I usually work on my Blender stuff at night usually on my laptop and with quite low level lighting in the room ( incandescent) So the lighting has a yellowish cast.
As a result when Im judging the color / contrasts etc for my images im doing it in this context with this iighting on my screen.
Images often look quite different on a computer screen depending on the lighting in the room.
My questions I guess are these ;
what lighting to you tend to have when you are working
are you conscious that images may look different depending on the room lighting were your screen is.
Do you optimise for that lighting?
My general assumption I guess has been that most computer images are viewed in artificial often incandescent lighting and often with lower light levels and so adjusting my images when in this sort of lighting makes sense. Does it?
Or am I the only one worrying about this issue? LOL
I agree that the images that look really well balanced in low light can look dark and less contrasty in something like daylight. I tend to prefer the lower light because my assumption is that I’m seeing the image in purer state whereas daylight or brighter light is brightening the image ( and also some color cast) I agree re the laptop screen. My options are a bit limited at the moment re that but that wont be forever. I tend to look at my images using other devices just t check and I have two laptops with different types of screens so that gives me a certain amount of cross check.
What would you optimise for - low light or bright / daylight? Perhaps it depends what we think the image will be used for / how it is likely to be viewed?
This is an interesting topic. I don’t have much info to offer so I did a couple of quick searches and found a couple of good links. I’m sure there’s plenty more to be found.
In general, CGI has the same requirements as photography here. The main thing to care about is white balance - Blender’s default working space is sRGB, which has D65 as it’s white point. Therefore, if you need colors to be accurate for e.g. print, your working environment lighting should be similar to D65 conditions (which is approximately average mid-day lighting).
It’s also possible to work with a different white point and still have color-accurate results, but it’s a little more tricky to set up.
Yes I had read about that before. Would that equate to the sort of light that european painters liked to use - a very even flat not overbright white? I tend to be doing my images for screen at the moment in a viewing environment were I myself am also viewing lots of images ie on the web.
Can you advise me where I van find a specification for D65 as it sounds like I shouid be paying attention to that if Im getting stuff printed.
That first link EXACTLY addresses the issue and in fact gives recommendations for different light levels for different types fof work and different devices. Going to digest that just now.
The actual type of lighting (diffuse vs. sharp shadows etc.) doesn’t really matter too much for correct colors, the hue is what’s important. You can find details regarding D65 on e.g. Wikipedia, but in general, look out for lamps with a “color temperature” of around 6500K.
A cheap method for display compatibility would be to sample many displays and then create an average. Meaning, put the image on your phone, laptop, TV , camera and compare all outputs, then create a version which is balanced on most displays.