What LED lighting for a photo-processing room?

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Name
Toni
Edit My Images
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I'm sorting out a room for (among other things) image processing, and would like lighting that won't skew my color percpetion too much. The walls are all white/grey and the carpet will be dark grey to keep things neutral. I normally use warm white (3000K) LEDs in our living spaces, but could use a different colour temperature if that's perceived to be more helpful.

Any thoughts?
 
I'm assuming you are talking about image editing using a computer and monitor?

My thought is that your perception is much more influenced by the image you see on your monitor, than the colours and lighting of your surroundings.
In my opinion, provided you have a correctly calibrated monitor, the room back ground doesn't matter very much.
Some colour calibration software has a "background lighting" monitor facility, but I've always been advised to disable this.
The backlighting of the monitor never changes whatever the ambient lighting, and that is what is displaying your image.
I develop/edit my images under different lighting conditions, from daylight to artificial light and always had good, and consistent, results.
I've never found the need to go back and re-edit my images because the ambient lighting is different.

That's what works for me, but others may have different opinions.
 
Thanks guys, I think I'm going to try 4000K cool white LEDs for the main lights.

Hi Toni,

I joined a camera club in January last year and got a local specialist to print my competition entries, (http://digitalartimages.co.uk), he's local to me and an accomplished photographer.

He said the images I were supplying to him, colours were ace - all down to the exposure / brightness from screen to print.

I failed again and he said, 'just hold the print up next to your monitor and get it the same as the print'

Not sure if this is 100% relevant but it sounds like good advice to me before I send him any more images to print.

Cheers,
Dougie.
 
He said the images I were supplying to him, colours were ace - all down to the exposure / brightness from screen to print.

Getting density right for printing requires quite a bit of care, and yes, that's an excellent way to sort that side of things out.
 
Hue or Ikea color change bulbs?
Can set white balance on them and think Hue's CRI isn't too bad
 
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