It's time to paint

[JohnT]

After living here for 15 years, it time for an interior makeover. This will begin with new paint so I have question. The spare room that will soon become a "new" office currently has white walls, but I'm tired--very tired--of white. I don't want to paint a color that will affect my imaging work in PS (I've heard colored walls will do this) so I'm thinking maybe a light gray, taupe, or what's called a "latte" color. What say you? Does wall color affect onscreen photo work?

[johnastovall]

Yes, wall color can have very adverse affect on color work. If you plan to do your editing and printing in there consider 18% gray. Both Fraser and Rodney in their books on color managment devote sections to this. Also consider maybe redoing the current lights with some D50 track lights.

[JohnT]

Thanks, John.

[bondarnes]

It is surprising the things that affect color vision. Most labs put women on their VCNA machines primarily because they could pay them less, but also because women have more accurate color vision. One lab manager told me that they had to bar one employee from eating mexican food because after doing so he started analyzing images with 10 points too much yellow. After several months they discovered it only happened in the afternoon after he ate at a mexican restaurant around the corner.

[johnastovall]

Also Graphic arts people don't just wear black to make a fashion statement but the reason it won't affect their colors. The Mac's graphite mode is expressly for graphics work.