You will always be limited by your actual screen resolution. Scaling up will help a tiny bit, but your actual resolution will always limit you in the end. Viewing distance will not make up for the fact that the one pixel you're viewing cannot properly represent that data that was contained in 4 pixels. Increasing view distance will indeed give you the retina effect of not being able to see your pixels (that's the definition of retina) but your initial resolution will still be the same. It's like the retina display of an iphone vs that of an ipad. They are both retina, but the ipad can show you much more data, because it actually has more pixels.
Since you work with photos, let me put it this way: scaling on a non retina display is just like taking a photo of a detailed high resolution photo, but you're taking that photo with a low megapixel camera. Those low megapixels will always mean you're losing visual information from your initially high resolution image.
Speaking of retina, which Apple device has the best resolution display? The MacBook pro, the iPad 4, or the iPhone five? Which retina rules them all?