Set Colour Temperature of the Screen

[emariz]

Some of you have probably used redshift [1] (or the Night Shift mode on your iPhone) to adjust the colour temperature of your screen and reduce eye strain, specially at night. In my case, even though the brightness of my laptop's monitor is around 50 % during the day and around 20 % at night, adjusting the colour temperature of the screen still makes a huge difference. And once your eyes get used to it, you cannot go back.

Lately, I have been trying sct (set colour temperature) [2] and because it has just been included in Debian (July 8th), I wanted to promote it and check if my (intermittent) issue is reproducible.

I always disliked that redshift relies on geographic localisation to adjust colour temperature, and thus pulls many dependencies for (what I consider is) a simple task. On the contrary, I like the simplicity and straightforwardness, in both its use and approach, of sct. [3]

In Gnome 3, X-session, Testing, sct is sometimes reset after pressing key bindings involving Ctrl or playing a video (in Firefox or Totem), specially near the beginning of the session. This issue is intermittent and easily corrected by resetting the desired colour temperature, but ignoring its trigger makes it impossible to prevent.

If you use redshift, give sct a try. It is simpler. And if you do not usually adjust the colour temperature of your monitor, do your eyes a favour and install sct! [4]


1. https://packages.debian.org/sid/redshift
2. https://packages.debian.org/sid/sct
3. https://github.com/Tookmund/setcolortemperature
4. Depending on the ambient light, I set it at 5,000-5,500 Kelvin during the day, and at 3,500-4,500 Kelvin at night.

[bw123]

adjusting the colour temperature of the screen still makes a huge difference. And once your eyes get used to it, you cannot go back.

wow, that is so true. I still have a very nice diamondtron that i use when this superbright, washed out, lcd notebook screen gets on my nerves, and gives me a headache.

personally, i think it's because we got rid of black screen with the internet, everything is white now, too white!

[geoaraujo]

https://packages.debian.org/stretch/sct

"Unlike redshift, it [...] will not change the screen temperature automatically."

That's bad.

[No_windows]

Some of you have probably used redshift [1] (or the Night Shift mode on your iPhone) to adjust the colour temperature of your screen and reduce eye strain, specially at night. In my case, even though the brightness of my laptop's monitor is around 50 % during the day and around 20 % at night, adjusting the colour temperature of the screen still makes a huge difference. And once your eyes get used to it, you cannot go back.

Wow, 50% and 20%! Mine is 90% and 75%, you must have the eyes of a cat!

I always disliked that redshift relies on geographic localisation to adjust colour temperature, and thus pulls many dependencies for (what I consider is) a simple task. On the contrary, I like the simplicity and straightforwardness, in both its use and approach, of sct. [3]

Redshift-gtk pulls in quite a number of dependencies, but the regular redshift has only two or three.

4. Depending on the ambient light, I set it at 5,000-5,500 Kelvin during the day, and at 3,500-4,500 Kelvin at night.

3500-4500 would be way too pink for me...... I only go to 5000 at night.

[emariz]

I still have a very nice diamondtron that i use when this superbright, washed out, lcd notebook screen gets on my nerves, and gives me a headache.
personally, i think it's because we got rid of black screen with the internet, everything is white now, too white!

And too blue!

Wow, 50% and 20%! Mine is 90% and 75%, you must have the eyes of a cat!

It depends where my laptop is located. At work, where natural light does not directly reflect on my screen, a screen brightness of 50 % is enough is most cases. It probably never goes beyond 70 %. At home (a high storey), on the other hand, I set the brightness around 80 % during the morning, otherwise the screen would look dull.
In both places, however, the colour temperature that suits me better during the day is 5,000-5,500 Kelvin. Anything cooler just looks very blue to me.

3500-4500 would be way too pink for me...... I only go to 5000 at night.

Well, it should mimic the ambient luminance. Note that my job is not related to computers, thus at night I just read the news or some articles on my laptop, under warm, low-power lights. If I turned on the brighter lights, 3,500 Kelvin would also be too orange for me.
At night, 4,500 Kelvin works for me in most cases.

I would also increase the screen brightness and colour temperature when manipulating photos or watching a film, not to interfere with the source.