Color Managing Monitor in Bright Room?

[nkp]

How does one go about color managing a monitor in a bright room, so that the monitor can properly anticipate prints?

After calibration, the monitor looks dark in a bright room, when compared to prints; whereas in a darkened room, the monitor and prints might be comparable.

Hypothetically, post calibration, one could just rails the brightness of the monitor.  But of course, this will throw off the calibration. 

If one raises the level of the monitor to a higher level before calibration, it appears that, to maintain the ICC standard, the calibration and resulting profile will just make the monitor that much darker. 

Putting this question a little differently, is it the case that, for an effective calibration and basis of print prediction, the room simply must be at an illumination level that's consistent with the ICC standard?  (In this case, darker.)

Is there not a way that one can accommodate a color managed system to a bright room?  If so, how can this be done. 

I'm using an I1 Display Pro system for calibration.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Color Munki has a device that measures room brightness and color temperature and adjusts the monitor in pre-determined intervals (say every five minutes).

I suspect that our resident color-management expert (Andrew Rodney, a.k.a. digitaldog) frowns upon that as gimmicky, and would advise to darken the room substantially instead.

[nkp]

Thanks so much for your comment. 

I'm not understanding the intervals aspect of your response.  Let's assume that the room illumination, while bright, is constant.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Thanks so much for your comment. 

I'm not understanding the intervals aspect of your response.  Let's assume that the room illumination, while bright, is constant.

Than it will change nothing.

I personally work in a room that changes light levels even as a cloud crosses the sky, not to mention the transition from daylight to light bulbs in the evening. In my case, I found it helpful to have such a device.

[digitaldog]

Color Munki has a device that measures room brightness and color temperature and adjusts the monitor in pre-determined intervals (say every five minutes).

Too bad this doesn't work.    At least if your goal is the calibrate the display to match something like the print. Or if your goal is consistency, in which case, control the ambient light conditions. You can't have too little ambient light! The less, the better as any light striking the display affects your perception of black. And black is damn important!
http://digitaldog.net/files/BlackisBack.pdf

[Doug Gray]

Too bad this doesn't work.    At least if your goal is the calibrate the display to match something like the print. Or if your goal is consistency, in which case, control the ambient light conditions. You can't have too little ambient light! The less, the better as any light striking the display affects your perception of black. And black is damn important!
http://digitaldog.net/files/BlackisBack.pdf

This is so true. Also, monitor reflected light varies from monitor to monitor. It's a gimmicky "feature."

[digitaldog]

I take issue with Andrew's statement that you can't have too little ambient light.

You can but again, you'd be wrong. 
The reason there's so much ignorance on the subject of color management, is that those who have it are so eager to share it! - The Digital Dog

[rasworth]

I believe this thread has wandered away from the original subject.  To the OP - you can certainly calibrate/profile your monitor so that the screen white reasonably matches reflected white on prints viewed in your ambient lighting, assuming your monitor has the required brightness capability.  Just increase the Luminance target in i1Profiler to a higher value and run the program.  It may take a few passes to home in on the required value.

However, as pointed out in the other posts, you won't be able to discern subtle changes in image black levels on your monitor.  Also reflected light from shirts, etc., onto your monitor screen will significantly affect color, as well as the general issue of ambient light flare decreasing its apparent contrast.  It will work for rough print matching, but certainly will lack precision for critical print evaluation.

Richard Southworth

[digitaldog]

Care to explain how I'm wrong on this issue, Andrew?

I already did (as and seems, Doug agrees). Also read what Richard just wrote which is quite true (and why when you purchased a Radius PressView in the old days, it came with a black smock; I've got two in the bag):

Also reflected light from shirts, etc., onto your monitor screen will significantly affect color, as well as the general issue of ambient light flare decreasing its apparent contrast.  It will work for rough print matching, but certainly will lack precision for critical print evaluation.

[digitaldog]

Care to explain how, in a room that's too dark, you won't edit your images to be too dark, Andrew?

That's another of your flat earth theories Frans. And OT.


The room isn't too dark. Your burden to prove it is.


While the ISO spec suggests something between 64 and 32 lux, they do not state it can't be lower and the reason why it's not an issue has been explained. I don’t know if you are purposely trying not to understand this, or if you are really struggling with it.


The ONLY downside is possibly bumping into something, otherwise, the lack of ambient light means none is striking the display. Which is good!
Soft proof, examine the display and print viewing conditions based on a calibration that produces WYSIWYG, turn all the lights off and edit if so desired.

