The general lighting in your studio or office can have a massive impact on how you see your digital prints. Your monitor should be calibrated to the same lighting conditions. Users can change the lighting condition used throughout their AVA systems. The default lighting condition used in all AVA applications is D65 2° or full spectrum daylight.

Checking the quality and type of lighting illuminant in the studio/office?

Some offices may have lots of windows which flood natural daylight in. Throughout the day, the lighting will be most likely D50 or D65 which are both variants of full spectrum daylight. As days get darker towards our winter, this means that those lighting conditions can change.

Many offices have tube or bulb lighting, so how exactly can you tell what type and quality of lighting you have?

If you look on the bulb, with tubes its most likely at one end, there will be details of the light spec aswell as models and manufacturer details. There is normally a 3 figure number in amongst the information, for example, 965 or 850.

The first part of the numbers, the ‘9’, represents the CRI or Colour Rendering Index, how wide the spectrum of light is from the bulb and how accurately colour can be displayed. 9 in the above example means 90%, so it has a very high rendering index for viewing accurate colour with 90% and above of colours be rendered accurately to the human eye.

The second part, the ’65’, represents the illuminant or the lighting temperature. 65 in the above example means D65, so standard daylight.

AVA recommends the studio lighting, unless other wise specified, should have a high CRI index of 8 or above and be a standard daylight D65. So 865 or 965 bulbs and generally considered the better option for a colour critical environment.

Setting the lighting condition throughout AVA

Users can change the lighting condition used throughout their AVA systems. The default lighting condition used in all AVA applications is D65 2°.

To work in a different lighting environment, launch the AVA CMS Controller and click on the Viewing Conditions tab, and choose your desired lighting condition from the drop down menu at the bottom of the window. Any changes to lighting conditions require the recalibration of your printers and monitors.

If you change the lighting condition in the AVA CMS Controller, you must re-profile your monitor and printers.