.

A display is made of pixels, and until 5 or 6 years ago, people were absolutely happy to work with computers with a 'normal' density display. The practical standard was at first something like 72 ppi (pixels per inch) for current 15" displays you were seeing everywhere at home, at work or in public spaces. That density means that you can't really see individual pixels at normal viewing distance, resulting in  smooth and sharp image.

The 72 ppi is still used as a reference for display whereas 300 ppi is a reference for quality printing. As a matter of fact, the real density of 'standard' displays has been 96 or 100 ppi for a long time.

To give an example, HD (High Density) computer or TV displays have 1920 x 1080 pixels. That's what I call 'normal' resolution, and you get an ideal image quality if you are looking at a normal sized display (17" to 27") seen at an appropriate distance.

Now, when did HiDpi (High dots per inch) or 4k resolution appear? That was precisely with the necessity to bring image quality to small displays in smartphones and tablets. They have very small sizes in inches and can be seen even under one foot distance. For comparison, it's like looking at a 4 x 6 " quality print which requires up to 300 ppi as mentioned earlier. To get the same density, there was a big demand for a higher density display technology, and everybody is now happy to have it in his portable devices.

Now, you know how marketing people are thinking: 'we have the technology, why not apply it to the displays of computers as well? We always can sell bigger is better'. And that worked, esplecially since the new 4k displays had other improvements making them more attractive, brightness, saturation, angle of view...

Now, apart from costing much more, what are the disadvantages of those HiDpi display applied to computers used for photo editing?

- In normal working conditions, you can't see the difference with a display of normal density and same quality.

- Your computer has much more work to do to display four times the number of pixels. Not very important with Elements, but users with 5k displays on Lightroom do report problems...

- and in our case, the softwares like Photoshop and Elements (about 20 years old...) were programmed on interface tools provided by the Operating systems providers (Microsoft and Apple) which did not take into account the new density. Think about reprogramming all features of a pixel editor by Adobe... So the best solution found from Elements 13.1 was to use the 200% scaling for the editor = a square of 2 x 2 = 4 pixels is used to show a normal 1 pixel of the user interface, fonts and icons.

Other softwares like the organizer have been programmed or re-programmed differently and they can use a Microsoft Windows feature to scale the UI interface to 125 or 150%. No real problem there.

Now, what about the problem with 2 to 3k displays like the Surface pro? If you use the 200% scaling, the menu layout will expand outside the display and they won't be displayed... in that case I think that all displays can be set to a 'normal' resolution which will be applied to all softwares. To give you an idea, the 'normal' 1920 x 1080 density is too much for my wife's 17 " laptop for my taste and I have set it to a lower resolution.

We have to remember that picture editing means hours of work. If you don't want to strain your eyesight, rather use a normal desktop external display, seen at a comfortable distance (2 to 3 feet) in a controlled light level and without reflections on the display.

Isn't then Automatic option working for you?