Monitor Temperature Settings

[Gordon JL]

Someone I know tells me that if there are temperature settings for monitors or television sets, it's best to set that temperature to warm for best neutrality, instead of normal. This sounds a little fishy to me, but the image does look more natural (at least on my home theatre rear-projection Toshiba) with the temperature on warm. I have an LCD monitor that I'm currently using, and he also recommends that I have the temperature be set at 6500°K; however, websites I've been to recommend 5000° K. He says that setting is often not as neutral as the former one.

So is this true that warmer is often considered the better (more natural) of the three temperature settings (cool, medium, warm)?

Also, you guys know where I could download or view a monitor calibration "thing" that I could use to help calibrate my monitor? I could use something like that to determine what really is more neutral.

 

[Scottdvx100]

6500 is cooler than 5000.
Tungsten (warm) is 3200ºK.
Neutral doesn't mean warm, it means neutral.
Some of the issues are what is your viewing room like. If you have a lit up room with a lot of tungsten lights then the screen image may look cool in comparison. But for real color correcting is done in a dark gray or black room. Film color correction is usually done at 5000 or 5500 since that's the color of the projectors.

 

[andre]

Set it to what you find best for the average pictures you look at. Broadcast "white" is 6500K. Skintones are sometimes better with a warm setting. Hue (NTSC) settings are sometimes more critical for getting good looking pics, than color temp settings.Colorimeters used by broadcasters are very expensive and allow to callibrate a monitor.