it's not a big difference for normal people, but a massive difference for visual artists. but to be frank 1440p is already massively impressive - and way better than what normal people see on a regular basis.

@briancalifornia1

7 жыл бұрын

I agree i have a late 2012 27 i mac still looks great.

Great to see real and honest opinions rather than specs we can ready anywhere online. Thanks much!

Hey, Jim! Thanks for posting this video! Just wondering; for all those people you showed who couldn't tell which was the 5K display, and which was the 4K display, do you think the results would have been different if you had each display zoomed in to 100% on areas of the photos that had very fine detail?

How is the expereince and feedback after 1.5 years? i am in the mood to upgrade to a bigger monitor, probably 27inch and for that i need to upgrade the whole system for 4K resolution, it will be in the same ballpark as an 27inch Imac but better specs wise. What fo you suggest?

I think the refurb iMac 5K I bought is similar to yours. I love it! My Lr and Ps opens instantly, compared to about 15 seconds on my old iMac.

Love your review, How is it holding up since you got it? I'm considering the version instead. still worth it?

Hi!thanks for the great video!may I ask you would you suggest me to buy 27" i5 3.8ghz with 8gb ram(will upgrade myself after) ,2tb fusion drive and radeon580 8gb for photo editing and some times 4k video?do you think will run nice smooth and fast,import and edit,export fast?or shell I upgrade to i7 4.2ghz and 512ssd?thanks

Whats a best monitor compare to imac 2k screen! I mean when i saw the monitors we cannot tell which one is imac 2k or not

what does the resolution help me if I can only see 78% of the Adobe RGB color space?

can you please do a review on ultraflix running on the imac. It is the first to offer 4K streaming for the 5K retina display. It has all 4k content and has more 4k than netflix.

What specs you recommend for the 5k?

Is this the base model 5k you are comparing.. or have you upgraded 2000 gb of ram ?

I picked up my 5k last week. At the Apple Store in Providence, RI - they have the non Retina and the 5K near each other. Maybe I have better eyes than most (20/13) but I can see the difference clearly at editing level. Like Jim says the text is a huge difference but the photos are different too. You don't see any pixels when viewing at 1:1 at all with the 5K...

The thing I have to ask is this, is it working like the retina display? In other words, the retina display doesn't display that size, it displays the size of 1440x900 but combines the pixels together of all that resolution to make things sharper. Therefore, it is a bit sharper, but it's not a HUGE deal. But, if seeing a photo at the real resolution with no doubling or tripling pixels, you see the full resolution in a different way. Is the iMac actually displaying 5k or is it displaying 2560x1440 and then adding the rest of the pixels to that resolution to make it sharper? If that's the case, you won't be able to tell a huge difference. If it's displaying at full 5k, almost 15 megapixels, I would think there would be a big difference if you blew up a 20 megapixel photo on a 5k display vs a 1440 which is 3.7 megapixels. In other words, if it works like the retina display, then it just makes the text, icons, other things look a little finer in detail as there are way more pixels in the same area. But if you spread the pixels out and are not over sampling, it seems like one would be able to see it. Because if you watch a 4k video on a monitor that works like the retina display, you're not really seeing it at the size of 4k. You're seeing it at the size of 1440 with over sampled pixels making fine lines and some details appear a bit sharper.

thanks for the review~

How do the iMac monitors compare to the BenQ 99% RGB Photo monitors geared towards photographers? That would be a GREAT comparison!

Also. I have RDM installed and I can adjust the res to basically whatever I want on the fly. It's nice because using full 5k while hard to read text (small) I can watch a Netflix video, browse the web, use messages, and use Photoshop..all at the same time on the screen. There's that much space and some. I don't remember you mentioning the space u get in 5k in this vid

Now show them some text on screen, or the preview pane in something like photoshop.

I appreciate the video Jim Harmer . I noticed that you said that you moved from windows to an iMac a few years back, would you care to explain the pros and cons of the switch? I've recently been considering the move but was looking for facts instead of opinions that seem to be running rampant online. Maybe this could be another video idea. :) Thanks!

@LuisBrudna

9 жыл бұрын

improvephotography.com/31242/mac-vs-pc-for-photographers/

@SeanThurston

9 жыл бұрын

Luis Brudna Thank you!

I'm thinking its a distance issue. Once you bring your eyes closer to the monitor, you'll begin to notice that the pixelation is more present in the lower resolutions as pixels aren't as dense.