[digitaldog]

From way back in 2007, on the ColorSync list by Karl Koch of BasICColor. This may help the OP and persuade other's to ignore Frans who's got a history here and elsewhere of providing odd ideas about displays and color:



Hi Roger,

its actually 2 relevant standards that need to be taken into consideration: ISO 3664 and ISO 12642.
If you interpret both, you end up with the following suggestions:
Ambient light below 64 lux, best below 32 lux (Bold and underlined for dear Frans)
Monitor luminance ABSOLUTELY above 80 cd/sqm, better above 120 cd/sqm
Viewing light 500 lux ± 125 lux

If you now want your monitor to match the viewing booth, it should be set to 160 ± 40 cd/sqm (= 120 to 200 cd/sqm). basICColor display takes this into account when calibrating the monitor and JUST color communicator2 (basICColor diLIGHT). The brightness of the viewing booth is being adpted to the calibrated luminance of the monitor. A traffic light will show if you meet or exceed any of the 2 standards, also for any other viewing booth that cannot be automatically calibrated but which can be manually dimmed.

The conclusion is that there is not much variance allowed in the ambient light and thus no necessity to "dynamically" calibrate to varying conditions. To do so would mean shooting at moving targets. All the "solutions" I have seen so far, check ambient light in shorter or longer intervals. If ambient light changes during these intervals, you have a sudden change of monitor characteristics when your correction kicks in. Do I need say more?

Regards,

Karl

[Doug Gray]

A problem that almost no one talks about, is that room reflected light can significantly change not only the effective black point of a monitor due to glare but can greatly change the black point of prints in a viewing booth when room ambient is high. Especially glossy and semigloss types. At least matte prints are more immune. It's also important to properly illuminate a print, preferably at 45 degrees as well as  minimizing reflected light from the operator off a monitor and off the prints. I wear a black tee shirt and keep the ambient around 30 lux when working to minimize reflections from the screen as well as glossy prints if there are significant shadows.

[GWGill]

I take issue with Andrew's statement that you can't have too little ambient light.

You can but again, you'd be wrong. 

It's well established that the ambient light level has an effect on the perception of the displayed tones. See "A probabilistic explanation of brightness scaling"

So the choice of very low ambient light levels is one which exaggerates tonal differences at the dark end.
This is neither right to wrong - tonal differences will be exaggerated around whatever light level you are adapted to, which is why standardization of viewing conditions is important.

If a very low ambient light level viewing condition environment isn't equivalent to the intended end user viewing environment, then you won't be seeing what your end users are going to see. There are technical ways of compensating for differences in viewing conditions, so merely comparing ambient light levels is not a sufficient way of evaluating the equivalency of one viewing condition to another.

[digitaldog]

If a very low ambient light level viewing condition environment isn't equivalent to the intended end user viewing environment, then you won't be seeing what your end users are going to see.

What end user viewing what?

[hjulenissen]

...You can't have too little ambient light!...

While ambient light will affect the display image (in generally undesirable ways), it will also (to some unknown degree) affect our perception of that image.

Without being a certified color scientist (tm), I would suggest that the best way to predict how a (reflective) printed image will appear hanging on a wall is to match that condition as "closely" as possible using a (emissive) display. If the print (and the wall behind it) will be lit to (peak) brightness A, then trying to match the same brightness in both display and ambience light sounds like a decent plan.

If the editing room has some unavoidable illumination corresponding to > A, then adjusting the display to match (effectively shifting image and surround brightness compared to the assumed print) sounds like the next best thing?

If the display has a limit in how small reflectance is possible in blacks (and thus is vulnerable to stray light), then perhaps it can be shaded against such stray light?

-h

[Dale Villeponteaux]

An interesting experiment would to compare an actual print in a "too-dark" room with one in an "adequately lighted" room.

Regards,
Dale

[digitaldog]

Flat earth theory? Really?

Yes!
Flat earth theory may be a new term for an author of political science fiction**

Frans needs to spend his time in a forum dedicated to political flat earth theories about where presidents are born, and who will pay for the wall if he can't prove that if you edit your images in a very dark (totally dark) room, you'll edit your images to be too dark:

Care to explain how, in a room that's too dark, you won't edit your images to be too dark.

This is the fellow who has wrote that lamps that state they are 5000K are indeed 5000K, you should always calibrate your display to that value. The full, agonizing paper trail of Frans flat earth ideas:
http://photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00bjDL

I recommend the same color temperature for the monitor and the lighting because color science suggests that would give the best match and in my experience that is indeed the case.

