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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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