@ion-shivs

9 жыл бұрын

Brandon Davis Exactly. You have to look close to spot the pixels. None of these people knew to do that.

@Wldktz

8 жыл бұрын

+Ion-SHIVs I saw the difference when they zoomed in on the screens. 1:1 is where you are going to notice the big difference.

@ion-shivs

8 жыл бұрын

+Robert Weaver Exactly.

Nice review... mine reboots way faster than what yours did ... even with lots of apps open.... hmmm. and I have the fusion drive..... pretty interesting

Wow that boot time isn't normal Id say. My 5k seems to boot about the same time as the older Mac. I think I get black screen just slightly longer.

@verstaerker

8 жыл бұрын

+REDSnYELLOWS there is a problem .. that's not normal .. i would recommend a pram-reset

@Improvephotographycom

7 жыл бұрын

REDSnYELLOWS This was right after it was released. It was fixed later.

what are your thoughts on a 13" retina macbook pro late 2013 8 GB ram 256 GB SSD connected to a 32" HDTV 1080p by HD. My main focus would be 1080p video as the highest rest right now. I prefer desktops but also need portability so i use the same machine in both enviroinments. For storage I have a 1 TB drive in a usb case for direct external storage and I have network storage as well. So I have a good solution for storage. I would have gotten an iMac if i could have afforded two macs but since i only had a limited budge I figured i'd get the best portably config i could afford to use as a laptop and desktop depending on if I'm home or not. Great video I always enjoy the comparison videos. By the way I like the idea of an HDTV as a monitor when editing it gives the most accurate results how content will look on a TV. Considering I calibrated the display with a video disc and using a blu-ray player I am confident video will look correct too.

This is kind of silly. I notice a big difference in certain kinds of photos with fine detail, such as people's hair, particularly if they have wild hairs ... for example Bernie Sanders would look fantastic on the 5K monitor. The color is nicer, and I also step the screen res down a bit and the text is much easier to read - that is my hardest thing with monitors. Also with an SSD the system boots very fast and opens apps very quickly too. I don't do much photo editing. I do use iMovie. Browers are less confused ... I used to have my browser acting really weird sometimes. Rebooting is not a problem with me. Not sure why reboot would be so slow. I want to add 16GB to my existing 8GB for a total of 24 ... I don't think I need 32. What happened to the microphone port that used to be bhy the headphone port?

geeeezz.....yes because neither of them is actually displaying those images in max native resolution. Please go to display settings and check the actual resolution. Premiere might utilize native 5k. Neither LR nor any other picture viewer utilizes native resolution

Well, I came from a non-Retina 20 inch (1680x1050) iMac from 2008 which used a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. I had maxed it out entirely to 6GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM, and it had the ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO GPU with 256MB of GDDR3 VRAM. It was also using a 320GB 7200rpm hard drive. It was okay for its time, but I started getting into some video and sound editing later on, and I wanted a screen that'd be great for the future as 4K is on the horizon. I had gotten a Retina iPhone sometime along the way, and then I got an iPad Air 2 in 2014. So both my phone and tablet were Retina, and it was then that my computer's screen *really* started to look old. So I went all out with the 2015 model. I got mine with the 4GHz Core i7 Skylake CPU, upgraded it to 32GB of 1867MHz RAM (it apparently goes up to 64GB, but at the time it was an additional $1,100… so I didn't care for that), I maxed out the GPU to the 4GB m395X, and went with a full 1TB SSD, not a Fusion Drive. Going from a 1680x1050 to a 5120x2880 screen, the difference is **MASSIVE**. Put it this way, the 4032x3024 images that the 12MP iPhone 6S camera takes are almost entirely visible on this iMac's screen (the image cuts off a bit on the top and bottom). I think you're severely downplaying the screen resolution.

I got a 2011 and my new 2016i iMac 5K and I can see the difference straight away with text (it is quite different, the 5K looks like paper you cannot see the pixels whereas in the old model you easily can). I can see the difference with the dock too. The other great difference I noticed is that the antireflective of the new iMac is great, the 2011 screen reflects objects much brightly. Also when off the new screen is darker and the blacks on the screen are much better. It is a superior screen in every way!

The Dell 5k display costs nearly as much as the iMac itself.

@RobertLeBlancPhoto

8 жыл бұрын

+Bryon Lape I've seen it for as little as $1700 but you make a good point.

