Hey All…
… I’m asking myself …
Which Color Temperature do you set in your LC Display and how does that influence the colors of professional (online) paperprints.
More specifically: what temperature do I have to set on the display so that the paper prints correspond as closely as possible to the impression on the monitor?
Am I making a mistake and the question is stupid? I can’t figure it out by thinking even hard…
THX,
Mr Carson
If you want your prints to match your display, you need to buy/rent/borrow a screen calibration device and use it to generate a profile for your display.
Setting a color temperature or any other subjective setting on your display isn’t going to lead to anything but madness.
I’m not an expert, but I believe the light the print is viewed in is the most important.
If you want the picture on the monitor to look the same as the print when viewed under a 5500K light source, you should calibrate (not just set, calibrate, like @paperdigits says) your monitor to 5500K.
If you look at your prints in bright daylight, your monitor temperature should be closer to 6500K.
I’m still poking around in the fog, so to put it more simply: whether I set my display to 5500 K or 4500 K… does it make a difference with the paperprints?
Yes. If you set your display to a lower colour temperature:
Or in other words: if accuracy is your goal, you should match your monitor to your viewing conditions.
Traditionally you calibrate to the reference conditions for the colour space you’re working in, so for an sRGB monitor, that’s 80 cd/m^2 CIE Illuminant D65, gamma 2.2 under D65 lighting with 10Lux screen surround.
The sRGB ICC profile then converts this to the ICC XYZ D50 connection space and then a further ICC profile converts it for your printer and final viewing conditions.
The further you move from these settings, the less “correct” the data in the file and the less accurate the ICC profiles will be.
When I become a famous photographer and everyone wants to see my images, my gallery will simply consist of one large monitor hanging on the wall of one small room — it’ll save me both the absolute ovary ache of printing and the crazy-high price of renting a space . 
Ok, now the fog is clearing… actually easy, if one has got it.
Thank you all !!
It’s extremely unlikely those presets are calibrated in any way, so chances are they won’t really be that close to the “promised” color temperature. Even my HP monitor’s factory calibrated sRGB profile wasn’t super accurate.
If you’re serious about printing, you need at least a reasonable quality monitor, calibrated with something like the CaliBrite ColorChecker Display, and some knowledge about color managed workflows. The printing service should have profiles you can use for soft proofing.
This looks like a decent tutorial:
https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/soft-proofing.htm
I think in addition you need to seriously consider the ambient light of your viewing room. The color and brightness of the light there will have a strong effect so if you stick to a strick recipe you might still be less than optimum
80 cd/m^2 seems quite dim to me (I have always used 125 cd/m^2). Can you elaborate or send us to some enlightening sources? Thanks!
The colour and brightness of the ambient light have a large effect, that’s why it’s standardised in the specification.
80 cd/m^2 is dim, but then sRGB was standardised in the era of the CRT where you were lucky to get reliably bright output.
The spec, including the reference viewing conditions, can be seen athttps://www.w3.org/Graphics/Color/sRGB.html
Yes but as I understand it the spec also relies on you following the standard for ambient light or viewing conditions… its of no use to set it blindly to 80 if you edit in a brighter room… at least that is how I understand it… in summary my rule of thumb would be as follows from this statement…
“Ideally, you should control the ambient lighting in your editing area so you’re free to set the luminance you want. The monitor should be the brightest object in your line of vision. If you’re forced to edit in a bright setting, luminance must be raised so that your eyes are able to see shadow detail in your images. Some calibrators will read ambient light and set parameters accordingly. In controlled situations, this feature is needless and even unhelpful.”
So 80 might be fine if your room is dim but many rooms are not… and also often not the color temp of the stated reference as well so I think it is still a factor to consider and compensate for one way or the other…
That doesn’t work unfortunately as the gamma of the monitor would also need to change to match the brighter display and brighter room, otherwise the relationship between shadows, mid-tones and highlights will be off.
If you edit as the spec states, then any ICC profile based conversion should work and the look will remain constant. If you diverge, then the look will vary.
This is a big topic as the range of display brightnesses and viewing conditions increases and there’s a lot of work in standards bodies to deal with it.
Thank for the link, good info.
I don’t have a proper photometer, but a phone app on a foggy morning reads from 30 cd/m^2 to 300 cd/m^2, depending on a spot in a room. Hardly a controlled environment then, “amateurs”… 