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Your Display’s Gamma

{democracy:6}

Gamma ChartA friend sent me a link to an article titled "This is your Mac on drugs." My initial response to him was that Safari was using ICC profiles, which was a good thing, and simply specifying gamma - brighter or darker - really doesn't matter. In fact, I prefer 1.8 because the color curves are more like what I'd like to see:

After all, I've done Web work, my colors have matched, and I've done just fine using Safari, Photoshop, and CSS to match colors. For as long as I can remember, it's been a non-issue. In looking at my Photoshop CS3 (beta) color settings, I see that I'm actually set for "North America General Purpose 2." I could switch to "Monitor Color" or "North America Web/Internet," but it's not been an issue at all, so I won't.

P.S. Roll over the gamma image to toggle between the same JPEG saved with and without a profile.

2 Responses to "Your Display’s Gamma"

  1. This is slightly complex for me, I also use a few external displays with my powerbook, oddly enough while the 1.8 gamma looks best on my powerbook's display, I prefer a 2.2 gamma on the external display. I really do very little design work (i'm not good at it) and even less do I actually even try to match colors (I midas well be color blind) for my programming and sysadmin work this seems to be the best.
    I am much less concerned with color reproduction than being able to see stuff easily.

  2. I use 1.8 because I've been using Macs for a long time so I'm used to the way 1.8 works. I find it better for most of my daily usage, because 2.2 has too much contrast and makes the darks too dark.

    Personally I think Safari should color-correct everything and leave it to Adobe to make the Flash plugin match.