4 ms·

If your LCD is tiring your eyes, it's set too bright. E-ink has the advantage that it automatically shows the correct brightness for the lighting conditions, bu

by mrob 4y ago

If your LCD is tiring your eyes, it's set too bright. E-ink has the advantage that it automatically shows the correct brightness for the lighting conditions, but there's nothing inherently less tiring about it. I have keybinds set to change my monitor brightness using DDC, so I can easily adjust my LCD's brightness as needed.

AstixAndBelix 4y ago
>there's nothing inherently less tiring about it e-ink doesn't flicker. I know that past a certain number of Hz our brain just mushes the images together and we magically perceive that the motions on the screen are fluid, just like we believe our electric lights are completely on all of the time. But even though our final perception might be continuous, maybe there are steps in the image processing pipeline in our brain where something gets overloaded by the discrete refreshing of the screen.
- mrob 4y ago
  My LCD doesn't flicker either. Some LCDs use pulse-width modulated backlights, which do flicker, and there are gaming LCDs with optional strobing to improve motion clarity, but these are not inherent to the LCD technology.
  - AstixAndBelix 4y ago
    Maybe you're misunderstanding the usage of "flicker" here. I'm not saying that I can see my monitor flickering, because nobody can past a certain refresh rate. What I'm saying is that any monitor inherently flickers because of its refresh rate, independently of our perception.
    - sho_hn 4y ago
      Refresh rate is not the same as flicker. Refresh rate is the rate at which new information is displayed. Flicker is things turning on and off. As the parent mentioned, some screens use fast cycles of turning on/off to modulate perceived brightness, but this is not always the case.
      - shanebellone 4y ago
        I'm not entirely sure if what's being said is true but I believe the intention is to stay: All LCDs "flicker" in the same way all movies "flicker". The technology simply displays or flashes a series of still images quick enough to be perceived as fluid motion or video.
        sho_hn 4y ago
        I'm not sure that's the intention, because they said that "e-ink doesn't flicker". But e-ink certainly has a refresh rate. So I think they attribute some other form of flickering to LCD. (And in fact, some of the e-ink readers with optional display lighting will use PWM to modulate its brightness, and then exhibit flicker. This is a super dumb engineering choice, though, so it's not very common. The Kobo Forma was an offender.)
        shanebellone 4y ago
        Fair point. E-ink does refresh the entire screen though, correct? It's closer to a old-school slide projector than a monitor. I admittedly know little about this topic. As an aside, I'd love a secondary e-ink monitor. Hopefully the technology improves so prices come down.
        sho_hn 4y ago
        > E-ink does refresh the entire screen though, correct? No, e-ink displays and controllers support partial updates.
        shanebellone 4y ago
        Thank you for the correction.
        AstixAndBelix 4y ago
        >But e-ink certainly has a refresh rate of course it has a refresh rate when there is a change in the image, but if I'm reading something completely static then literally nothing changes whereas an LCD screen still does things in the background
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    > not inherent to the LCD technology. actually they kinda are Blue light from close distance screens is the enemy of your eyes and has many other side effects. https://health.ucdavis.edu/blog/cultivating-health/blue-light-effects-on-your-eyes-sleep-and-health/2022/08 https://health.ucdavis.edu/blog/cultivating-health/blue-ligh...
    - mrob 4y ago
      The amount of blue light emitted by an LCD depends on the backlight used. Some brands advertise low blue light. You could even build an LCD with zero blue light emission if you wanted to, at the cost of being unable to display blue. And even with a conventional backlight, you can reduce the blue light to very low levels in software, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift_(software) E-ink reflects light over a broad spectrum, so the amount of blue depends on the amount of blue it's illuminated with. It can be higher than the LCD in some conditions.
      - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
        not disagreeing, but you can't chose the display of the laptop most of the times. Besides, in the last 2 years people reported many more cases of eye strain and blurred vision (at least in my country), because "home" is not really the best work environment for 95% of the people. There's a reason why offices are always well illuminated. e-inks are usually used with lights turned off and when ate not I use the red light because it's better for reading.
nottorp 4y ago
> If your LCD is tiring your eyes, it's set too bright. The race for brightness considered harmful :) The problem that LCDs have and CRTs didn't is that you lose color reproduction/contrast if you turn down the brightness to healthy levels. Hopefull OLED fixes that and becomes affordable. But I'm afraid manufacturers will still race for brightness even on a technology that doesn't need it. > E-ink has the advantage that it automatically shows the correct brightness for the lighting conditions Tbh I find eink very readable in bright sunlight and it's all downhill from there, to the point that i prefer reading on a tablet with brightness way down and the lights off to eink with a lamp on. But that may be a consequence of staring into LCDs most of my life.
lloeki 4y ago
> E-ink has the advantage that it automatically shows the correct brightness It doesn't because e-ink is a non-light-emitting technology so has no concept of brightness. Ambient light is what lights it up usually (unless one turns an entirely optional backlight on to read in the dark). So you don't need to adjusts as there's nothing to adjust, it's literally ambient light bouncing back, so is the same brightness by virtue of being the same light source. Conversely, typical displays (TN, IPS, OLED, CRT even...) being a light emitting technology, one needs to turn backlight up as ambient light increases as both compete. (That is, unless it's a transflective LCD, but even then it's quite dim in ambient light). > there's nothing inherently less tiring about it e-ink really is more like paper, while typical displays are like turning a flashlight straight towards your eyes.
- balaji1 4y ago
  but the e-ink displays have a dull gray background. While printer paper is the bright bleached white which a lot more pleasing and easier to read.
alin23 4y ago
There's even software that can adapt that DDC brightness automatically using the ambient light around you. I develop Lunar (https://lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi) that can do that for macOS. For me, the screens I use are always at the brightness where white regions are as comfortable as a piece of paper. Sure, colors aren't reproduced "as the artist/developer wanted" at those values, but neither do I need that, nor do we have e-ink screens that can reproduce color more accurately. I just want to create software, research stuff on the internet, arrange my music etc. and if I feel like doing that for 10 hours straight, I only want the screen to tire my eyes as little as possible. I also read a lot of books and research material, both on Kindle and paper. My eyes get tired after hours of doing that as well. Light is not the only factor. So although it's good to try to be optimal about the light that gets in your eyes over large periods of time, it's best to also try periodic rest and moving some activities to non-screen mediums instead of fretting endlessly over the last 5% of screen light optimization.
- hxugufjfjf 4y ago
  I've been looking for this software for ten years. My eyes thank you!
zozbot234 4y ago
If you lower the brightness on an LCD screen, it's going to have terrible contrast even if you use the lowest possible black because the "black" on that kind of screen is achieved by filtering out polarized light. Additionally on some screen models, low brightness is obtained by flickering the backlight which only adds to the discomfort.
- mrob 4y ago
  Changing the brightness of an LCD screen does not affect the contrast of the emitted light. The lowest possible black is some percentage of the backlight brightness, not a fixed value. You can see this by changing the brightness while displaying a pure black image. LCDs do also reflect some ambient light, so turning down the brightness will reduce the contrast slightly in most environments, but many LCDs have anti-reflective coatings to mitigate this. LCD typically has higher maximum contrast than e-ink.
- alin23 4y ago
  When lowering the hardware brightness (either through the monitor OSD or through DDC), the voltage of the LED backlight gets lowered and thus the LEDs get dimmer and less light passes through the crystals. Polarization doesn't come into effect here. What you're describing happens when lowering the brightness through software (either Gamma adjustments or a dark overlay) because in that case you're only changing the software pixels to be darker. Although even in that case, newer miniLED/quantumDot LCD screens also lower the LED brightness when pixels get darker, because they have more granular control and dimming an LED doesn't cause shadows over a large area of the screen anymore.

