Lightly Toasted

If you have a very bright and colourful desktop wallpaper this is something you should read.

With digital imaging so rampant many ornate their wallpapers with scenic photos or portraits of loved ones or even very colourful abstract themes etc. and yes they all look really beautiful. But they maybe counter-productive if you are a graphic artist.

I do a fair bit of web work and a fair amount of that is design. I play with colours constantly, not to mention that is part addiction The reason I have a neutral or call it ‘dull’ background on my screen is because I do not want to look at a stronger/colourful desktop all the time to distract my mental colour calibration. This causes the human eye to have subtle insensitivity to the colours they often see(on their desktops). Let me explain…

If you always looked/wore the same tinted pair of glasses when you went out in the sun, after a while your eyes think and react to the messages received by your optical nerves as the real colour of what you see thorugh your tinted glasses. And because you wear your tinted glass very frequently you don’t even mind the shift in colour calibration in your mind. It becomes a part of you(human adaptibility) as does accepting the wrong colour signal from nature.

Does that mean you should never wear sunnies?

No, not at all. Wear ‘em all you want but be aware that they are changing your colour interpretation to your brains differently every time you wear ‘em.

What is so bad about having a colourful Desktop?

Lets say I had a splurge of bright and brilliant colours on my destop image/wallpaper; red, orange, green and yellow… my eyes… probably would float towards the shades of green… and in sometime I start to like(settle) a particular shade of green. The reason I like that colour is probably because:

• My eyes find harmony of colours there
• That particular area or patch of colours is more soothing than the rest

If I were now to look at or work on an image with lots of green in it I would still find the green component in that image to be insipid or bright. This is because my eyes think that the green I see on my destop is the normal level and therefore judges other green components in respect to that what my eyes have gotten used to. In other words, your mental colour calibration has temporarily shifted! And you are not even aware of it.

The above example was in relation to the colour green — it could have been any other colour or even a combination of colours and shades

What about gradients then? Say dark yellow to a very pale yellow?

The problem in essence is the same! Only you have narrowed down the scope of colours available. My eyes over time will STILL choose a spot that seems comfortable to my eyes(as pointed earlier). This is my eyes soft spot. And it will read the colour value of that yellow gradient to be the reference of your mental colouring system. You’d be looking at most things and finding the yellow factor insipid! You may or may not complaint, because the brain tries to pacify us and adapt to the given situation. But the problem doesn’t end there… the spot you choose today will differ from what you will tomorrow. In fact, it can change once or many times during the day depending on ones mood, emotional level, behaviour, nature of work.

Is it possible to avoid this problem totally?

Unfortunately no. You can however, minimise it at best and that is by choosing something that your eyes are comfortable watching, preferably a shade of grey, not too dark, not too light. You might now ask, why grey? Because it is a balance between black and white. Its a desaturate colour. It doesn’t induce any colour components so you are not biased to ‘a particular colour’ to start with. The less colour you see on your desktop the more the assurance your understanding of colours will be.

Do I walk the talk?

I have had the grey background on all my screens since 2001! It does look very insipid but I do change it time to time when not doing any graphic work. Thanks Ruth for encouraging me to write this.