Monitor Brightness and Eye Issues

[AlanKlein]

Lately, I've been getting what's called Ocular Migraines where you get these half moon circles that play out in the eye over twenty minutes or so.  No headaches though.  I suspect it may be because I spend too much time in front of a monitor that's too bright. So I just turned on monitor night mode which lowers the Kelvin to a warmer color and reduced the brightness as well by about half.  Hopefully that helps. Of course the pictures don't look as nice.

 

Anyone have experience with these things?  

[Sandy Vongries]

Wife spends a great deal of time on the computer for her work, got some prescription blue blocking computer glasses that seem to help.  They are for sale in the usual places online.

[samstevens]

I think the wisest course of action in a situation like this would be to see an ophthalmologist. 

Edited January 27, 2023 by samstevens

[Gary Naka]

IMHO, the problem is the MANY WHITE windows.

Like the Photo.net web site.
WORD and EXCEL and other programs.

The white screen is like looking at a light bulb.

I turn down the brightness of my monitor to a level that I can deal with.
But, that then is too low for editing photos, where white is a small percentage of the colors on the screen.

I have only seen ONE monitor, an old Sony CRT, that had a switch to go between a "normal" brightness and a brighter video brightness.

For my setup, night mode just changes the color to more red.  Which does not help, because it messes up any screen with color. 
And when I use colored cells in EXCEL, overlaying the red screen on the cell colors makes some of the colors change and become confusing.
I would just like to have an EASY way to lower the brightness level.

I have thought of wearing my sunglasses.

[samstevens]

44 minutes ago, Gary Naka said:

I would just like to have an EASY way to lower the brightness level.

It’s easy on a Mac. The F2 key adjusts brightness a click at a time. I use it a lot to quickly change the brightness of the screen. I would look into keyboard shortcuts for monitor control by googling that for your monitor, though maybe Mac just makes it easy. 

[Jochen_S]

AFAIK you can do a lot of stupid things with a monitor. Since we are also on photo.net, I 'd suggest proper calibration for starters, which can be way much dimmer than a "bright" setup. 

Maybe lighting the rest of the romm slightly provides additional eye relief? 

Best of luck!

[Gary Naka]

18 hours ago, Jochen1664876637 said:

AFAIK you can do a lot of stupid things with a monitor. Since we are also on photo.net, I 'd suggest proper calibration for starters, which can be way much dimmer than a "bright" setup. 

Maybe lighting the rest of the romm slightly provides additional eye relief? 

Best of luck!

I found that when I properly calibrate my monitor it is too bright.

The problem is, in a photograph, white is only a small percentage of the image.  The other colors reduce the brightness of the image.
But when looking at a WORD, EXCEL or similar program, 95+% of the image is white.

Since I only have ONE monitor, when I calibrate my monitor, I turn the white level down to a level that I can tolerate. 
So my monitor is not "properly" calibrated for photos, but as close as I can get it.
Ideally I would have TWO monitors, one with the brightness turned down for non-photo work, and the second a properly calibrated monitor for photo. 

[AlanKlein]

5 hours ago, Gary Naka said:

I found that when I properly calibrate my monitor it is too bright.

The problem is, in a photograph, white is only a small percentage of the image.  The other colors reduce the brightness of the image.
But when looking at a WORD, EXCEL or similar program, 95+% of the image is white.

Since I only have ONE monitor, when I calibrate my monitor, I turn the white level down to a level that I can tolerate. 
So my monitor is not "properly" calibrated for photos, but as close as I can get it.
Ideally I would have TWO monitors, one with the brightness turned down for non-photo work, and the second a properly calibrated monitor for photo. 

Gary, I've adjusted Night Light in my Windows 11 desktop.  It adds filters to reduce the brightness and can change the colors from bright white Kelvin 5000 to a warm let's say 2500.  You can set it to come on at sunset and return to normal at sunrise or switch it manually on and off or set the hours of operation to your preference.  I suppose Apple computer  has something similar. 

[Gary Naka]

Alan, I just checked my Win10 settings, and it only has the strength slider.  Which primarily seems to affect color.  There isn't a separate brightness control.

I think it would be better to let us choose color and brightness separately.
Cuz during the day, I would like to reduce the brightness without changing the color.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Gary Naka

[LensofNature]

I am susceptible to ocular migraines as well, and find the light on white design or, conversely the super black designs of websites, Microsoft and other software very hard on my eyes.  I have the brightness/contrast turned down significantly which, as you say, makes it hard to gauge colour in photo editing.  I've tried calibrating my monitor but there is an error message saying there is no additional monitor to select, or something like that.  At any rate, it would probably mess with the brightness/contrast for word processing and other routine computer tasks.  I also developed floaters while shooting a sunset a couple of years ago, so that doesn't help.  I've had to resign myself to the fact that between sunglasses in the field and reduced brightness/contrast of the screen, there will always be a discrepancy between actual and perceived intensity of colour.  I find myself sometimes re-editing photos that look garish at different times of the day/night, lol.

[Tony Parsons]

Don't know if this is any help, but my desk (work station, whatever) is situated in front of a window, so there is less difference between monitor brightness and the 'outside world'. I also have a 'daylight bulb' for when the shades of night fall. I agree, though, the use of a white background is often less than helpful on the monitor.