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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

> True black tends to look pretty unnatural, so start with a really dark grey

I wish this myth would die. #000 is already dark gray on any normal real-life screen anyone uses because of ambient light, halos, etc. It's nowhere near "true black".

There is a good reason to avoid pure black or pure white in an interface, but it's nothing to do with "naturalness" or even legibility.

It's simply so that images or content which do include the full brightness gamut from #000 to #FFF "pop" in comparison. You want the darkest shadows and brightest highlights to catch your attention, and not have them compete with browser or interface chrome.

An interface is generally intended to "recede" next to actual content. But if your interface is star of the show? Use pure black and pure white. Go crazy. It's been used to great effect before.

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> I wish this myth would die. #000 is already dark gray on any normal real-life screen anyone uses because of ambient light, halos, etc. It's nowhere near "true black".

I would say phones would be an exception to this rule, since a large number, perhaps even the majority, use OLED panels which are capable of displaying true black. This is becoming true for TVs as well.

No it's not, this is what people misunderstand.

An OLED or LCD panel, even one that is entirely turned off, isn't "true black". If you put something like Vantablack next to it, it would become very obvious that it's merely dark gray. It's still reflecting a significant amount of light from the environment.

And then it appears even lighter when you've got "black" text on a white background, because on our retina the white background "bleeds" into the black as well.

Painters, photographers -- these people are very aware that with real-world common objects, "black" is never actually black. Unless you're literally in a room with no light at all, it's only ever dark gray. Computer screens are nowhere near capable of producing any kind of "unnatural true black". It's not a thing to worry about.

I think you are being a bit too finicky here. "true black" is generally accepted to mean #000 in digital media.

We're talking design here, not physics.

My point is that it's now a common misconception that #000 is an "unnatural" black -- that's literally the word the article uses. That it's blacker than anything natural, i.e. blacker than objects in real life, that it becomes an "unnatural" level of contrast.

It's a bizarre idea that started gaining traction maybe around 5 years ago, that using #000 in designs is therefore bad because it doesn't occur in nature.

That's what I'm pushing back against. The #000 on your screen does occur in nature, because its output on your screen is just a normal household black like lots of other objects.

I was about to write my own diatribe, but found yours first.

Yeah, something like 10 years ago there was a web designer who took an Art 101 class, where the teacher told them to never use pure black paint. Because black objects in the real world appear to the viewer as a dark gray.

This is all true! On a canvas, painting a black car—which uses actual black paint in real life—using pure black paint, will not look right. The painting is supposed to "have its own light" included. So you must represent what the object would look like under the lighting conditions of the world you're recreating. Highlights are not different colors in real life, but they are on a painting.

But anyway, so this web designer, fresh from his Art 101 course, decided to write some blog post about it, and it's been accepted wisdom ever since.

1) We're not painting cars here, we're writing text. I don't load up "dark gray" ink in my fountain pen, nor do I use a "dark gray" toner in my printer. I would much rather the text on my screen be the same.

2) Contrast is good for legibility. Make the contrast as sharp as possible. Or, if you don't want that harsh look, then darken the background instead of lightening the text. Not too much, just enough to please your aesthetic sense while maintaining readability.

[Watches the spread of low contrast, grey emails]

Yup. Agreed across the board.

Displays do have technical issues. CRT's bloom on high contrast elements. I just read OLED ghosting is a thing when pixels are full black, not driven, as examples.

How to best handle those makes sense.

You are not wrong. Peeve of mine too.

There are technical reasons to avoid both extreme white and black. Discussing those makes sense.

It’s bad because it doesn’t look as good, not because it doesn’t occur in nature.

Same with grays. Grays look better when you add a subtle amount of blue to them, instead of plain ass grays. Cold grays look better.

OLED black simply doesn't emit light, it still reflects light.

>#000 is already dark gray on any normal real-life screen

So? The contrast between 'black' and 'white' is still extreme relative to what people normally have around them. The same goes for the neon colors. They are 'diluted', but they're still incredibly garish and generally look unnatural. If you don't like the word 'unnatural' just replace it with 'digital looking'.

Now, looking 'unnatural' isn't necessarily bad (especially for a website interface) and something like text should definitely have a high contrast, but it's definitely something to keep in mind.

> The contrast between 'black' and 'white' is still extreme relative to what people normally have around them.