Hi. Thanks. It'd be easily noticeable if a 5k image was used and the 5k iMac (I just bought the late 2015, 7 days ago, prematurely, if only I could wait some months more for a the 2017 iMacs but business needs it) was set to native 5k and they are a bit closer:-) At a distance, true, can't see the difference if both are set in the default resolution (still 5k but pixel doubled). I like setting it to 5k even though the texts and UI are extremely small (I think that will improve the eyesight coz' if you use it most of the time with Zoom and Smart Zoom, you iris is kind of exercised to dilate and not to dilate, instead of just static eyes focus). Also the real estate with a 5k iMac is great, you can open your pro apps and see them, like a map instead of a globe, all at the same time- increased productivity and better eyesight in my experience.

I feel as if you make the video like 2-3 minutes long and change the title a little bit you could make a viral video.

It should not take that long to boot. I don't know how many boot devices you have setup for your system but resetting your nvram may speed up your boot time. support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

Iceland!

You are missing the point. First of all, its not just for photographers but film and video editors and when you zoom in to roto-scope or fine tune a key matte, or anything you would do to pixels besides just looking at a full resolution photo is a MASSIVE difference. Also, don't show a photo, show a piece of video which by it's very nature has more moving parts and looks better at a higher resolution than a lower one. There is a reason people love the higher resolution projectors at theaters and 72mm film because it has higher resolution in IMAX. Your test while interesting refused to look at some of the more important parts of the equation.

@Improvephotographycom

7 жыл бұрын

Adam Cohn Well like I said in the title, this review is just for photographers.

I bought a base model Retina 5K iMac about a week and a half ago. Love it. I can see a difference for sure. You DO get used to it, and becomes less "Wow". But when you look at a regular screen, you'll want to cry. This is when your appreciation level goes back up. My D810 files really shine on this machine. (Upgraded from 2010 15" MBP)

you need a 5k picture to use all the pixels the computer is just down scaling making it look the same as the non 5k

@Improvephotographycom

7 жыл бұрын

Austin Henson These are 36 megapixel images.

that is because ur not looking at 4k plus material , any shity images will look about the same on both screen , when u see true 4k plus material u can see how amazing the quality is but for that u need 4k plus material a regular screen like the other imac u got cant disaply that beauty

@burnedoils

9 жыл бұрын

or you're eyes cant understand 4k and over ur choice

@User.Joshua

9 жыл бұрын

Huh? He's shooting these photos with a 22.3 megapixel camera (Canon 5d3). 5K is not even enough to render the full resolution of the photos. Photos are the ultimate test for display quality, not video content. Furthermore, 14 megapixels can be had at entry level DSLRs these days. While enjoyable, it's not a necessity for photographers. Your production/processing will not improve because you have a better display... remember clients still have their crappy screens. Those so called "shitty images" are far higher quality than either of those screens can muster. Nevertheless, the 5K looks amazing... if you're so vain to spot the difference.

@User.Joshua

9 жыл бұрын

You're way out of your league here, kiddo. You're speaking gibberish. I'll leave you to feed on other trolls.

@burnedoils

9 жыл бұрын

lmfao joshua i just debunked u

@User.Joshua

9 жыл бұрын

Okay (thumbs up).

The people who pointed at the wrong display need to visit their optometrist.

@LeoInterHyenaem

7 жыл бұрын

Wizard Clip Audio Clearly no photographers out retouchers.

also u make me laugh 40 secons??? i got 8g of ram core i5 and my flash storage is almost full only 30 gb left and yet my computer boot up in 15 second and everything is all loaded u might want to check with apple if there isnt any issues with ur computer

I'm 14 years old and I'm really into photography and videography. I've been asking my dad for a while now if he could get me an iMac 5K. He has replied many times saying what would you use it for!? I told him for homework and to edit pictures and videos. He wants me to get the iMac only if there's a real cause. For example, he wants me to pay him back the money for it by selling my pictures, but I replied that's a really difficult thing to do. I've looked up online why would a 14 year old need an iMac and all this other stuff, I think the main reason I want an iMac is because #1 I freaking love the graphics! #2 I think I could do my essays and homework more easier without lag. And #3 I could edit pictures and edit videos and it could become a hobby. Also, I am in high school and I don't really wanna wait until college to get a 5K because I wanna already know how and what to do. I'd rather get an iMac 5k while I'm in high school so I'm already familiar with everything.

