You are not printing fine art HQ Photography books for a living, do you? Don’t overthink it like me in the beginning. Even if you do occasional prints you will be more than fine and definitely better than without any norm light and calibration. This is a little bit of hassle that most people are not willing to do, so I definitely recommend if most of your work is Web-based, simply go with 6500k. Of course, you need to switch your screen profile too. So if I need to edit prints, I would just unscrew the 6500k and work with the 5000k and vice versa. 6500k with screen calibrated to 65000k for The Web.5000k with screen calibrated to 5500k for Prints.

I personally have 2 different light bulbs and 2 different color profiles on my screen: Standardized lightĪs mentioned above, there are certain standards that were established internationally for picture processing, we just will cover 2 of them: So the choice is yours and based on what you want to achieve. I now use 6500k most of the time, because 90% of my content is web-based. I actually went with 5500k for print processing which is an often discussed topic, but use whatever works best for you.

Your whole screen will have a yellow hue.įrom my personal experience, you get great print results and the colors really are on point when using light around the 5000k range while editing, but for me it was unbearable. Now be aware that 5000k, if you haven’t worked with it before, will probably set you off because it is way too yellow for your nonprint images. If you want to print your pictures, the standard is around 5000k. If you solely process pictures to release them to be viewed on digital media, you can simply go with a color temperature of 6500k, which is the standard for digital media processing. Calibrate for Web and Print are two different pairs of shoesĭepending on your goal this is important. You, of course, can’t assume that all your users view your pictures on calibrated screens, that would be ludicrous, but you want that the pictures that leave your post-process have the best possible quality. You edit your photos on this and send them out on your Instagram feed and wonder why you get shitty or no response, that’s because the picture probably looks completely off on a standard (non-calibrated) screen. Just assume you are using an ultra crappy, old, and not calibrated monitor for your post-processing, which has colors, contrast, and brightness levels that are totally off. If you want your viewers to have the best possible experience when viewing your photos, you got to calibrate your screen. You might wonder, why do I even need to calibrate my screen? Well, this depends entirely on what your approach to photography is and how much weight you put on how your viewers experience your work.

Monitor Calibration: Linux Howto Why it’s important to calibrate your screen

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