It's actually the opposite. The truth is, our eyes are able to easily register extreme levels of contrast -- clearly taking in a bright sunlit day through the window next to a dark but still clearly visible interior.

Computer screens (and film and camera sensors) don't achieve anything close to the level of contrast our eyes can take in, which is why things like exposure and blowout require so much careful attention -- why you simply can't take a photo of a bright landscape in the window of a dark room without artificial-looking HDR.

If you stand in an office and look around, it's not like computer screens stand out as blazing white with inky black figures on them. To the contrary — they fit in rather harmoniously in terms of brightness. (And in dark rooms, we tend to reduce brightness in order to keep the harmony.) The idea that computer screens have extreme levels of contrast in comparison with the surroundings is simply not true — it's entirely the opposite.

It's more of a personal feeling - black on white text seems jarring. I prefer to attenuate both a bit.

> our eyes are able to easily register extreme levels of contrast >Computer screens (and film and camera sensors) don't achieve anything close to the level of contrast our eyes can take in

And I didn't say anything to the contrary. It's about what people are used to, not to what is physically possible. Again, digital neon colors are definitely not even close to the most extreme you can get - that doesn't mean they're not garish and ugly.

> clearly taking in a bright sunlit day through the window next to a dark but still clearly visible interior

Do you think most people would call that 'natural' and pleasant lighting conditions?

>If you stand in an office and look around, it's not like computer screens stand out as blazing white with inky black figures on them

If you look at them from their intended viewing angle, they're absolutely going to stand out (unless your display is just really dumpy).

>The idea that computer screens have extreme levels of contrast in comparison with the surroundings is simply not true

Feel free to name all the items in your (normally lit) office that have a higher or even just comparable contrast to your screen.

This relative black / dark grey you speak of would appear differently on each display.

Finding a grey color range that more accurately reproduces seems like a more fruitful undertaking.

> "pop"

What do designers mean by 'pop'?

Grab attention.

My interpretation: Contrast, vividness, attention-grabbing.

Stand out from the background

It's funny seeing this question because in the early 2000s it was designers complaining "what the hell do clients mean by 'pop'?" Now it seems designers have adopted the lingo and it's others asking designers this question.

I think people scale their perception when looking at a screen, looking at white on black is too harsh for most uses with text these days. I personally think it looks really unprofessional and uninspiring going for the most possible contrast in a design.

>I wish this myth would die. #000 is already dark gray on any normal real-life screen anyone uses because of ambient light, halos, etc.

No, it's not. And with OLED, mini-LED etc, it will be even less so.

OLED ghosting is another thing to consider - using a very dark gray instead of 000 prevents pixels from switching off, and prevents ghosting.

Technical performance is an entirely different matter.

The "unnatural" black argument is not valid, as others are making clear.

Avoiding display artifacts is something different. And it is not "unnatural" black.

It is better to discuss black, as in 0, in those terms that have a basis in reality. "Unnatural" black is not reality.

I agree. In my case, my art teacher told us, almost 20y ago now, that we shouldn’t use pure black in digital design because it‘s unnatural. He failed to explain why though, and I never found an argument that didn’t sound dogmatic, so I‘ve filed it under cargo cult.

20 years ago, pure black on a CRT, for example, up against pure white would have generated artifacts on many displays.

Similar things happened with TV programs. NTSC has low color resolution and much higher luma resolution. Large shifts around the color wheel, at higher resolutions, smaller pixel sizes, generated undesirable artifacts.

Luma changes generally didn't.

This kind of thing drove art direction toward more broad swaths of color, luma and gentle hue changes to imply texture and detail, rather than actually forcing detail.

Frankly, these subtle limits in display tech are all over the place.

4k HDMI does not have 4k pixel perfect color, or didn't last time I looked.

Discussing art in these contexts makes great sense!

For that matter, one might also say to avoid high saturation colors... many displays cannot even render them. CRT displays can, plasma TV can, and some new OLED apparently can.

LCD, generally can't.

Nature does present these colors to us, so... yeah.

I much prefer to talk about these things in terms of display capability, potential artifacts and such myself. It is a far more useful discussion.

HDMI 2.0 can do 4k at 60Hz without chroma subsampling, though not all devices support it. HDMI 2.1 can go much higher.

Good to know. I qualified my statement because it had been a while since I reviewed HDMI specs.

Thanks for the quickie update.

If you've found an OLED screen that doesn't reflect ambient light I'd recommend trying to sell that to phone companies.

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