As I've asked for proof of concept here, I asked Frans how he measured the Solux bulb he states produces that value and he wrote: http://photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00bjDL

I don't have a spectrophotometer; the SPD curve is straight from the SoLux website, with permission. The datasheet on the SoLux website states the CCT for the "5000K" bulbs as 4901K at 12 Volt and the CRI as 98. And yes, when I calibrate my monitor I select 4900K and a gamma of 2.2.

So much for trust but verify as we've seen here with Frans idea that we'll edit images to be 'too dark' in a room where the ambient light is very low or non existent. Of course I do have a Spectrophotometer and good software and again proved him wrong:
http://photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00bkvN

Anyone else agree with Frans?


** https://www.amazon.com/Obama-Doctrine-Socialism-Corruption-Economic/dp/1463641133/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472738979&sr=8-1&keywords=Frans+Waterlander

[digitaldog]

An interesting experiment would to compare an actual print in a "too-dark" room with one in an "adequately lighted" room.

In a too dark room, the print will look too dark. 
This isn't new and if we forgo the thousands of years people have been viewing artwork and just examine people viewing photography, seems this issue came about recently. Due to the intermediary device we now use to edit our images: the display. I don't think anyone here (perhaps besides Frans who's ideas I can't fathom) would disagree that if you view a well produced print that doesn't look too dark when properly illuminated next to a very bright display, it appears darker. Is that print too dark? No. Take it into a large room illuminated by a 2 watt LED nightlight, is it too dark? It certainly appears that way.


The discussion was about editing images in a (too) bright room. Again, aside from Frans, the audience members here I recognize understand that ambient light can be too high. Frans might suggest hoods for displays are to protect the electronics from ObamaCare but I believe the others here know that light striking a display affects our perception of what we are viewing. There's also the ISO spec's already outlined here (see the text by Karl Koch).


Now we come to this idea from Frans that the room can be too dim/dark and the results are, our prints will be too dark. Dale, don't believe that without some proof of concept.


Any ambient light striking the display can affect our perception of black, especially when soft proofing where we recognize the black hole the display shows us when it's not simulating the output is again affecting our perception. Too bright? Not good. Too dim? No issue based on my conversations on this concept with Karl Lang (a guy who knows a few things about displays, creator of the Radius PressView and Sony Artisan), plus just understanding a simple fact about light and perception!

[digitaldog]

While ambient light will affect the display image (in generally undesirable ways), it will also (to some unknown degree) affect our perception of that image.

Without being a certified color scientist (tm), I would suggest that the best way to predict how a (reflective) printed image will appear hanging on a wall is to match that condition as "closely" as possible using a (emissive) display. If the print (and the wall behind it) will be lit to (peak) brightness A, then trying to match the same brightness in both display and ambience light sounds like a decent plan.

If the editing room has some unavoidable illumination corresponding to > A, then adjusting the display to match (effectively shifting image and surround brightness compared to the assumed print) sounds like the next best thing?

If the display has a limit in how small reflectance is possible in blacks (and thus is vulnerable to stray light), then perhaps it can be shaded against such stray light?

-h

I agree with everything you state above but the new 'debate' has nothing to do with display and print matching. We have to view the print which means it has to be illuminated which means ambient light. The new debate is, when you're not viewing the print next to the display, when you're editing your images, the room can be too dim and the result is, your prints will look too dark. Not a lick of evidence from Frans this will occur.


The older ISO spec's give a suggested and low range of recommended ambient light. They do not state it can't be lower and both Karl's state it can be.


When viewing a print next to the display properly, do everything you can to ensure no light strikes the display. That means using a hood, aligning the viewing booth properly and I'd submit, having no other ambient lighting. When editing the master image and not soft proofing (which is of course an output specific preview), the room can be dim, dark but shouldn’t be too bright because again, the ambient light can affect your perception (not only black of course).

[nkp]

I've been wanting to participate in my own thread, but I had to go to a different forum to find the Short form of HyperText Transfer Protocol (----):."  (Jeepers!)

I appreciate the input and am on the right track.  Clearly, bright rooms are accompanied by all sorts of problems.  For example, the effect of the light on shadows is the analogous to flare in cameras, which I hate. 

Dark rooms are best, sine they have the least influence on monitors.  It also occurs to me that, in bright rooms, the irises of the eyes will make the monitor appear darker, which will cause a problem.  (In this setup, the monitor appears darker than prints.)

With comments offered here, I take it that the ambient reading on the I1 Display Pro merely checks the environment to make sure that it's within proper bounds, versus collecting data as input to the profile.  That's been my thinking all along, so I kind of ignore that function.

The input has been very helpful.  Thanks.