Profiled monitors are good right?

Think again.

Sure we all need a profiled monitor to do colour critical work, but how often is that. First thing in the morning when you turn on your computer to check your emails – does it need to be profiled? Not really. How about last thing at night? Got a DVD to watch, pop it into the computer and off you go… Does that need to be profiled?

At this time of year as you walk home in the dark, look up at the flats and the buildings around you. Remember that harsh blue glare you get oozing out of some of the windows. TV, yes? Who’s to say that we all need to watch our DVD’s on a D65 calibrated screen?

Just as ambient lighting can be a concern in your working environment when doing colour critical work, what’s to say that we shouldn’t match our screens to our environment for the ease of our eyes?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for profiling monitors for our colour critical workflow, but when was the last time you went to see a printer and the daylight balanced fluorescent strips just end up giving you a headache after 10 minutes? In fact headaches are a real concern for the majority of people working at computer screens nowadays. More so if you work at a D65 colour balanced high resolution monitor.

So this idea of allowing your screen to wonder in colour to suit your environment, or more specifically the time of day, was a paradigm change for the way I considered my working environment. That was when I heard about f.lux

You set your geographical location and the ambient lighting you use at night and hey presto, f.lux tailors your screen to reflect your ambient environment during the day. Sure you can switch it off in the drop-down control bar menu for all your colour critical needs, but if like me you end up waking up at 4am and fancy a bit of night surfing, you’ll no longer be blinded by your screen as it wakes up and lets the whole road know that you can’t sleep!

I’ve been trying it for a couple of weeks and all I can say is it takes the edge off a colour managed screen when you’re using it for general use. Oh, and no headaches. Oh, and it’s totally free. Thanks to Jeff Ngan who brought this gem to my attention.