Color temperature in your Digital processing room

[Gobert]

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May be a somewhat strange question.

I have to buy new LED lamps for my digital processing room as my present TL lamps have reached their end of life phase. Which color temperature in Kelvin do you recommend?
Or is the light which is surrounding you (almost) irrelevant for post-processing?

[elmars]

I think the color temperature gets really important, when you are looking at prints. Monitors are illuminated by themselves so You see the color temperature they create. I use 5700 K for my digital processing room.

[evikne]

I have no dedicated editing room or lamps. But when I fine tune colors and contrasts, I always do that late at night, and turn the ambient light very dim so it affects the screen as little as possible. 

[pgk]

If you know the illumination under which prints are finally to be displayed then it might be worth ensuring colour temperature of the lamps matches this. If not (usually the case) then something near 'daylight' is probably reasonable in order to give a none warm biased colouration. Precision is only really highly relevant when it can be carried right through the process.

[zeitz]

Based on the recommendation of my Eizo dealer, I use 5000K LED MR16/GU10 track light bulbs.

[Richardgb]

My 'digital processing room' also has to serve other domestic uses, so I can't go too industrial...

Nevertheless, a few years ago I sourced some 23W / 1450 lumen Philips 'daylight' 6500K CFL lamps being touted as 'bluer, brighter, and better for health' than most domestic lamps for standard light fittings, the latter being of the order of 18W and about 2700K.

The room has rather a white ceiling and 'magnolia' (a kind of pale cream) walls, and the bulbs go into the normal glass fittings giving a light which closely matches the colour balance on my Eizo monitor. When doing any processing, I turn off the light nearest the monitor so that there is no glare on the monitor.

All in all, an effective and cheap solution.

Edited August 28, 2020 by Richardgb
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