It's time to stop using the Kelvin scale for display calibration

The Kelvin scale has always been relatively simple to understand in the context of display calibration. Choose a higher value and your display white point will be bluer; choose a lower value and it will be yellower, etc. But this is where the simplicity stops and the confusion begins. What do we do if the white point appears to be magenta or greenish? And why doesn’t the display calibration Kelvin value correlate with the value of our lighting? In other words, why does calibrating to ~5700 Kelvin match 4100 Kelvin lights? Why can’t we calibrate to 4100K to match 4100K lights? So…


Celebrating 25 Years

25+ years ago I was splitting my time between a job where I was a scanner operator and an apprenticeship with a master printmaker. In the printmaking studio we were making large digital negatives on an imagesetter and using them to make hand-coated platinum/palladium prints in a wet darkroom. Back then everyone was using Photoshop 2 and had CRT monitors. While the color scans coming off the Leaf45 seemed pretty decent after a little color correction in curves, I was frustrated with how different the handmade B&W platinum palladium prints looked in comparison to the same images onscreen.…


Celebrating 20 Years of Color Management Consulting

20+ years ago I was splitting my time between a job where I was a Leaf45 scanner operator and an apprenticeship with a master printmaker. In the printmaking studio we were making large digital negatives on an imagesetter and using them to make hand-coated platinum/palladium prints in a wet darkroom. Back then everyone was using Photoshop 2 and had CRT monitors. While the color scans coming off the Leaf45 seemed pretty decent after a little color correction in curves, I was frustrated with how different the handmade B&W platinum palladium prints looked in comparison to the same images…