In article ,
N. Thornton wrote:
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.

I'm afraid they do. If you use dimmed tungsten as a background, the brain
adjusts to that. Might not be the case if your screen was so big as to be
your full field of view, but this isn't of much use for a computer monitor.

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.

It's been known from the early days of colour TV that the control rooms
where the cameras are adjusted must have the background lighting of the
same colour temperature as the monitors. Of course, for just watching TV
at home, you can have what suits you, but I'm talking about ideal viewing
conditions here - as might well apply at home if you're doing graphics
work on your computer.

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.

The colour temperature of daylight doesn't necessarily change with
brightness - that daylight might well find its way into a room via a white
reflective area - say a wall. In the middle of a field, it will, because
as the day changes both the level and colour temperature change, but you
don't use a monitor in a field.

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.

I'm not knocking individual preferences - just saying how it should be
done if you wish pro results on graphics, etc.

And thanks to Andrew Gabriel for a good piece there.

Absolutely.

--
*Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn