On Tuesday 25 May 2004 11:27, John Cupitt wrote: snip > An alternative is to buy a display with a built-in colour calibrator. I know Barco sell a few of these, there are probably others. Not very cheap though :-( > > http://www.barco.com/prepress/en/products/product.asp?gennr=1215 > > They have a "dumb" mode where they just display sRGB which will work with any computer.
Sony also has their Artisan monitor with "built in calibration". I am not sure how much is in hardware and how much is software. But it might be worth looking into. This is an expensive monitor and it comes with a hood to limit the amount of light that hits the viewing surface. > > Of course the environment (wall colour, monitor surround, desktop theme, temperature of ambient illuminant etc.) is also very important, and often ignored. > Yes very important. I have only D50 lighting. My display desktop background is gray and everything else is as neutral as I can get it and still have a usable environment. My walls are an eggshell color; close to neutral but a little too warm and perhaps too light. My next monitor will have a gray case. My mouse, pen and tablet (Wacom) are all gray/dark blue. Dark neutral colors in the workstation room are best. In addition you need to consider not just the color temp of your illuminant but also it's CRI (Color Rendering Index) - how close it's overall spectrum is to sun light. CRI values should be 85 or higher - 100 is perfect and not attainable. Most incandescent lights have CRIs in the 50s and low 60s. Most florescent lights have CRIs in the 60s and low 70s. There is one bulb, a low voltage halogen Solux MR-16, that has a CRI 99.35 and a color temp of 4700K. This bulb is highly regarded. It is inexpensive but needs a fixture that supports an MR-16 bulb. The most easily obtained D50 bulbs are the Philips compact florescent bulbs which can be gotten at Home Depot and other places. These have a CRI of 85 and cost about $15 each for a 50 watt output bulb. These only come in 50 watt output. There are other more expensive compact florescent bulbs with CRIs as high as 92. But these are not available locally and must be ordered. In the T8, T10 and T12 type bulbs you can find CRIs as high as 97. But again these are hard to find and tend to be expensive. These are usually not avaliable locally. There should also be no direct light on your monitors viewing surface. The best setup is to have a totally dark room for your graphics workstation and a bright D5000 high CRI illuminated area for checking your prints and proofs. Of course a totally dark room is not practical so make the room as dim as you can and still work. As has been said several times in this thread every element of this is important. Environmental issues like lighting are things that you have control of. For more info http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-one-category?topic_id=1701&category=Color%20Management%3ELighting http://www.soluxlamps.com/ One of my favorite web sites about color management. Windows centric but lots of useful info http://www.normankoren.com/color_management_2.html#Implementation%3C/A%3EHere, %20you%20helped%20me, %20again!%20%20I%20am%20learning%20how%20to%20do%20the -- Hal V. Engel
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