by mrob 4y ago

AstixAndBelix 4y ago

>there's nothing inherently less tiring about it e-ink doesn't flicker. I know that past a certain number of Hz our brain just mushes the images together and we magically perceive that the motions on the screen are fluid, just like we believe our electric lights are completely on all of the time. But even though our final perception might be continuous, maybe there are steps in the image processing pipeline in our brain where something gets overloaded by the discrete refreshing of the screen.

mrob 4y ago
My LCD doesn't flicker either. Some LCDs use pulse-width modulated backlights, which do flicker, and there are gaming LCDs with optional strobing to improve motion clarity, but these are not inherent to the LCD technology.
- AstixAndBelix 4y ago
  Maybe you're misunderstanding the usage of "flicker" here. I'm not saying that I can see my monitor flickering, because nobody can past a certain refresh rate. What I'm saying is that any monitor inherently flickers because of its refresh rate, independently of our perception.
  - sho_hn 4y ago
    Refresh rate is not the same as flicker. Refresh rate is the rate at which new information is displayed. Flicker is things turning on and off. As the parent mentioned, some screens use fast cycles of turning on/off to modulate perceived brightness, but this is not always the case.
    - shanebellone 4y ago
      I'm not entirely sure if what's being said is true but I believe the intention is to stay: All LCDs "flicker" in the same way all movies "flicker". The technology simply displays or flashes a series of still images quick enough to be perceived as fluid motion or video.
      - sho_hn 4y ago
        I'm not sure that's the intention, because they said that "e-ink doesn't flicker". But e-ink certainly has a refresh rate. So I think they attribute some other form of flickering to LCD. (And in fact, some of the e-ink readers with optional display lighting will use PWM to modulate its brightness, and then exhibit flicker. This is a super dumb engineering choice, though, so it's not very common. The Kobo Forma was an offender.)
        shanebellone 4y ago
        Fair point. E-ink does refresh the entire screen though, correct? It's closer to a old-school slide projector than a monitor. I admittedly know little about this topic. As an aside, I'd love a secondary e-ink monitor. Hopefully the technology improves so prices come down.
        sho_hn 4y ago
        > E-ink does refresh the entire screen though, correct? No, e-ink displays and controllers support partial updates.
        shanebellone 4y ago
        Thank you for the correction.
        AstixAndBelix 4y ago
        >But e-ink certainly has a refresh rate of course it has a refresh rate when there is a change in the image, but if I'm reading something completely static then literally nothing changes whereas an LCD screen still does things in the background
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > not inherent to the LCD technology. actually they kinda are Blue light from close distance screens is the enemy of your eyes and has many other side effects. https://health.ucdavis.edu/blog/cultivating-health/blue-light-effects-on-your-eyes-sleep-and-health/2022/08 https://health.ucdavis.edu/blog/cultivating-health/blue-ligh...
  - mrob 4y ago
    The amount of blue light emitted by an LCD depends on the backlight used. Some brands advertise low blue light. You could even build an LCD with zero blue light emission if you wanted to, at the cost of being unable to display blue. And even with a conventional backlight, you can reduce the blue light to very low levels in software, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift_(software) E-ink reflects light over a broad spectrum, so the amount of blue depends on the amount of blue it's illuminated with. It can be higher than the LCD in some conditions.
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      not disagreeing, but you can't chose the display of the laptop most of the times. Besides, in the last 2 years people reported many more cases of eye strain and blurred vision (at least in my country), because "home" is not really the best work environment for 95% of the people. There's a reason why offices are always well illuminated. e-inks are usually used with lights turned off and when ate not I use the red light because it's better for reading.

