Got my GTI print viewer. WOW!

[walter.sk]

I've been getting used to my NEC 3090WQXi monitor with SpectraViewII and the iOne Display 2 colorimeter.  Yesterday I got my GTI PDV3e/D dimmable print viewer.  Since this is the first time in my 10 years of digital photography I have a controlled viewing situation, I am completely blown away by the difference!  While the cost of the print viewer totally trashed the piggy bank through at least 2 generations, it was the best investment I could have made at this time.  I compare the thrill of seeing my print and the softproof match so well to the first time I tasted a canoli, or shrimp tempura!

I will embark on a test of the system at higher light intensities (the 3090 is currently profiled and calibrated at 135cd/m2), but right now I can't believe I can actually adjust the softproof and have evidence that what I am seeing on screen is just about what I will get in the print!

I also find that dealing with D65 in the monitor and  5000K in the viewer is so easy to adapt to.  I have both on my desk, equidistant from my seat and separated by my ridiculously large Dell XPS 730 desktop computer, which is sufficient to keep light from the viewer from spilling into the monitor area, and vice versa.  It is not the ideal setup, but there is nowhere else in my tiny room that would work better.

Now, some of my inevitable questions:

1) Adjusting the light intensity of the viewer:  I tried by bringing up a white file on the computer, softproofed as if it were a photograph, using the paper profile with which my recent prints were made.  I put a sheet of the photo paper in the viewer.  It was very difficult to equalize the monitor and the viewer.  What I did do was to put an actual print in the viewer and bring up the file from which it was made, and by trial and error I found the best match.  I then tried several other images and prints and located what seems to be the best average setting of the viewer's light level.  Is this sufficient?

2)  My desktop is about 3 inches too high for this viewer, and I am limited in how high I can raise my seat and still get the keyboard/mouse drawer out and fit my legs under it.  The result is that the top 1/4th of the print in the viewer was reflecting the glare from the fluorescent tubes and interfering badly with the function of the viewer.  Since I had no way to raise my seat or lower the viewer, what I did was angle the top panel with the lights upward, putting a wedge made from a piece of matboard folded over on itself a few times in the joint where the lighting panel meets the back of the viewer.  I had to tape another piece of matboard on the front to keep me from seeing the fluorescent tubes.  I had then to increase the light intensity to make up for the greater distance of the tubes to the print.  Is there a better way to have done this, to get away from the reflections?

My thanks to Andrew Rodney for pointing me in this direction, and to Michael Reichmann and Jeff Schewe for their great Camera to Print videos.

To anyone who is doubtful about the D65 monitor vs the 5000K print viewer, all I can say is find a way to try it yourself.  I can honestly say here that seeing is believing, and that  being able to totally trust that all of your work on an image, and tweaking the softproof, can actually predict how the print will look.

Sorry for the excessive verbiage, but I am really excited about this!

[Tim Lookingbill]

It's great that you "saw the light" so to speak and got you a neutral viewing environment for assessing color on your prints.

After a while your eyes will thank you as well.

Glad it worked out for you.

[walter.sk]

It's great that you "saw the light" so to speak and got you a neutral viewing environment for assessing color on your prints.

After a while your eyes will thank you as well.

Glad it worked out for you.

Thanks for the response.  I have a technical question as well.  The power cord for the print viewer has a bright chartreuse paper attached, with a warning not to plug the unit into a UPS, because of the nature of the ballast in the system.  It said that the viewer could be damaged.  Would this also hold for plugging into a surge surpressor?

[Thomas Krüger]

Last week I was looking for neon tubes for my lab and found the daylight type Philips MASTER TL-D 90 De Luxe 58W/950.
The light intensity to view prints should be around 500 lux, which can be also measured with a light meter on white paper resulting around f2 and 1/250 s at ISO 100 (data from © FUJI PHOTO FILM (Europe) GmbH, Qualitätsservice). Are these "poor man" viewing conditions also ok to review prints ?

[walter.sk]

Last week I was looking for neon tubes for my lab and found the daylight type Philips MASTER TL-D 90 De Luxe 58W/950.
The light intensity to view prints should be around 500 lux, which can be also measured with a light meter on white paper resulting around f2 and 1/250 s at ISO 100 (data from © FUJI PHOTO FILM (Europe) GmbH, Qualitätsservice). Are these "poor man" viewing conditions also ok to review prints ?

