10-22-2010, 09:23 PM
Vati,
The real damage to the eyes comes from:
- The long time forcing them to focus on a fixed distance - this brings the lens muscles a lot of effort, combined with irreversible strain of the lens. Later you'll need glasses to be able to focus distant objects.
- The long time of non blinking - that brings dryness.
- The long time of fixed eye direction - and not rotating your eyes enough. This strains the eye muscles.
Any other harmful effects are negligible, and are mostly result of nervous symptoms. Those are easily recoverable after a day of relax.
About your particular question -the background color. The science says that you are forcing your nerves when you are watching light objects on dark background. This is result of the eye/brain evolution leading to a mode called "night vision". This mode consists of neglecting the focus distance, combined with inductive sensibility of the neighboring photo-cells adjacent to the illuminated cell in you retina. That means simply (in technical terms) your eye is increasing it's sensitivity by giving false signals to the brain that the light felt on more cells, This one leading to lack of proper focusing feedback. In nature it is OK - as usually it is perfectly suitable for night scenes (light sources far away that can't be focused, combined with loosing the color information because it is not important in these conditions). This "night mode" brings more nervous strain, but not muscle/lens damage!! So if you are looking on a dark background with light objects, you will feel tired.
Usually black background is preferred by many people wearing glasses, because for them it seems that they see more. No need to go in deep in explanations, but this is the only case somebody could feel better with black background - it is the feeling that his eyes defects are not so visible as on white background.
From 20 years there is no doubt about the need to use dark signs on light background - just like on the normal paper. (ALL contemporary software products are using white background, and the black/green was left in the ages of DOS and the poor display hardware)
And usually the defenders of the black background are the people with focusing problems, that feel better in "night vision" where their problem seems to disappear for them.
I would recommend you to use black background only if you feel good with it and you wear glasses. Also if somebody is using light colors in his drawing - you are almost forced to use his background, or change the object colors to something visible on white background.
The real damage to the eyes comes from:
- The long time forcing them to focus on a fixed distance - this brings the lens muscles a lot of effort, combined with irreversible strain of the lens. Later you'll need glasses to be able to focus distant objects.
- The long time of non blinking - that brings dryness.
- The long time of fixed eye direction - and not rotating your eyes enough. This strains the eye muscles.
Any other harmful effects are negligible, and are mostly result of nervous symptoms. Those are easily recoverable after a day of relax.
About your particular question -the background color. The science says that you are forcing your nerves when you are watching light objects on dark background. This is result of the eye/brain evolution leading to a mode called "night vision". This mode consists of neglecting the focus distance, combined with inductive sensibility of the neighboring photo-cells adjacent to the illuminated cell in you retina. That means simply (in technical terms) your eye is increasing it's sensitivity by giving false signals to the brain that the light felt on more cells, This one leading to lack of proper focusing feedback. In nature it is OK - as usually it is perfectly suitable for night scenes (light sources far away that can't be focused, combined with loosing the color information because it is not important in these conditions). This "night mode" brings more nervous strain, but not muscle/lens damage!! So if you are looking on a dark background with light objects, you will feel tired.
Usually black background is preferred by many people wearing glasses, because for them it seems that they see more. No need to go in deep in explanations, but this is the only case somebody could feel better with black background - it is the feeling that his eyes defects are not so visible as on white background.
From 20 years there is no doubt about the need to use dark signs on light background - just like on the normal paper. (ALL contemporary software products are using white background, and the black/green was left in the ages of DOS and the poor display hardware)
And usually the defenders of the black background are the people with focusing problems, that feel better in "night vision" where their problem seems to disappear for them.
I would recommend you to use black background only if you feel good with it and you wear glasses. Also if somebody is using light colors in his drawing - you are almost forced to use his background, or change the object colors to something visible on white background.