Digital BW, The Print

Hi Marc.  

For over a  year, I really tried to get 6500K to work for me.  I 
wanted, if possible, to calibrate my monitors to the Windows and WWW 
standard, since that would make life easier all around.  Some people 
seem happy with 6500K for their personal work, but it never gave me 
what I would call an acceptable monitor to print match with good custom 
profiles.  At 6500K, the monitor is a bluish white, so I was always 
adding more yellow to compensate.  My prints always looked much 
yellower than my monitor (using D50 viewing lights and the same 
brightness as my monitor).  I knew my profiles were good.  I know the 
eye adapts, but mine never could make that big a leap.  

So, I spent months experimentation with color temp, gamma, luminance, 
etc.  I have found that when set to 6500K, neutrals on screen are very 
blueish, both to the eye and measured with a spectrophotometer.  5000K 
is spectrally neutral, and also happens to be about the color temp of 
most printing papers.  One of the whitest papers I ever use is Epson 
Premium Glossy, which measures about 5200K.  The rest are warmer, in 
the 4800 to 5000K range.  

To complicate matters, monitors vary in quality and range.  Most have a 
definite "sweet spot" where they perform the best.  So for me, ideally 
5000K is the best point.  But lower temperatures, especially on lesser 
quality monitors, can reduce gamut, smoothness, etc.  If you stay 
within the sweet spot of your monitor, the loss is minimal, and in my 
opinion well worth a good monitor to print match.  Once you step out of 
the sweet spot, you begin to lose too much.  For this reason, I 
calibrate my monitors to somewhere between 5000K and 5500K, depending 
on the actual monitor.  Once I did this, my monitor to print match 
became nearly perfect.  The same file will now appear less blue (more 
yellow) on screen and the prints match nicely.  

Contrast level also varies quite a bit from one monitor to the next.  
My LCD gives me the correct distribution of tones when set to 2.2, but 
my CRT at work has to be calibrated to 1.8 to give me the same tonal 
distribution.  I use a special Lab file to evaluate all my profiles, 
and this gives me the consistency I need for my personal and 
professional work.

White luminance is another important setting.  A pure white image in 
Photoshop should have about the same apparent brightness as a sheet of 
white paper when viewed under a D50 viewing light.  If they are very 
different, it will be difficult or impossible to get a good monitor to 
print match.  The brightness of the viewing light will affect apparent 
contrast, shadow detail, saturation, etc.  I choose to set both my LCDs 
and CRTs to between 90 and 100 cd/m2 for consistency.  This means I 
also need to have the same approximate ambient brightness in my room 
and with my viewing lights, both at home and at work. 

So, while some people are happy with 6500K, I'm not.  The closer I can 
get to 5000K, given the limitations of the monitor, the better.  Try 
them both and decide what works for you.  If you are happy with your 
match at 6500K, stick with it.  If not, try some other settings.  

Lou

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "marcsienicki" 
<marcsienicki@y...> wrote:
>
> Hi all.  This is a follow-up question to my earlier posting on 
luminance level calibration.  
> With regards to white point, I've always left it at 6500 but wonder 
if I should change it to a 
> 5000K since I view my test prints under a D50 light source while 
working on them.
> Thanks for helping me climb the learning curve, Marc.
>