@brianagee2790

7 жыл бұрын

Too young. Best to not let your dad spoil you. Makes it more difficult to appreciate higher quality as you get older.

I bet you can tell a huge difference when you view pictures 1:1.

Sorry man but this iMac screens will never be colour accurate even if you calibrate them by using X-ray or datacolor software. You shouldn't call them best photography editing displays in the world ! You should look at ColorEdge eizo full gamut monitors developed for the main purpose which is photography.

@User.Joshua

9 жыл бұрын

Perhaps there is far too much emphasis on "color accuracy". Clients never have the quality of screens you're working on. You will not see a difference in print quality either. Many make the argument of these almost endless color gamuts being more useful for designers ... well, that's why colors have values. I think we've reached an extreme point of pixel pinching and absolute insanity for the craze that it "accuracy". I can't tell you how many times I've delivered a product/photo only to have clients initially view them on their smart phones or cheaper desktop/laptops. I think a simple color correction is all you need. We have far greater equipment than the professionals of yore, yet we complain over a 2% increase in accuracy. The marketing companies are winning this battle, we're a numbers generation. I complain, but I too would love the next 8k with 100% accuracy monitor of tomorrow (the ever contradiction).

@michonn2

9 жыл бұрын

Joshua Adams It is up to the client who very often request colour matching in 100% especially those in makeup business

You completely left out the two main points of the 5k screen... 1. It allows you to see more of the image while editing at 100%. 2. It allows you to edit 4k video at full resolution in a window while still having room left over for editing tools.

If you ask women...

lame

A rather weak test method. I agree with Adam Cohn comment, zooming in and video would give better value to your test. Also, bring in a group of non-photographer (which appeared to be the case) judging a monitor is a waste of our time and yours. I appreciate your effort just not a very helpful evaluation.

@geofflovig2183

7 жыл бұрын

A rather real world test method. My clients are non-photographers and are only interested in picking their favorites shots. They post their photos online, at reduced quality and are happy seeing and sharing them on small screen mobile devices. the rest will be printed. unless you are a top tier photographer/film maker, understanding the nominal differences is certainly of interest and helpful when balancing the books at the end of the day.

@LeoInterHyenaem

7 жыл бұрын

Thomas Steele True, but if we were to depend on the average Joe's (let alone, average Nancy's) standards of what is sufficient and what is overkill, there would be zero progress. In fact, it's in part because of the average Joes that Apple to those day sells bottom-spec computers (and iPhones: 32GB in this day and age, and even 16GB a mere year ago! Or 256/512GB storage in computers!), then sells properly-specced machines along these for a fortune! It's because of the reliance on housewives and grandmas / grandpas that a top-tier MacBook Pro in Europe now costs €5.000! Because Apple, in their arrogance and endless greed, capitalises on the average housewives' lack of standards and logical contentment with a computer with the same screen resolution as 10 generations older ones, with slightly more powerful processors and the same storage capacity. So that We the super users, photographers and videographers will have to spend 2-3 times that amount on current technology. That's an ugly thing to do. Take the 17" MacBook Pro. In 2010 it cost €2500 and came with the same storage (albeit much slower: SSDs were slowly gaining in popularity at the time). Now the 15" top-tier models that are supposed to cost about the same, cost €5000! Say, I pay €5000 for the best current MacBook Pro. It's not that it is going to last 15-20 years: €6-7 years later it will be unusable, if works at all by then (another valid complaint: they aren't made to last). It's the same trickery that Samsung & Co. use to sell "[Galaxy] Mini" - total crap they tout as the smaller-size equivalents of proper smartphones that in fact incorporate technology of a decade ago. Disposable rubbish. It's insulting to consumers and to the environment alike. If the consumer (more so, the prosumer) stops expecting progress, there will be none. If one acquiesces in paying a fortune on equipment without objecting, the prices will keep soaring. That's exactly what is happening right now. Another issue: if Apple thinks that in terms of income professional equals Mario Testino, then I wish I could agree with them. The fact of the matter is that many a professional, semi-professional and amateur photographers barely make the ends meet, and spending a couple of €5.000 computers every 5-6 years (plus, spending thousands in upgrades, tens of thousands on peripherals and so forth, not to mention tens of thousands on photographic and lighting equipment, not to mention a studio and all that, logistics and so forth) - is a luxury only 1 in every 20.000 photographers can afford.

Are these people blind?

i got the 5k iMac and i see a huge difference.. this guy doesn't know what he's talking about...