Take the grayscale challenge

[sclitheroe]

So I was fooling around on my Macbook today and found that you can easily toggle the display into a nice grayscale display mode via System Preferences -> Universal Access.

It looks pretty nice, and somewhat surprisingly, considering how long its been since I’ve had a monochrome or grayscale display, it looks a ton less crowded and busy onscreen without all those colours all over the place in overlapping windows.

So I’m going to take the grayscale challenge, and use my Macbook as a grayscale machine for a week. I’ll report back whether it improves productivity, reduces eyestrain, induces coma, or any other unusual or interesting side effects.

[Hack&Lube]

I would really love it if I could get a nice monochrome green or orange mode for modern computers, complete with reversed contrast so whites are black, etc.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I would really love it if I could get a nice monochrome green or orange mode for modern computers, complete with reversed contrast so whites are black, etc.

There is nothing finer than a terminal or command prompt window set to green on black. That is the way man was meant to interface with a machine.

[algernon]

Alright, I am going to try this.
The White on Black would be nuts,I almost had a seizure.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by algernon

Alright, I am going to try this.
The White on Black would be nuts,I almost had a seizure.

White on Black is crazy, and not usable full time.

I’m on day two now of full time grayscale. I’m appreciating my wallpapers all over again - I mostly have aviation photography, and the aircraft look fantastic in black and white. I tried playing X-Plane (flight sim) and it looks cool in grayscale too, more realistic in fact. I attribute this to the fact that no matter how good a flight sim’s graphics are, the ground, sky and cloud textures never have quite the right colours. In grayscale, you don’t have that cognitive dissonance when playing the game.

I did a few tests using grayscale and colour gradient test patterns at various websites, and the grayscale on the Mac is quite good - no obvious dithering or banding to worry about. Everything looks nice and sharp, and I notice details in a lot of graphics that I otherwise don’t, because the eye is drawn to shape, texture and lines, rather than splotches of colour. It’s also apparent, after approx. 24 hours now, just how technicolor the web is. My wife’s machine has colours screaming out of every browser window, blue on facebook, red on CNN, blue text, black text, red text, green text. The dock is a huge jumble of un-cordinated colours.

Almost none of this miasma of RGB conveys any useful information. That’s the most shocking thing about it.

Meanwhile, my grayscale machine is cool, uniform, and CRISP. Websites look more like newspapers or high grade textbooks, with the emphasis on text. It’s becoming apparent how little colour adds to most websites, and how poorly colour is used overall. Having two or three different colours of text on the same page is brutal for pure efficiency of reading and concentrating on content.

Who knows, at the end of this week long experiment, maybe I’ll remain in my grayscale world. The real test will be doing work rather than leisure stuff on Tuesday.

[GGG]

I changed all of my windows from white to a sea foam green kind of colour and that helps when you are using excel or word a lot. Doesn't help on the internet though.

[sclitheroe]

We’re on day 4 of the grayscale challenge now, and I may have a problem here. I had to turn colour back on temporarily to work on some stupid colour-coded charts, and much to my dismay, the colours look too bright, garish, and just generally far too over the top. My dock looks like one of those pools full of plastic balls that kids jump around in.

The other thing that really jumped out at me is how much freaking blue there is in the Mac interface. Blue scroll bars, blue highlights, blue folders, blue text, blue radio buttons, blue sliders, it just doesn’t quit with the blue. It’s pretty horrible looking when you first go back to colour.

So by day 7 I might irreversibly be stuck in grayscale land, because at this point I think it might actually look better.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

We’re on day 4 of the grayscale challenge now, and I may have a problem here. I had to turn colour back on temporarily to work on some stupid colour-coded charts, and much to my dismay, the colours look too bright, garish, and just generally far too over the top. My dock looks like one of those pools full of plastic balls that kids jump around in.

The other thing that really jumped out at me is how much freaking blue there is in the Mac interface. Blue scroll bars, blue highlights, blue folders, blue text, blue radio buttons, blue sliders, it just doesn’t quit with the blue. It’s pretty horrible looking when you first go back to colour.

So by day 7 I might irreversibly be stuck in grayscale land, because at this point I think it might actually look better.

It's not just greyscale, it's the annoying gradients too. If you greyscale a modern OS, you find that there are all these annoying color gradients, etc. muddying the contrast and borders between objects and text and in the background and in the details, etc. when classic b/w dithering with most objects having sharp edges and high contrast. I have fond memories of making fun hypercard stacks in the classic Mac interface.

Greyscale and monochrome are just superior in everyway. A lot of modern computer related eyestrain is probably due to garish color and just too much "busy-ness" and graphical congestion making s***ty UI design even worse. I can't even look at the colorful part of the desktop without feeling sick when you have the classic emulated 1984 desktop inset. I have to load a command prompt and actually type something instead of clicking on everything every now then in in Windows to make it livable.


You are right about the blue.

I've been greyscaling my PCs with ATI cards. Goto CCC and then displays and turn saturation down to zero. You can do this by turning Nvidia digital vibrance to 0 as well.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

It's not just greyscale, it's the annoying gradients too. If you greyscale a modern OS, you find that there are all these annoying color gradients, etc. muddying the contrast and borders between objects and text and in the background and in the details, etc. when classic b/w dithering with most objects having sharp edges and high contrast. I have fond memories of making fun hypercard stacks in the classic Mac interface.

I don’t get any annoying dithering, that’s what’s so insanely nice about this. Take a look at this:



Those are some sharp looking icons!

[sclitheroe]

Browsing the web is like reading the paper:

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

I don’t get any annoying dithering, that’s what’s so insanely nice about this. Take a look at this:



Those are some sharp looking icons!

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Browsing the web is like reading the paper:

There are still color gradients and shading. I would prefer none for a true greyscale experience. Heck, I guess I want 1-bit color basically for all UI elements while photos can be in color or greyscale.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

There are still color gradients and shading. I would prefer none for a true greyscale experience. Heck, I guess I want 1-bit color basically for all UI elements while photos can be in color or greyscale.

You want monochrome UI elements, then, not greyscale. That’s a little more hardcore than I’m willing to go.

It would be great though, on a screen with really good DPI that didn’t require antialiasing to smooth out the text. A laptop with a “retina” style IPS panel would be fantastic (and quite expensive...)

[Hack&Lube]

I've started browsing the web with Opera's "Nostalgia" mode which is basically an 8-Bit Commodore 64 sort of look for everything. It goes quite well with the greyscale and the fonts are quite pleasant to read and type in.