monitor to display and work on A3 at 100%

[ik9000]

Does anyone know how to work out what screen size+ spec I need to look for (in terms of pixel density/pitch) to get a large monitor that will display A3 pages at full size 100% with enough room for the ribbons, toolbars and the like around them without having to drop the page size % ?

i.e. I need to see, and be able to work on, a whole A3 page in one go, at full size as if I was looking at a paper print. It feels like it should be a simple thing, but some web searching is full of people saying "ooh pixel scaling ratios", and "monitor pixel pitch not mapping 1:1 so the aspect ratio gets distorted" and all sorts.

Any tips?

[cptwhite_uk]

I'm no expert in this area, but I would assume a 32" 4K display should provide the necessary space physically. From there it's a matter of setting the DPI in the program's settings so that 100% scale on screen correlates to actual size in real life.

A PDF is more of a container format for housing images, text and other medium. You can have a an PDF with a DPI value of whatever you like (typically printed media is around 300 dpi if I'm not mistaken). The lower the DPI the lower the resolution / clarity. The display DPI is a seperate thing to an images' DPI, the Display DPI just scales the virtual size of the image on screen to the real world. So if set correctly (to match your display's DPI) then 100% on screen will correlate correctly with actual size in real life.

Unless working with very low DPI images (images with the same DPI as your monitor). Then the pixels will never scale perfectly with actual print detail so there will always be some degree of ratio scaling. As mentioned earlier print medium tends to be around 300 dpi, and even a 4K monitor will not be more than 200 dpi.

For reference, the pixel density of a 28” UHD screen is 157.35 Pixels Per Inch (PPI). This compares to 108.79 PPI for a 27” 2560 x 1440 model and 81.59 PPI for a 27” 1920 x 1080 monitor.

To get close to true 1:1 pixel scaling (near 300 dpi) 4K would only neat you a screen around 15", so a 30" 8K screen would be near 300dpi

[kalniel]

A monitor from 24" or bigger is all you need:


from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LCD_screen_sizes.svg

[ik9000]

A monitor from 24" or bigger is all you need:


from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LCD_screen_sizes.svg

Not so, 24" is not nearly big enough. I'm running 24" and you can't get A3 at 100% nevermind with menu bars, toolbars, windows bar etc. Even with everything set to full screen you still don't get proper true-size on screen.

[Jonj1611]

Even when I used to work in the newspapers we never had anything like that. It was all just scaled

[ik9000]

it's part of the sustainability push to go paperless. We currently have to print at A3 to see what it looks like. If we can find a way of getting it truly displayed we can start to amend the process to bypass this (largely wasteful) stage.

[DanceswithUnix]

Holding a pair of A4 sheets (I don't have an A3) up against my 27" monitor there is plenty of space around the outside. About an inch and a half at the bottom, and about 7 inches to the side.

That's a fairly cheap to get monitor size, I like 1440p for it's ability to do programming etc with no scaling. A 4K monitor would be better DPI, but personally my eyes can't see it at normal viewing distance and 1440p is quite sharp enough. It is pretty easy to get height adjust with swivel on 27" as well if you want your A3 in protrait.

At work we are getting IIYAMA ProLite XUB2792QSU-B1 Quad HD 27” IPS monitors for engineering work, £260 at currys. They are nice monitors generally, so might be worth a punt.