What is your preferred way to view images?

Think about your favourite way to view a collection of images (just to enjoy the images, not for pixel-peeping or special scrutiny).

What is your usual preferred viewing distance relative to the length of the image diagonal?

For myself, I usually view images on a 27" iMac. Most of my images are 4:3 aspect ratio. I'll ignore the others that can be any ratio from 1:1 to 4:1 or even more. I generally view the screen from about 22" away, which is approximately the length of the diagonal of a 4:3 image that fits the height of the screen.

How do you like to view images just to enjoy the images?

Print. buy far is to print my best images on a canon pro printer. nothing else compares. just bought some new paper i hadn't used before. the skin tones are simply gorgeous, no monitor can show the same subtleties as a quality print.

Although I actually agree with you on this one as far as viewing prints of images (I also do my own home printing) I think you'll be hard pressed to find a printer that has a larger colour gamut than a good quality screen.

So it depends on type of subtleties you are referring to.

Can't beat a print, much as I love my 27" Eizo. That even extends to books for me, though; a big, quality bound and printed coffee-table book is still a lovely thing.

Fair enough!

So what size prints do you make and what is your usual viewing distance (distance between your eye and the print)?

In the case of an image collection I'll have to say that any good enough 24in monitor will do but then I consider the platform and the means of navigation equally important, nothing beats full screen viewing while going from one picture to the next, and/or back, through the means of the left and right arrow keys.

p.s.
Where it concerns (full) attention towards a single image nothing beats a printed version.

So, what size prints and what is your usual viewing distance (from your eye to the print)?

And what is your usual viewing distance?

A 65" 4K Monitor at 35cm from the bed's foot.
Usually, I use Windows Picture Viewer (deprecated) or Fastone

I measured the viewing distance right now :

• it's around 189cm from the eyes plane

Monitor: about 100 to 120cm.

Mostly on a 32" 4K/UHD monitor, sitting about 22" from the screen. A few I'll show on a 48" OLED TV, about 32" viewing distance.

Well, I usually view from about 24 inches to a 40" 4k monitor. But the right way for me is to get to the point where the image subtends the same angle of view in my vision as did the original scene. That's hard on a fisheye because I don't have one of those IMAX circular domes in my house and it doesn't work on focal lengths longer than 35mm equivalent or so.

My 12.9” iPad Pro is my favorite image viewing platform. Because it’s in my hand, it feels ‘more like” a print.

My preferred way is a quality print, nicely mounted and hanging on a well-lit gallery wall. However, I view and evaluate (and process) the majority of images, mine and others, using the iPad Pro 12.9. (Mine pre-dates the introduction of the current screen.) I can move to a calibrated 27" 5K iMac, in an office painted neutral gray with indirect lighting, optimized for color-correct work…but in practice, this makes less difference than one would think so long as I'm reasonably conscientious of the display brightness and ambient light while using the iPad.

I designed and maintained color sync workflows professionally for a long time. I've become a believer in 90% quality for 10% effort in my personal work. Nobody is evaluating my prints with a Pantone book…they just have to look good on the wall.

I’m also considering replacing the picture hook in my (sparse, white) living room with a proper digital gallery display. I haven’t picked one yet — but I try to look at them critically, and ask questions, when I come across them in galleries and museums.

Print.

The bigger the better. The image quality and the psychological experience of holding a print and viewing it far surpasses anything that a monitor can deliver.

In the last 10-20 years, a huge number of people, viewing images on various types of computer screens, tablets, phones have never had the experience of seeing a high-quality print, and actually reject the idea of a printed image. That's a real shame.

I much prefer matte stock with dye inks (Canon Pro 100). I wish Canon offered a dye printer in their larger sizes. There is no large format dye ink printer. Still, matte stock is far superior, no matter the ink type.

Rich

I’ve found this is generally true in competition. However, when it comes to exhibit, I've come to believe that some images are meant to be small…

~ Carroll, Henry. Photographers on Photography: How the Masters See, Think & Shoot. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2018. [p 19]

Yes.

What I should have said, is that there's no better way to appreciate an image that begs to be displayed large, than as a large print.

Rich