Twitter Updates

Friday 11 July 2008

Inverting Screen Colours OS X

I often get saw eyes when reading web pages in low light on my macbook, so I find this keyboard short cut very useful.
ctrl-alt-cmd-8
Which inverts the colours. White text on a black back ground is much easier on the eyes, and since there is less light comming off the screen your eyes can adjust better to see the keyboard.

2 comments:

Simon said...

Dont forget...less light coming off the screen, less energy used...isn't that the philosophy behind http://www.blackle.com ??

A Person said...

I have had a look at blackle.com and I like the idea but unfortunately does not apply to the majority of monitors today.

There evidence even shows this Roberson et al, 2002 [http://enduse.lbl.gov/Info/LBNL-48581.pdf] as it points out that TFT/LCD monitors power usage stays almost constant regrdless of picture colour. Which makes sense sinve Traditional Cathode Ray tub display devices have to put more energy in to sending more electrons to light up the phosphur. LCD/TFTs have a constant back light and it is the job of the LCD screen to block out this light, which is why they also do not have very good contrast ratios.

However in the future once locally dimming LED backlights have taken off or OLED technology takes over, black screens will once again start saving power. as the lighting power is dynamic based on content.

Also the new rival to google www.cuil.com has a black back ground, I just wish there results were as good as the name.