Color Temperature - NEC SpectraView Profiler 5 User Manual

Profiler
User Manual
D50 spectral distribution curve
„D50" spectral distribution curve of a CRT monitor

4.6 Color Temperature

If you heat up a black body you will see that it radiates light. The spectral
distribution of the emitted light can be correlated with the temperature
of the black body. Any light's color temperature is the temperature in
kelvins (K) at which the heated black-body radiator matches the hue of
the light.
The lower the color temperature, the more yellowish/red- dish the
emitted light (e.g. incandescent lamp -> approximately 2800 K). The
higher the color temperature, the more blueish the emitted light (e.g. not
calibrated CRT monitor -> approx. 9300 K).
Color temperature only describes a certain color sensation, not a
specific spectral distribution. So, it's unknown, how the measured x and
y values are composed spectrally. The CIE (Commission Internationale
de l'Eclairage) have de- fined spectral distributions of standard lighting
situations, the most important of which is the D-series (D = Daylight).
SpectraView Profiler 5 offers quite a lot of different possibilities to make
a selection for the color temperature.
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