Comment by rconti | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rconti | Hacker News Reader

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Interesting; when I got 2 new pair of eyeglasses last month, again I fell for the usual "buy all the coatings" spiel. I didn't much understand what they were, but I was told one causes refractions that bother some people.

I absolutely notice a blue refraction from car headlights when driving at night. I keep thinking I'm seeing a police light from somewhere. It's fine, just interesting. Well, after looking at a few lens coating websites, and realizing my lenses reflect blue light back at me if I have a light source to reflect, they're obviously blocking blue light -- cool!

I've never been much for f.lux style color shifting, I HATE the obviously inaccurate colors. I also wonder if we'll find that some of these technologies don't work nearly as well as a blue filter, and that perhaps the light just LOOKS less blue.

But I'm sure glad to have glasses that now block some blue light. Also, it validates my desire to keep the blinds open at work; I have LOTS of light coming into my cubicle area. Sometimes it's even a bit annoying but keeping my pupils small should help.

What makes f.lux inaccurate? Color perception is relative and if you are in a dark room, your eyes should adjust to different white points naturally. This is the same thing that makes it so a white piece of paper looks white no matter whether you are inside or outside, even though the actual light reflected from the paper has a radically different spectrum in each case.

shrug. Same way the 'average' person does. Looks totally wrong. I notice it from the first minute it starts to shift. I notice it every time I look at the display of a coworker who uses it. I tried it for a few months thinking it would cue me to go home, at least, but I just started snoozing it the instant it began sunsetting -- forget the more extreme ends of the progression.

I never work in a perfectly dark room. My office is next to a window, both at home, and at work. The lights are on. Plus, all of these things help keep my pupils small which apparently helps prevent the blue light harm to begin with.

The colors on a RGB-based display is incorrect either way (with flux or without flux) at any color temperature (cool, warm, or in between).

Why is it that you prefer the incorrect colors without flux to the incorrect colors with flux?

Sounds like you prefer cool color temperature which is no more correct than warm color temperature.

I'm not OP but I can't stand f.lux and its clones. I never adjust. The inaccurate colors stand out to me no matter what the conditions are.

"Inaccurate" is definitely an incorrect way to describe the colors. The colors are correct from relative colorimetric perspective, you're just changing the white point.

Any 3-color screen will never be true to life accurate. It's always a simulation of the real thing projected into the three dimensions of color that most of us perceive.

Colors appear to change dramatically under different lighting conditions, but we accept these changes as normal given context. Changing the white balance on your screen is no different. It's not inaccurate, it's just rendered as if in different lighting conditions.

Just because "white" can be recognized as "white" under varying color temperatures doesn't mean that the spectrum isn't truncated, and thus less accurate.

We have the ability to adapt to different color temperatures and perceive the relative output, but we're still missing information when shifted from the full spectrum daylight we evolved with.

Consider a recorded rock song: if we gradually apply a low pass filter of increasing strength, the high frequencies will be cut. We'll still be able to hear and recognize the cymbals, for example, but the stronger the filter, the less accurate the output.

Just because we can recognize relative colors under different lighting conditions, it doesn't mean that they're still accurate when we remove information.

> perhaps the light just LOOKS less blue.

That is a really interesting distinction! Blue is a color derived by social consensus, but it is also a particular wavelength of photons. I'm curious about what's there if we dive in and examine what specific wavelengths of light (numerically) cause damage, and what is the overlap with what we typically consider the color blue. I'm sure it's not one to one.

We're able to see similar colors under different lighting conditions only because the mind adjusts what you see for lighting. Seems like the same should be true for filters.

> I absolutely notice a blue refraction from car headlights when driving at night.

I think some ultra-bright headlights are actually slightly blue.

Especially with the move to LED headlights, car lights have gotten significantly "colder" in color temperature

nah, it's a refraction in the lens -- eg, i see it offset from the actual light source.

Isn't blue light important in the mornings for keeping the circadian rhythm aligned? I thought you were supposed to avoid it in the evenings only. Probably it'd be fine for you if you're getting a lot of light, but might be bad if you don't.

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