Your Working Environment

The first step to making sure that your monitor and prints match is preparing the room in which you view your monitor and prints.

For better matching results, use lamps/lighting that are 5000 K in your work room - This means that you are viewing the print and monitor in the same light as HVP Pro Lab so you can begin ‘comparing apples to apples’

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There are several things to be careful of when creating a suitable environment for colour matching. Using curtains or blinds to block outside light will minimise the effects it has on the colour of your photos. 

A monitor hood is also extremely effective in keeping your monitor from being influenced by outside light. Choose neutral colours for your walls and preferably achromatic grey for your desktop background. If your eyes grow accustomed to seeing reds, greens, blues, or other strong colour that are normally incorporated into photos, you may not be able to clearly judge the colours accurately.

If colour matching has been successfully performed between onscreen and printed photos under indoor lighting conditions in the evening, why do they look different under outside light during the daytime? 

When viewing objects in outside light during the day and indoor lighting in the evening, the colour of the light changes, so the colour of the printed photos (the reflected light) looks different. The problem with this is that monitors do not reflect ambient light; they emit light. Therefore in actuality, even if the ambient lighting changes, the colour of the monitor itself will barely change causing colours to appear differently when compared to a printout.