The LCD is used as a viewfinder by digital compact cameras. To be able to use it you need to capture a live video feed of the scene, which is provided by the LCD. The LCD’s normally measure between 1.5″ and 2.5″ diagonally, with typical resolutions between 120,000 and 240,000 pixels. But there are LCD’s that function at a higher level of performance. For example, some LCD’s have an anti-reflective coating and/or a reflective sheet behind the LCD, to allow for viewing in bright outdoor daylight. Other LCD’s can be flipped out of the body or angled up or down to make it easier to take low angle or high angle shots. There are cases when an electronic viewfinder supplements the main LCD. A smaller LCD (0.5″) is used to simulate the effect of TTL optical viewfinder. On Digital SLRs, LCD is used only to review images or change the camera settings. It doesn’t support live previews.

If our camera has an LCD screen we have an advantage, we can play back our images immediately after shooting. However, due to the fact that only about 120,000 to 240,000 pixels are used to represent several millions of pixels in the original digital image, the image might not be sufficiently sharp. To be able to determine if the image needs reshooting, further magnification is needed. But the magnification factor can be different per each model of digital camera, or can be missing. Some cameras allow basic editing functions such as rotating, resizing images, trimming video clips, etc. In playback mode you can also select an image from the thumbnail index.

Each digital camera with LCD has a set of buttons that can be use to change the camera settings. These buttons are also used to change adjust the brightness or the color settings of the LCD itself. Sometimes, the main LCD is supplemented by one or more monochrome LCDs, located on top or at the rear of the camera. These monochrome LCDs show the most important camera and exposure settings.