best enviroment to retouch in?

[flieckster]

does any one have any advice on lighting an office of retouchers? we moved our desks to the back half of the building and we're right near some blinds. i'm thinking of tinting the windows behind them to block that light but allow us to see outside. its either that or black out shades which i think will make it too dark. thoughts?

[skoobey]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

No screaming colors like bright yellow, red, green, blue etc. And you'll be good. Don't tint, put some color neutral thick curtains instead. Tint is often blue or orange, and will color the whole room that color... or you can tint for privacy, but will still need those blinds or curtains in order for tint not to affect your work. (I said curtains because they still let in the light while being semi-neutral unlike blinds, which block the light).

[flieckster]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

is there such thing as color neutralizing tint by chance? if not we should invent that.

[Shoku]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

Subdued, consistent lighting is best. So being next to a window is the last thing you want to do. Even with curtains that reduce the amount of light, as the sun crosses the sky the light emitted through the curtains will change, or if the day is cloudy compared to clear.

Office walls should be neutral, workspace should be neutral as possible if you sit in a cubicle. Computer desktop should be neutral. Application windows should be neutral. - it is amazing how much our surroundings influence our perception of color.

We use cubicles with specially made canvas tarps that cover half of the cubed space, over the monitor - really helps to maintain consistency in our building with ceiling-to-floor windows and skylights.

[skoobey]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

We use super fancy lamps, neutral gray walls, and have window shutters. Does it really make that much of a difference? Not really. I open the window often. No color casts, no direct sunlight on the monitor, monitor shade and neutral colors in your field of vision are more important to me. I have an all white room at my home office, and I still think it does the job fine.

[Benny Profane]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

Neutral grey room, zero window light, small discrete desk lamps just to be able to get around.

[Greg Curran]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

Neutral grey room, zero window light, small discrete desk lamps just to be able to get around.

Exactly. I think the color of the Lightboxes are called Munsell grey.

http://www.rpimaging.com/munsell-neutral-gray-paint.html

Buy a non glass screen too.

[andrewrodney]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

Calibrating the digital darkroom environment by Karl Lang (a color scientists):

https://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/calibrating_digital_darkroom.pdf

[andrewrodney]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

its either that or black out shades which i think will make it too dark. thoughts?

For image editing, the conditions cannot be too dark (unless you're walking around into furniture).

[klev]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

I agree with the others on this. Additional light influences the appearance of things on screen. You want to minimize that as much as possible. The rules about display brightness relative to ambient brightness don't apply here. Those are for comfortable viewing, not making careful judgements.

[skoobey]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

I think that my eyes get very tired in a completely dark room, I can't work under those conditions.

[klev]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

I think that my eyes get very tired in a completely dark room, I can't work under those conditions.

Your eyes get tired if your room is dark and your display is really bright. While this may be necessary if you're trying to match a proof viewed under a very bright source such as a viewing booth (most of these systems specify 160 cd/m^2), it's not usually a good idea. High quality displays can produce good results relative to validation targets at 80-100 cd/m^2 white points. Your eyes won't tired quickly at that brightness level, even if that's the only light source. I have used this setup. If display and environment are too bright, it throws off my judgement (granted I don't do a lot of retouching these days).

[skoobey]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

IDK, i think I've found a sweet spot with dimmed lights and monitor at just above mid point on the brightness scale. I don't get tired easily, and I can still do things around the office.

[klev]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

That makes sense if it works well for you. My point stands that it's better to go darker than brighter. I've seen people do some very silly things. The silliest was someone who used an imac with a mirror-like like screen and improperly controlled lighting. That was pretty extreme though.

[andrewrodney]

Re: best enviroment to retouch in?

ANY ambient light that strikes the display affects your perception of black which affects your perception of the image! And some of us have the capabilities to calibrate our displays to specific contrast ratio by means of adjusting black. Ambient light can hose that approach.

http://digitaldog.net/files/BlackisBack.pdf