Color temperature

[Drake]

I've been trying to get my monitor calibrated for photo editing. One thing I just can't understand is the advice I see everywhere to set my monitor to 6500k. I've always used 9300k which seems perfectly neutral for me. On 6500k everything looks so warm, as if I were wearing tinted sunglasses, even after giving my eyes some time to adjust.

Am I missing something? Can anyone shed some light?

 

[KmH]

What is your monitor's gamma set to?

 

[Drake]

There's no hardware gamma setting in the OSD, so I have no idea. It's a few years old Philips 107E6 CRT monitor I use mostly for photo management.

 

[KmH]

Ah. I remember what a Cathode Ray Tube looks like. Watch out for the kick from that flyback transformer. Gzap!

 

[Drake]

Ah. I remember what a Cathode Ray Tube looks like. Watch out for the kick from that flyback transformer. Gzap!

Yeah, it's archaic I guess

Still, my laptop is too slow for photo editing, and has an awful TN screen. That's why I keep my desktop running. It processes the 10mp raws from my Rebel XS in no time, and the old CRT also does a pretty good job, much better when it comes to color accuracy than most cheap LCDs.

 

[clanthar]

Back to the original question: 9300K is way too blue and yes your display should be set to a 6500K white point.

If you've been working for years with a 9300K monitor the change to 6500K will be a shock and yes it will look very warm by comparison. To remind myself what it was like I just reached over and flipped my display to 9300K. Woah! the excessive blue was overwhelming!

That 9300K is a holdover from the days when a computer was a tool for word processing and spreadsheet work. The blue was easy on the eyes. You gotta make the switch. In a couple weeks it'll be just as much of a shock to switch back.

Joe

 

[Drake]

Back to the original question: 9300K is way too blue and yes your display should be set to a 6500K white point.

If you've been working for years with a 9300K monitor the change to 6500K will be a shock and yes it will look very warm by comparison. To remind myself what it was like I just reached over and flipped my display to 9300K. Woah! the excessive blue was overwhelming!

That 9300K is a holdover from the days when a computer was a tool for word processing and spreadsheet work. The blue was easy on the eyes. You gotta make the switch. In a couple weeks it'll be just as much of a shock to switch back.

Joe

Thanks for the info. Does it apply to all types of monitors? I've read in an article that 6500k is the way to go on an LCD if you want to get accurate colors, and that the same result is achieved at about 9300k on a CRT. I guess they were wrong, weren't they?

 

[clanthar]

Thanks for the info. Does it apply to all types of monitors? I've read in an article that 6500k is the way to go on an LCD if you want to get accurate colors, and that the same result is achieved at about 9300k on a CRT. I guess they were wrong, weren't they?

They were wrong. I'm still using a CRT and my CRT is set to 6500K.

Joe