Mike Pearson Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Hi Twisties,
First, I am by no means an expert in this area. But I think you are taking the wrong approach so I’ll say so on the basis that the real experts will correct any errors.
A couple of years ago I got into printing pretty heavy for a short time (I only have so many walls). The approach my research lead me to, and which worked for me, was to set the monitor based on the conditions under which the picture would be viewed.
I saw a lot of folks saying you should always set the color temp at 6000K, others saying 6500K etc. That did not work for me. Further research found folks saying that if you were going to view the pictures under noon outside light those color temps were just fine, but if you were going to be viewing them in the average house you needed to set your monitor a lot warmer. That worked for me. I ended up at 5000K.
The next thing is how bright the screen should be. Again I found that if you were going to view under bright light you wanted a bright screen. In my house it is not that bright and I essentially ended up setting my monitor at the lowest brightness that kept good contrast – it is a trade-off.
So, once you have your monitor set your next step is accounting for the printer. I sent my files out for printing. In that situation your printing company should have profiles you can load into photoshop to do soft proofing. That is, the profile they send you shows you what your file would look like coming off their printers. Because you have your monitor set to the lighting where the picture will be viewed what you see is what your file would look like off their printers in your viewing setting.
All that is fine in theory, but you will want a test print because while you can get close you will rarely be exact. In my case my test print came back with a print in which the reds were a wee bit stronger than the soft proof and I kept that in mind when adjusting the files.
So, I guess the short way to say all that is that you want your monitor set so that white looks the way white will look in the place you will view it. If the light reflecting off the white in the picture will be warm light, the white will look warm there and you want your monitor to show that. If the light will be dim where you will view the picture then the light reflecting off the white in your picture will be dim and you want your monitor to show that.
Just my two cents from my experience.
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