Dave Plowman wrote in message ...
In article ,
Andrew Gabriel wrote:
Another area confused with colour temperature is the nature of the
spectrum a lamp emits -- continuous at one extreme and a few discrete
lines at the other. This is completely unrelated to colour temperature,
but unfortunately the lighting industry marketing people confuse the
issue for using terms which imply a continuous spectrum when they
really mean high colour temperature. The two properties are not
related. Descrete line sources, or sources which are continuous but
are not even or have some holes/peaks in the range can cause colours
to be washed out, simply because they happen to be missing some of
the components a particular pigment responds to, of have an over-
abundance in some part of the spectrum. Generally your eyes are
quite forgiving of descrete line light sources, providing there are
enough lines covering the visible spectum and they are not too badly
matched. TV cameras and anything else which splits an image up into
colour components and reassembles it at the other end can be a lot
less forgiving though.


You've put it far better than I ever could, Andrew, - thanks. Continuous
even spectrum lighting is essential if you need to match colours - or
indeed even expect them to look 'right'. And with low level lighting as
you might want while using a monitor or viewing TV, it's equally as
important if you wish to see the colours as intended.


Hang on, the colours on a monitor screen are produced by the monitor
and dont depend on the ambient lighting. The eye's perception of them
depends to a limited extent on ambient lighting, but not by much. It
depends mainly just on the monitor, as the brain concentrates on this.
Hence one can use different colour temp ambient lighting without
having much effect on how the monitor is perceived.

Secondly the monitor brightness level is far removed from daylight,
thus proper perception of the monitor colour will occur if the monitor
uses a lower colour temp than daylight. Ie 9000K is well off for
correct perception. Even 6000K is much too high.

Then there's the question of preference... I prefer a low colour temp
display, I find it much more comfortable to work with, and the colours
overall appear richer and warmer. And why not.

And thanks to Andrew Gabriel for a good piece there.


Regards, NT