Re: Monitor White Point Confusion
Re: Monitor White Point Confusion
- Subject: Re: Monitor White Point Confusion
- From: Ben Goren <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2019 10:17:44 -0700
On Mar 7, 2019, at 12:04 AM, Refik Telhan <email@hidden> wrote:
> The widths and the peak wavelengths of the band-pass filters are different
> for each monitor. Given the that absorbance curves of the SML cone pigments
> for each individual is slightly different (the standard viewer is just an
> average), it is not surprising that we perceive monitors differently. A
> through testing is a must to find the best match for each lightbox, monitor
> and viewer combination.
I’d heartily agree that more research is called for, and that many will wish to
do their own experimentation to find what they’re most comfortable with.
But there’s also an elephant in the room whose general direction you’re
pointing at, and we should also be addressing the elephant.
Specifically...we have all these high-precision technologies for measuring
color — and yet, in the graphic arts industry, the consumers of the products
are doing their own evaluations with their own eyes.
It has the feeling to me of a T-shirt maker using engineering techniques suited
for jet engine manufacture.
When you buy a T-shirt, you don’t expect it to be a perfect custom fit. Nor do
you expect it to fit the same way after you wash it — and, for that matter, you
don’t even expect it to fit the same way after you gorge yourself on a
Thanksgiving dinner. You especially don’t expect the same shirt to fit anybody
else the same way.
Color perception is potentially even more dramatically variable. Go outside on
a sunny day. Close both eyes, but cover one (and only one) especially well with
your hand or your arm. Point your face at the sun for a minute or three. The
closed-but-uncovered eye will have lots of long / red cone fatigue. The
closed-and-covered eye will be heading towards dark adaptation. The color
perception differences between the two eyes will be very dramatic!
Never mind the perennial philosophical pondering of “Is your red the same as my
red?” Your own red is never _exactly_ the same any two times in your life — so
why should you expect anybody else’s red to ever be exactly the same as yours?
This is not, of course, to suggest that we should just throw our hands in the
air and give up.
It _is,_ however, a suggestion that we should stop measuring with micrometers
and instead start marking with chalk.
Let’s say your monitor and viewing booth are both perfectly matched, your
ambient lighting is a perfect D50 spectral match, walls are all neutral gray,
and you’re even wearing a neutral gray body suit...
...so what?
Your client is going to be reading your magazine in a doctor’s office with
flickering greenish fluorescent tubes with fifteen-year-old ballasts. Your
print is going to be hung over the receptionist’s desk, where it’s going to
reflect the glare from her $50 Dell monitor — and never mind the fluorescent
pink athleisure top she’s wearing today.
So...make sure your editing environment is one your clients would be happy to
spend some time in. For most, that means a nice office setting without any
really glaring colors — and maybe put some effort into getting
better-than-average lighting. Calibrate your monitor to a white point roughly
(+/- 1000K) the same as ambient (and get a good profile of the monitor). If you
can’t make proof prints on the same stock as the final, at least get something
with a similar amount of OBA. Use a good ICC-aware color management chain — and
always use perceptual rendering unless you know exactly why you want something
different. (A good perceptual rendering is going to “bake in” common human
visual system quirks better than any of the colorimetric ones; since the final
consumer is almost always an human and not a colorimeter, that’s typically what
you want.)
And then don’t think about color again until you actually have a problem you
need to solve. Even then, suspect that your problem is more likely to be with
out-of-gamut colors (including poor gamut mapping) than with your display
calibration or the like.
Instead, focus more on the content and artistry of the work you’re trying to
reproduce....
Cheers,
b&
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