Figured out why my digital paintings look flat - it was the ambient light in my room

Been painting for a year and always wondered why my stuff looked great on screen but off. Last week I was working on a piece at 2am with all the lights off. Accidentally turned on a desk lamp and my monitor washed out. Realized I need consistent lighting around my monitor to see true colors. Been using a $15 lamp with a daylight bulb set behind my monitor and its like a cheat code. Anyone else notice this with their setup?

2 comments

2 Comments

maryh9621d agoMost Upvoted

Accidentally turned on a desk lamp" and it just instantly fixed everything? That's wild. I've been messing with monitor settings for months trying to get my colors right. Never once thought the actual light in my room could be the problem.

gavin_reed21d ago

I mean, I get what you're saying but are we really acting like a desk lamp is some kind of magic fix for color accuracy? Like, sure, ambient light matters, but if you've been messing with monitor settings for months, it's probably your actual monitor calibration that's off, not a single lamp. Turning on a light isn't going to suddenly make your whites look right or stop your blacks from being all washed out, you know? It might help a tiny bit, but I think people exaggerate how much a little lamp changes things. Maybe it's just me, but I've got a pretty average setup and never had a desk lamp fix anything that I couldn't fix with like, thirty seconds of fiddling in the display settings.