Hi gang--
I have to correct some erroneous information I contributed a couple
of weeks ago.
It turns out that OptiCal and the monitor Spyder can only be used as
a colorimeter (to measure color temperature and light intensity) of
your monitor, NOT your room lights. ColorVision tech support says
they don't support the use of OptiCal/Spyder for room lights and I've
been getting wacky results in making the attempt so it looks like
they're right.
I also made a mistake in stating that if you use halogen viewing
lights you should adjust your monitor to the same color temperature
as those lights. It turns out that to do this you'd have to turn
down the blue channel so much that you'd get dingy images and very
little tonal gradation (on your monitor) in the blues.
These misstatements came from misinterpreting some mentoring I'm
getting from an accomplished professional in this field.
What's still true is that if you want to be able to compare an image
on the screen to a physical print right next to it then the color
temperatures of the viewing light and the monitor must be the same,
and the brightness of the light reflected off a white paper in your
viewing area must be the same as the brightness of your monitor.
A new twist on this is that you can still do reasonably good
comparisons without having to match color temperature and brightness
if you do not have the print viewing area next to your monitor. That
is, if the viewing area and the monitor are never both in your field
of view at the same time, and if the environment around your monitor
is dark enough not to affect you're eyes' interpretation of the
colors on the monitor, then you can look at the monitor, "memorize"
the color and tone of part of an image, then turn your back on the
monitor and examine a print in your viewing area. Apparently it only
takes a few seconds for your eyes to adapt from one color temperature
to the other.
Hope this helps,
--bill
>>"OptiCal lets you use the Spyder as a Colorimeter! You can use it
>>to measure the actual color temperature of your viewing lights be
>>they halogen incandescents, high CRI flourescents or whatever, then
>>it lets you set your monitor to THAT color temperature rather than
>>to one of the generic standards (5,000K or
>>6,500K). "
--
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Bill Fernandez * User Interface Architect * Bill Fernandez Design
(505) 346-3080 * bill_sub@billfernandez.com *
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