Why does a photo look different in different lights?

<p>I took an outdoor photo and had it printed at home. The picture looks very nice under the typical light bulb in the room, but the pictures shifts appeal when I put it under fluorescent lighting, it goes greenish and odd.<br>

Why is that? Ive noticed other pictures that look equally acceptable in all types of light, did I do something wrong?<br>

I just did a little softening, and then printed. Can I adjust an image to look acceptable in all types of light?<br>

Thanks.</p>

 

And here you are: http://www.photo.net/column/jonsienkiewicz/missing-pages-column/white-balance/

<p>Different light affects the way things are seen. I personally like fluorescent light though my pals think it's ugly and prefer bulb light. That's the reason we have White Balance in our camera menus. Our eyes are so wonderful and complex that they automatically adjust to different light settings within milliseconds...</p>

<p>Google light or color temperature.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Many fluorescent lights have a low <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index">CRI</a>, so colors won't look right under them.</p>

<p>Everything looks different under different lights</p>

<p>For the same reason that your shirt looks one way under "normal" light, and completely different under a black-light.</p>

<p>Light sources vary between one another as to their distribution of energy. In other words, the way we see objects vary from one light sources to another. Tungsten bulb lighting is rich in red energy. Fluorescent lamps are rich in some frequencies and poor in others. Sunlight generally starts out warm (rich in yellows and reds) in the morning. As the day progresses, daylight becomes quite blue, a mix or sunlight and blue-sky light. As evening rears, the light again takes on a yellow-red flavor.</p>

<p>The shifts in the color of light plus the color of surroundings like walls and green grass and trees, also affect the color of light. Indoors we not only have different colored lamps, we often have a mixture of different lamp.</p>

<p>It is not as bad as it sounds because we see with our eye's and our brain. This combination is able to adjusts, kind of a biological white balance called approximate color constancy. Our eyes change their sensitivity to colors. If you mount a pair of rose colored sunglasses, you see the rose tint but only for a few minutes. Soon your body adjusts and neutralizes the color of the sunglasses. You can demonstrate this yourself by placing strong colored cellophane or a strong colored filter over just one eye. Hold it there for a few minutes and then remove. Look about with fist the left eye and then the right. You will see a profound difference because your body will only have "white-balanced" one eye and not the other.<br>

Do perform this experiment. Doing so will explain a lot about this stuff.</p>

 

<p>Light sources vary between one another as to their distribution of energy. In other words, the way we see objects vary from one light sources to another. Tungsten bulb lighting is rich in red energy. Fluorescent lamps are rich in some frequencies and poor in others. Sunlight generally starts out warm (rich in yellows and reds) in the morning. As the day progresses, daylight becomes quite blue, a mix or sunlight and blue-sky light. As evening rears, the light again takes on a yellow-red flavor.</p>

<p>The shifts in the color of light plus the color of surroundings like walls and green grass and trees, also affect the color of light. Indoors we not only have different colored lamps, we often have a mixture of different lamp.</p>

<p>It is not as bad as it sounds because we see with our eye's and our brain. This combination is able to adjusts, kind of a biological white balance called approximate color constancy. Our eyes change their sensitivity to colors. If you mount a pair of rose colored sunglasses, you see the rose tint but only for a few minutes. Soon your body adjusts and neutralizes the color of the sunglasses. You can demonstrate this yourself by placing strong colored cellophane or a strong colored filter over just one eye. Hold it there for a few minutes and then remove. Look about with fist the left eye and then the right. You will see a profound difference because your body will only have "white-balanced" one eye and not the other.<br>

Do perform this experiment. Doing so will explain a lot about this stuff.</p>

 

<p>As one fine art customer said "Light has feelings too" !</p>

<p>We look warm at Sunset; Cool under gastly night vapor streetlamps too.<br /> <br /> Meat at the grocery store has redish bulbs and lighting.<br /> <br /> Stuff at old rock posters stores had a lot of UV to make glow colors pop.</p>

<p>Some materials/inksets/items look a lot more different when the color of light is varyed too</p>

<p>fluorescent light has a mess of spike; color rendering is often poor with common bulbs</p>

<p>CK -<br>

Ever paint a room in daylight and watch it 'magically' alter the color at night with standard tungsten bulbs on? Same deal. People matching paint color have to establish some sort of norm. People often take a piece of clothing from a store to the outside to see what it looks like in sunlight.</p>

<p>Ever notice how some white papers appear whiter than others. Some have dyes in the paper that fluoresce under light with UV (daylight) and that makes them appear brighter. Some detergents/laundry agents leave behind the same sort of UV dyes> It is this residue that makes your whites whiter than white.</p>

<p>Nature has made us sensitive to many hues and shades, but we sort of are lousy ‘rememberers’ of a color. Look at a color in your home. Go to Home Depot and pick some paint swatch cards that you think approximate the item. Look at them at home, side by side. Man, will you be wrong!</p>

<p>When I inkjet print something, I take it to the room where it will be displayed to decide if the color balance is right.</p>

<p>Jim</p>

<p>I have a different take on it...</p>

<p>As you mentioned, some prints that you've seen look good from one light source to the next, but this particular print only looked good under one light source. If the problem were just white balance, your eyes would adjust, and the print would eventually seem to be ok under any light source. But the problem is metamerism failure. Metamerism is just what everyone is talking about; under different light sources prints look different, but each color is perceived as equally different, so that your eyes eventually adapt. But when there is metamerism failure, the different color components of light reflect differently under different light sources, not equally, so that under different light sources, prints will never look the same to your eye, even after given time to adjust.<br>

Generally speaking, the problem is minimal with dye ink prints. But dye inks fade. When pigments first came out it was a profound problem. Manufacturers began to mix problematic pigments with dye ink in an attempt to fix the metamerism failure. That's when the Ultrachome inks came out. They were a big improvement, but it cut the longevity of a print from over 130 years to the 75 years +- that we have now. HP's Vivera ink is a pigment ink that is supposed to last well over 100 years. Time will tell.</p>

<p>Peter</p>

<blockquote>

<p>If the problem were just white balance, your eyes would adjust, and the print would eventually seem to be ok under any light source.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That's true ONLY for light sources with uniform spectral distribution.</p>

<p>Our eyes (and their supporting software) were designed long before fluorescent lights were invented.</p>

<p>Thus, there is no automatic compensation for the excess green which fluorescents typically emit.</p>

<p>- Leigh</p>

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