burkphoto wrote:
So true. Most monitors are simply re-purposed screens that would have gone into TV sets otherwise.
The standard color temperature for TV screens is 9300°K! So if your monitor has a 6500K setting, that is closer. Some prefer 5000K, but that works better for pre-press in an offset litho shop. DataColor suggests 5800K in dim room light.
Out of the box, MOST monitors are waaaaaaaay too bright. That is why prints of images adjusted on them come out too dark. The proper brightness level for photo editing is somewhere between 80 and 120 candelas per square meter. A brightness of 105 cd/m^2 is what many photo labs use, because that matches the brightness level PPA uses to judge prints in competition.
If you illuminate a test print in a light box with 5000K fluorescent light (91 CRI or higher), adjust brightness until a gray card placed over an 8x10 print reads EV 9.75 on a hand-held exposure meter (the iPhone app, myLightMeter, works fine for this). That will closely match a monitor set to 105 cd/m^2.
A lot of folks throw up their hands and say, "No one has a calibrated monitor except for a few nit-picky photographers, so why bother?" The answer is that, while most monitors are not calibrated, the vast majority of them are close enough to normal that calibration does matter. And of course, if your image is going to be printed via any means, it needs to be adjusted ONLY on a calibrated monitor, or what you see on screen will not match the resulting prints.
So true. Most monitors are simply re-purposed scre... (
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If amsteur photographers cared as much about their monitors and their printers as they
do about their cameras, we all be a lot better off. The final image is what counts.