Room lighting for image editing

If you're serious about photo editing, then pay attention to lighting in your office

Keith regularly tells people that they should calibrate their monitors for best results, but it's also important to consider the conditions you are working in, and how you evaluate your prints.

This short article is intended to give you some ideas and links to more info about what you need to consider when setting up your workplace lighting and decoration.

Why room lighting really matters

Thinking about illumination and room decoration will help improve the consistency and accuracy of your work.

As an example, most 'energy saving lightbulbs' are useless for critical lighting, even if they are cheaper to run...

The colour is (currently) pretty awful and I won't have one anywhere I'm doing any reasonable colour evaluation.

This graph shows why, although I should emphasise there isn't a lot of techy stuff in this aticle ;-)

CRI='0' (details later)

After monitor calibration...

Calibrating your monitor is an important first step in improving the quality of your digital imaging and printing. I've written quite a few reviews regarding profiling hardware and software, but apart from the Why don't my prints match my screen article, I've not really covered much about the rest of your office, or wherever you do your editing and printing.

How bright is the lighting in your office working environment at the moment? Is there any glare reflected from your screen? Are there any bright lights or strong colours in your view as you read this?

Lighting levels

Some hardware devices allow you to measure the levels of lighting.

My Eye One spectrophotometer for example, measures the spectrum of the light and allows me to get an idea of how good it is for accurately viewing objects, but that's jumping ahead - how about brightness levels?

I've just been looking at the Spyder 2 Pro for monitor calibration and it allows you to measure ambient lighting levels. Depending on the brightness it recommends different settings

Do note that this ambient measurement is not the same as the dynamic measurement you can get with the huey calibrator (-not- a feature I'd personally want to use. It's a feature beloved of many so-called 'reviews' and a masterpeice of marketing ;-)

There are actual ISO standards for office lighting for graphics design and Pre-press work.

They are called "Viewing Conditions -- for Graphic Technology and Photography" (aka ISO 3664:2000). A second related standard -- ISO 12646 ("Graphic Technology -- Displays for Colour Proofing -- Characteristics and Viewing Conditions") requires more stringent colour pre-press viewing conditions for monitor calibration and room lighting.

If you are setting up a lab for comparing printed output and digital image files, then use ISO 12646. Or, if you are a Web developer or desktop publisher who seldom creates printed proofs, you can use the less stringent IS0 3664:2000 for guidance.

Room decoration

Daylight is excellent, but it changes - I use big thick heavy curtains (not bright colours either!) I open the curtains and let the light flood in for showing just how much dust has accumulated in various corners, and when I'm dismantling some piece of equipment and a screw has dropped on the floor.

Even the curtains are probably a bit too bright when direct sun shines on them, but then I'm not doing precision photo editing all of the time...

Walls - good grey paint. Check the article mentioned above for some details, but do check that it really is grey when it dries.

Using a spectrophotometer, or spectrocolorimeter like the PrintFIX PRO allows you to measure the colour. Go for Lab measurements with the lowest a and b values for the most neutral.

Don't forget though that normal 'grey card' grey is quite dark and makes for a dismal room if you are not careful.

Furniture - grey of course :-) OK, if that's a bit too much then at least try to keep distracting bright colours away from your field of view (I have a large sheet of grey backdrop paper behind my monitor. If you are really serious you can take to wearing grey clothing... (OK, all black is probably OK too)

Lighting - Your monitor should be brighter than the ambient lighting, thus your vision will automatically see monitor white as 'white'. The lighting ideally needs to be 'full spectrum' lighting from 5000K to 6000K and needs to be able to render colours well. There is a number (the colour rendition index - CRI) which specifies part of this 'quality'. Aim for a CRI of over 90

Detailed info on CRI and what it means
Great short article on Colour temperature
Information about specialist bulbs with good CRI from Solux (note -- frames based site)

If you can find good D50 lighting then go for it.

Just remember that it's actually spectral power distribution (SPD) that is important, not just the CRI.

My own pet hate is the 'energy saving lightbulb', most common ones are quite dreadful in colour reproduction - until they have improved quite a lot then the only place in my home is areas I don't spend much time in.

The diagram at the top of the page shows that using my Eye One, they get a CRI of zero (or 'so bad, we're not even going to bother calculating it')

Print viewing

Use a 5000K light if possible.

The idea is that the white of your paper should look lighter in the viewing box (if you are using one) than when you take it out.

The picture above is the new GrafiLite. It uses an Ott Lite tube to give a colour temperature of about 5300K and a good CRI.

We've a short review of using the Grafilite with more info.

We've also a reveiew of the much more advanced PDV Desktop Viewer from GTI, with more information on viewing prints and soft proofing

Put your viewing area well off to one side of your screen -NEVER- right next to it.

Get used to actually turning your head to view the print, and don't ever try holding a print right next to a monitor. They won't ever match...

You might also want to compare the results with Soft Proofing, ideally when all is set up (monitor brightness, viewing source brightness, soft proofing, printer profiles) you should be able to edit and print your images with confidence

Summary

A bit more care in creating your surroundings will help improve the consistency and accuracy of your work.

This short note is intended to outline some of the areas that you might consider (lighting/decoration) - we'll update the links as we find more relevant info

More Info on this site

Why don't my prints match my screen? - title says it all...
Why do my prints look too dark? - something we're often asked
Beware the colour management tar pit - As colour management hardware comes down in price, more and more people are being told it will cure all their problems. A personal view from Keith covering some of the things it is good for, but also why you should be careful to understand why you are doing it in the first place.
Eye One Design Printer profiling, monitor calibration and ambient lighting checks
The Spyder2 PRO - review
and updates covering projector profiling and Ambient light measurement
Colour Management Check-up kit review
The PrintFIX PRO review
Black and white printing with MonoChromePro inks and QuadToneRIP
A review of a specialist B/W printing ink set. The Eye One is used to linearise curves for the shareware QuadToneRIP package.
An Introduction to colour management article by Keith and collection of CM info.
The Viewing page - basic monitor set-up
Print viewing distances - what printer and image resolutions to use for different print sizes.
Colour management links on this site
The Eye one Display 2 - review
Printer profiling with the Eye One Photo.

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