• Other

  • Disable Color Dither method collection

Gleb,
For external displays I'm following an interesting topic on macrumors: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-subpixel-aa-debacle-and-font-rendering.2184484/

The main idea is that Apple no longer cares about displays with resolutions lower than HiDPI. Here's an extract from the last comment:
"100 ppi: front rendering unacceptable after 10.6
160 ppi (4K 27"): font rendering unacceptable after 10.13
220 ppi (5K 27" = retina): font rendering acceptable with all OS's"
Could be because Apple are testing their OS on iMacs or Macbook Pros 🙂

I was going to buy an external matte display for iMac, but based on the info from that thread I've decided not to do it. I also tried connecting an old 19-inch Samsung 971p display with 1280x1024 resolution, and it was blurry with any possible settings.

On my iMac I switched off any font anti-aliasing and font smoothing with TinkerTool under Mojave and keep on doing so under Catalina. I was feeling dizzy from those thicker fonts. I've just tried reenabling font-antialiasing and set font smoothing to 1 in order to check it now, and I did not like how it looked. Small UI fonts are not an issue for me, as long as they stay thin. I believe that after some time I do not read the UI elements as careful as in the beginning, because I know what is written there, and this reduces the strain. But in work apps, where the text is always new to me, I make fonts larger.

I believe the font rendering on Mac is indeed not optimal. On Windows, with its lower resolutions, fonts never caused me any issues.

Probably, macOS would benefit from even more ppi than it has now. Fonts on my iPad with its 264 ppi are great, and even better on iPhone SE having 324 ppi. No strain at all.

    annv
    I also bumped into an article today. The "bad zone" is where fonts are too small or too big

    Personally I own two 4k Dells 23.8" and find my fonts small. I was thinking about buying 27" 4k screens, but they are now also out of "comfort zone". But I will have a chance to test a 27-inch screen over weekends, to see if UI elements are more readable.

    There are following settings that help so far:

    1. Disable blurry fonts by enabling legacy subpixel antialiasing (CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled) and disabling font smoothing in Settings->General

    2. In System preferences->Accessibility->Display:
      a. select Reduce transparency (makes font more readable, as they are printed on paper)
      b. Increase Display contrast to 1.5

    3. Use bigger fonts: TinkerTool and Command+J in Finder lists.

    4. Adjust brightness/contrast of the monitor B:30 C:60 at daytime, 0/40 at night

    5. In Preferences -> Display -> Color tab, select Generic RGB profile instead of Color LCD

    Regarding dithering, I believe it might come from the monitor itself (read your display specs, if it says 8bit + FRC, dithering will be added after video signal. I'm not sure if such thing can be captured using an external capture card. Maybe someone has a good Digital Camera with 50x zoom that can zoom into single pixels?)

        annv Could be because Apple are testing their OS on iMacs or Macbook Pros

        Yes

          Gleb That is definately a big part of the issue. However I get nausea and eye strain on my macbook pro 2018 even watching movies, even though now after the eye therapy it takes more time for it to develop than before, when it was quite instant. I think its more issues at once which makes is so complicated and hard to crack.

          • diop replied to this.

              martin Same here, it's not a text quality issue for me, I could be doing anything on the 'bad' machine (even staring at a solid color) and I will get symptoms.

                  diop Agreed. Grab yourself a newer Nvidia (1/2xxx) card, boot even to the BIOS screen and notice something "odd" with the picture.

                    I may have found an app that disables dithering on mac, please test. Wanted to start a new thread but theres a bug on the site and it wont let me.

                    I have noticed on iphone, when I use the setting reduce white point by 80%, the phone is very bearable. It was not as much before the eye therapy and some basic fixing, but many people here also mentioned it was very fine with this option. I blame it on LEDs being too bright in the whites, triggering heterophoria symptoms (when you have heterophoria, youre more sensitive to glare and brightness).

                    So I was trying to find a software that can reduce white point on Mac. I found Gamma Control 6. Its not for free and the price is not very nice (20$ or so), but I decided Ive got nothing to lose. I tried reducing white point (down to 0,30) and it immediately created banding on the display similar to samples of dithering switched off. I feel a lot of relief, but I need to test it first, reading and writing text being the ultimate test. If I get no headache, this will be a breakthrough, we could contact the creator of the software, ask what its doing and figure out a possible solution. Please, if you dont mind spending this money and have a mac, test it so I can know if its also good for you. There might even be a trial version if you dont get it directly from app store.
                    I wanted to take prinscreen samples, but the function seems to take the photo without the banding which is really weird to me.
                    https://michelf.ca/projects/gamma-control/

                    https://michelf.ca/projects/gamma-control/faq/

                    Thank you, Martin, I'm going to test it with the text this week.
                    I've found the developer's website: https://michelf.ca/projects/gamma-control/ and it has a 30-day trial version.
                    For some reason, I could only access the site through VPN.

                    a month later

                    I've just upgraded my 'good' MacBook Pro 2013 to Mojave and I'm definitely feeling eye-strain that I've NEVER experienced on this Mac previously through any OS update.

                    I've just tried some of the font tweaks above in the hope that might help but it's going to take some time to test if it feels better.

                    I'm feeling very glad I took that disk image backup before I upgraded!

                    And dammit that's BOTH recent Windows and Mac updates that have been giving me new previously unseen operating system level hassles. Cards and screens have plagued me 'til now but the OS doing it is new and downright infuriating.

                    • KM likes this.
                    2 years later

                    Hey yall! Just wanted to see if any apps were successful in reducing strain on Macs. I have to use a Mac for work so im curious if there are any results here?

                    dev