It depends on what you mean by reviewing prints.  If you mean  comparing a softproof of your image (on a well calibrated and profiled monitor) with the actual print, the intensity of the light on the print should match the brightness of the monitor.  There is no arbitrary value that is correct, as it depends on the monitor brightness as well as the room illumination.

[Thomas Krüger]

Hmm, the intensity of the light on the print should match a low level viewing illuminance of 500 +/- 25 Lux (to simulate normal viewing conditions), thats from  the ISO 3664:2000 specs.
Kevin Mills has written a nice article about lighting the workspace at http://www.kevinmillsphoto.com/2008/10/lig...-your-workspace .

Philips offers also another type of lighting tubes that are used in graphic and print studios, the Philips TL-D Graphica Pro.
Specifications of the TL-D Graphica Pro.

[digitaldog]

Would this also hold for plugging into a surge surpressor?

That's fine. I've had my GTI SOFX in one for years.

[digitaldog]

Hmm, the intensity of the light on the print should match a low level viewing illuminance of 500 +/- 25 Lux (to simulate normal viewing conditions), thats from  the ISO 3664:2000 specs.

Take a look at the date that ISO spec was introduced. I don't think it has been updated. 16-25lux was the recommendation for ambient light in the old CRT days when getting 95cd/m2 out of a new CRT was a big deal. Now the ambient light can't be TOO LOW, but it can be too high. Considering the physical minimum luminance out of modern LCDs (140-150cd/m2), no reason to have to stick to such low recommended levels of an old ISO spec.

Again, adjust either display or booth (or both) to produce a visual match. Doing this with a CRT (even a new one) versus an LCD (even an old one) will require quite different values for the print viewing luminance.

I don't know why folks want to greatly diminish the luminance of a modern display technology that provides one great benefit over CRT, that being the luminance, because they used an older technology which simply had to be run low. If you force a low luminance for print and display, you might be getting dangerously close to the physical minimum luminance the LCD can hit and you do need to ensure an even lower ambient lighting in the surround. You save some energy, a useful goal. I'd start at a higher luminance for the LCD that its comfortable hitting, raise the booth to match (or in my case, lower it by half from its max).

[Tim Lookingbill]

Isn't the appearance of contrast the main issue, Andrew?

A room lit up with manufactured dispersed artificial light to balance the luminance of a bright display doesn't render contrast similarly on a print. Or are you saying in addition to the lit up room have a separate viewing station or booth with focused light?

The one thing that bugs me about all these lights is when you want to lighten or add or reduce contrast editing the image on the display you encounter hue/saturation distortion these lights don't mimic when you reduce their luminance. It's not a big deal. It's just that when tweaking to get specific hue's to render as you want, these lights tend to fight you a bit.

For instance say you have a shot of a cadmium (canary) yellow sports car against a cobalt blue graduated sky shot with a polarized lens, you stand the chance when adding definition and contrast to the yellow car, which adds a bit of red, the yellow still looks slightly greenish or more a lemon yellow while the sky either turns royal blue or cyan-ish depending which brand of light used.

No real problem just a quirky behavior I notice.

[NikosR]

I have roughly matched the luminosity of my GTI with that  of my calibrated monitors by using the SpyderPro 2 to take measurements of the GTI luminosity at the print holding surface level.

I also compliment the GTI with a Solux 5000K tungsten desktop lamp. The main issue one might encounter with the GTI is the relatively non-uniform wavelength distribution of the fluorescent tubes and maybe some strong UV component. Using the Solux to double check helps checking out potential issues with metamerism and UV brighteners.

[walter.sk]

I have roughly matched the luminosity of my GTI with that  of my calibrated monitors by using the SpyderPro 2 to take measurements of the GTI luminosity at the print holding surface level.

Did you have the spyder face the print surface on the GTI, or did you reverse it and do an incident reasding of the light reaching the surface?

[digitaldog]

Isn't the appearance of contrast the main issue, Andrew?

For the print its very important. There's often a very big disconnect between the contrast of the display and the print.

Or are you saying in addition to the lit up room have a separate viewing station or booth with focused light?

Does the environment only have the booth or are there other lights affecting the ambient light? In either case, lower ambient light (less light striking the black of the display) the better.

[NikosR]

Did you have the spyder face the print surface on the GTI, or did you reverse it and do an incident reading of the light reaching the surface?

The latter. Not sure how accurate this is but it seemed OK. I took a color temp measurement also which came close enough to the rated 5000K.