nottorp 4y ago

> If your LCD is tiring your eyes, it's set too bright. The race for brightness considered harmful :) The problem that LCDs have and CRTs didn't is that you lose color reproduction/contrast if you turn down the brightness to healthy levels. Hopefull OLED fixes that and becomes affordable. But I'm afraid manufacturers will still race for brightness even on a technology that doesn't need it. > E-ink has the advantage that it automatically shows the correct brightness for the lighting conditions Tbh I find eink very readable in bright sunlight and it's all downhill from there, to the point that i prefer reading on a tablet with brightness way down and the lights off to eink with a lamp on. But that may be a consequence of staring into LCDs most of my life.

lloeki 4y ago

> E-ink has the advantage that it automatically shows the correct brightness It doesn't because e-ink is a non-light-emitting technology so has no concept of brightness. Ambient light is what lights it up usually (unless one turns an entirely optional backlight on to read in the dark). So you don't need to adjusts as there's nothing to adjust, it's literally ambient light bouncing back, so is the same brightness by virtue of being the same light source. Conversely, typical displays (TN, IPS, OLED, CRT even...) being a light emitting technology, one needs to turn backlight up as ambient light increases as both compete. (That is, unless it's a transflective LCD, but even then it's quite dim in ambient light). > there's nothing inherently less tiring about it e-ink really is more like paper, while typical displays are like turning a flashlight straight towards your eyes.

balaji1 4y ago
but the e-ink displays have a dull gray background. While printer paper is the bright bleached white which a lot more pleasing and easier to read.

alin23 4y ago

There's even software that can adapt that DDC brightness automatically using the ambient light around you. I develop Lunar (https://lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi) that can do that for macOS. For me, the screens I use are always at the brightness where white regions are as comfortable as a piece of paper. Sure, colors aren't reproduced "as the artist/developer wanted" at those values, but neither do I need that, nor do we have e-ink screens that can reproduce color more accurately. I just want to create software, research stuff on the internet, arrange my music etc. and if I feel like doing that for 10 hours straight, I only want the screen to tire my eyes as little as possible. I also read a lot of books and research material, both on Kindle and paper. My eyes get tired after hours of doing that as well. Light is not the only factor. So although it's good to try to be optimal about the light that gets in your eyes over large periods of time, it's best to also try periodic rest and moving some activities to non-screen mediums instead of fretting endlessly over the last 5% of screen light optimization.

hxugufjfjf 4y ago
I've been looking for this software for ten years. My eyes thank you!

zozbot234 4y ago

If you lower the brightness on an LCD screen, it's going to have terrible contrast even if you use the lowest possible black because the "black" on that kind of screen is achieved by filtering out polarized light. Additionally on some screen models, low brightness is obtained by flickering the backlight which only adds to the discomfort.

mrob 4y ago
Changing the brightness of an LCD screen does not affect the contrast of the emitted light. The lowest possible black is some percentage of the backlight brightness, not a fixed value. You can see this by changing the brightness while displaying a pure black image. LCDs do also reflect some ambient light, so turning down the brightness will reduce the contrast slightly in most environments, but many LCDs have anti-reflective coatings to mitigate this. LCD typically has higher maximum contrast than e-ink.
alin23 4y ago
When lowering the hardware brightness (either through the monitor OSD or through DDC), the voltage of the LED backlight gets lowered and thus the LEDs get dimmer and less light passes through the crystals. Polarization doesn't come into effect here. What you're describing happens when lowering the brightness through software (either Gamma adjustments or a dark overlay) because in that case you're only changing the software pixels to be darker. Although even in that case, newer miniLED/quantumDot LCD screens also lower the LED brightness when pixels get darker, because they have more granular control and dimming an LED doesn't cause shadows over a large area of the screen anymore.