The article claims that 4K offers “remarkable” sharpness, which is beneficial for tasks like photo editing. However, sharpness, as the article defines it, has little to do with the quality needed for precise photo editing. For professionals, the key isn’t having a sharper image or smaller pixels, but rather the ability to accurately represent colors, contrast, and tonal details—especially for tasks like skin tone correction or intricate color grading. A 4K display’s higher pixel density may help for very large images, but for typical photo editing tasks, it’s the monitor’s color accuracy, uniformity, and dynamic range that are far more critical than pixel sharpness.

Mar 09, 2025 03:53 PM By BN

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The article claims that 4K offers “remarkable” sharpness, which is beneficial for tasks like photo editing. However, sharpness, as the article defines it, has little to do with the quality needed for precise photo editing. For professionals, the key isn’t having a sharper image or smaller pixels, but rather the ability to accurately represent colors, contrast, and tonal details—especially for tasks like skin tone correction or intricate color grading. A 4K display’s higher pixel density may help for very large images, but for typical photo editing tasks, it’s the monitor’s color accuracy, uniformity, and dynamic range that are far more critical than pixel sharpness.

Hi, you’re quite right. Color accuracy is definitely more important than a higher resolution for photo editing. In our Best Monitors for Photo Editing we discuss what to look for in a photo editing monitor, and agree with you that accuracy is more important than resolution. In that recommendation our Color Accuracy performance score includes both color accuracy and gray uniformity, and our SDR picture score includes contrast. We also look at brightness in the recommendation. That said, it can certainly be helpful to have a higher resolution display, all other things being equal.