Rock Faces and Monitor Temp Settings
While visiting some friends who have unique landscapes, rocky and hilly, on their property, I decided to try and photograph some interesting texture and patterns that developed naturally on the rock faces.
Rock wall at 5,500C
The above image was created on calibrated monitor with screen temperature set at 5,500C (degrees centigrade)
There was subtle colour on rock faces, stains from many years of weathering and with pink quartz in the area and sometimes it shows up in the light stain marks.
I used Photoshop to make these colours more vivid, not too much more than as it was actually observed. Clear blue sky on snow covered pond and not much direct sun of the rock face is why there is a lot of blue lighter parts.
I knew from past experience that red-blues (magentas and violets) become very blue when viewed on a standard monitor that is set to a temp of 7,000C and even worse when set to very bright 9,000C.
Rock wall at 7,000C
The above image was developed for a monitor set at 7,000C and compared to original image on the Calibrated monitor
I therefore developed a second image so viewers, who use the higher temp and that is everyone who hasn’t calibrated their monitor, could better set how I had intended the image to look.
Remember that when viewing images with subtle tones that there may be too much blue in all the colours do to the high temperature setting.
Why don’t I develop for the higher temp setting?
Its because I use an end-to-end color calibrated system and printer proofing, so that when I work in Photoshop I know my printed image will match my monitor reasonably close. For any fine-art type photographs there is always a little tweaking for the denser tones, especially if hints of colour in the darker shadows.
In the article on My Camera World blog; Web Makes Poor Place for Photographs I discuss this in further detail.
Niels Henriksen