What's a good color temperature in vague terms for DTP work?

August 4, 2010 9:28 AM

What's a good colour temperature for DTP work, in terms of warmness/coolness? That's to say, what will avoid me getting too much of a shock when I see the printed materials (that include photos)? My 2009-era Macbook Pro's display edges towards warm (yellowish) while my Samsung SyncMaster 2333 edges towards coolness (blueish).
posted by deeper red to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Sounds like you need a color calibrator.
posted by wongcorgi at 9:35 AM on August 4, 2010

Seconding wongcorgi - (very) broadly speaking, working toward print output requires warmer temps, but finding out the type of equipment and the actual paper being used for the final product should give you some resources to help find recommended printing profiles and calibration settings.
posted by jalexei at 10:16 AM on August 4, 2010

Response by poster: I calibrate using the built-in utility but I don't have the money to buy calibration equipment.

But the moral of the story is that for my purposes I should look towards warmer rather than cooler?
posted by deeper red at 12:11 PM on August 4, 2010

Best answer: I do a lot of color work for a printing company, and I have my monitor set warm; paper, as a general rule, trends yellowish more often than not.

There's no shame in using the built-in color calibrator. It's good enough for most situations, so long as you understand that you'll never, never get to say, "but it looked perfect on my monitor." I'm guessing you already know this though.
posted by lekvar at 12:31 PM on August 4, 2010