Seeing advice about room lighting.

[Doc_Pit]

I was reading some material from Eizo that advised trying to keep the ambient light in the work area as close as possible to the brightness and color temperature of the monitor.  If I tried to install a florescent light to replace the overhead ceiling light in the room, it would reflect on the monitor surface as a hot spot.  My only solution would be some high intensity floor lamps that can take 6500K bulbs and bounce light off the ceiling.  I'm wondering how others might have addressed the relation between monitor brightness/color and ambient brightness/color in the workspace.  Or, is it a real problem at all?

[Conrad C · Accepted solution]

To lower the amount of glare and hot spots, a standard solution is to add a black hood to the display that extends beyond the top, and at least part of the sides. Many pro displays either come with a hood or have one as an option. The following Eizo link is an example.

https://www.eizo.com/products/accessories/hoods/

They can be pricey; it’s quite acceptable to just cut and fold your own display hood using black mat board, I’ve done that in the past.

If I’m just casually editing, or not working on color, I don’t control room light very much but when color perception is very important, I’ll lower the overall room light level by closing the windowshades and only running low ambient light. That way, the display is a much higher percentage of the light I’m seeing and there isn’t much other light bouncing onto it.

It can be more than about the room lighting, too, it has to be thought about holistically. For example, I’ve read about very picky colorists who paint the walls of the room neutral medium gray, because if you have the right lighting but the walls are painted green then that’s going to influence you. And some note that if one day you wear a brightly colored shirt, its reflection on the display can alter what color you think you’re seeing.

So like a lot of things in life, you sort of figure out what amount of effort you want to go to in order to reach a certain level of certainty, and you go with that.

[Trevor.Dennis]

@D Fosse is our Eizo expert, although Conrad is officially very knowledgeable .  He will get an email about this thread and be along shortly.  

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

Well, I don't know if this qualifies as professor nutty, but at work (where this is pretty critical) I've covered the wall behind me with black felt.

I picked the space so there is no direct window light hitting the screen, but the room otherwise has normal ambient daylight, which is important for giving the eyes a neutral visual reference. For the same reason, I use a light application interface, not the default dark (a very important but underrated factor!) I also turned off direct overhead lights.

With all this, the hood doesn't really make much difference.

All of this mainly affects how you see the dark shadow values on screen. The highlights punch through anyway.

[Doc_Pit]

Thanks for the tip about the light application interface.  I'll need to try that.

[Lumigraphics]

Any decent photographer has ways to handle lighting hotspots and coverage. You could hang a diffuser below the light fixture, for example, or install indirect lighting. Personally i doubt it will make that much of a difference.

[Trevor.Dennis]

Doc, I'm thinking you are getting pretty serious about this stuff if you have invested in an Eizo monitor, or am I reading too much into what you wrote?