Black color - taboo, myth or necessity?
After reading this topic and the blog entry on which it is based, I once again thought about how “web design experts” love (this is a stone towards the author of a blog entry, but not only - everyone knows other fans of this) to issue the well-known theses for revelation and vigorously propagate them. Without worrying too much about the logic of how these theses are transferred to web design and design in general, and what they initially mean.
Let's see what the real problem is.
What is the "black color"?
This question is clearly not obvious to those who take to talk about the dangers or benefits of black.
Just because they constantly confuse conventional numbers like # 000 in the palette, the ability of the surface to reflect and absorb light (the true color of the surface), lighting conditions (the presence of so-called “shadows”) in the scene in question, as well as the human perception of the color-brightness pair ”, Which is not even in the eyes, but in the brain.
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If there is no black, can we get it at all?
The conditional number # 000 only assigns the screen pixel minimum brightness and neutral density (that is, equal values in the R, G, B channels). So what is next:
- The LCD monitor turns this color into its “best black”, which is no longer black (turn off the light in the room, fill the screen with solid black, and you will see that it still glows, even if in the case of a TN matrix - with almost all colors rainbows, if you look closely);
- plasma or OLED monitor does the same thing, only the weak point is not the clipping of the backlight, but the reflection of external light from the screen surface;
- the projector, as well as the liquid crystal monitor, has the same problem of the optical density of pixels through which the light of the lamp still penetrates.
So when someone says that “there is no black in nature, therefore it is impossible to use it in the design of interfaces” - it contradicts itself - after all, the screens obey the same laws of nature, and therefore the mythical “absolutely black” cannot be on them .
“We want black!”
I note that other people for the mysterious reason, on the contrary, need the deepest black on the monitor, but because screen makers are struggling to make the surface as absorbing as possible, and the pixels even better cut off the backlight.
Other strange people need the deepest black on the print, so they print black not just with K-colored paint, but add the rest of C, M, Y to it, in equal proportions, to increase the optical density, because paper is a low-contrast carrier. And some even resort to all sorts of tricks, such as glossy paper or varnishing black areas, so that light reflects off the surface in only one direction and not scatters, from which the black depth effect is enhanced.
Why do they do all this? It's simple: a person on a sunny day is able to distinguish more than 1: 10M contrast in the scene (including thanks to the brain, not just his eyes), so the stronger this contrast, the more realistic the image looks. And you can increase the contrast in only two ways - by increasing the brightness of the light and reducing the brightness of the dark.
Black or dark blue?
Part of the "campaign against black" is usually the statement that you need to use not black, but dark shades of different colors. The examples are paintings and photographs. We'll throw out the photos right away, especially - those that are on Instagram, but the rest too, because what is the white balance put on by the author, there will be shades of this color: blue, brown, red. And with the paintings (made in a realistic manner, because it is very difficult to vouch for the adequacy of the perception of the surrealists or the impressionists) we will understand further.
The atmosphere is complex, the mixture of gases with water vapor and dust lets in and reflects light very differently, making the lighting on a cloudy winter morning blue, and during the summer sunset with a weak cloudiness - red-orange. So it is easy to understand how in the picture “Sunset under a clear sky in a seaside town” there can be blue shadows and houses illuminated with orange light: where the direct sunlight that turned orange when passing through a thick layer of atmosphere does not reach, reflected blue light falls giving a clear sky a familiar shade. A similar situation arises in a variety of real scenes where there is a main strong light source and secondary ones whose color characteristics differ.
Another situation is easily explained - when there are strong sources in the scene, but the attention of the person is concentrated in the shadows. Then the eyes adapt to better see the dimly lit parts, and the bright details turn out to be "overexposed" and their color in the human perception is distorted. Here the shadow also seems to be colored, because the person really sees the colors of the objects in it.
Fine, we figured out the shadows in the painting. But what does this have to do with interface design? Absolutely none. The “shadows” and “lighted areas” of the flat interface are not really illuminated by any light sources, they are simply drawn. Yes, when creating volumetric elements, you can make the highlights a little warmer, and the shadows a little colder. But wouldn't it look “dirty”? This is largely a matter of user habits. Most people are accustomed to the severity and purity of colors on the screens, so such a decision in the spirit of "sunset under a clear sky ..." can be very controversial.
I'm not talking about what disgrace such “embellishment” can lead to on the press, if we are talking about printing screenshots of the interface of the application or site, which does not have a separate printing style. A low-cost, low-priced printer happily spits rare colored dots across a dark gray field. And let's also recall the matrix of monitors with 18-bit color, which significantly distort just colors with weak saturation ...
The pursuit of color rigor - subjective?
Is the habit of seeing clear colors and high contrast limited to habit alone? Definitely not. You can put a simple experiment. In any program, change the neutral (white or black) background to a close in brightness, but with a slight shift in some color. For example, a very light yellow (like old paper) or a very dark blue (like a clear sky at night). After working for several tens of minutes in such conditions, the brain will begin to subtract this new “constant component” and the background will appear white or black.
Likewise, people working on monitors with a faded backlight do not notice a pink tint, and when reading an old book, they stop noticing the yellowness of the pages. And this is not explained by habit - the subtraction of the constant component of color is a natural property of the work of the visual center, which allows us to see the situation on an overcast gray day rather than blue, and to distinguish other colors against this background.
For this very reason, it makes absolutely no sense to bring a weak color into the neutral-colored interface elements — the brain will bring these efforts back to neutral colors.
Or maybe it still makes sense?
In some places, yes. For example, there is a recommendation not to use solid backgrounds of neutral color (gray, white) for Android applications, because when displaying such backgrounds with OLED screens, the slightest unevenness in the color rendition, which they sometimes suffer from, is clearly visible.
Plus, if you make the background very dark (no matter what color), and on top put the inscription in white letters with black shadow, it will make the text even more contrast than just white on black. You only have to make sure that the audience will consider this text with anti-aliasing, otherwise you will get the impression of “torn” letters.
findings
The main conclusion - color, light, their display and perception - a single complex of phenomena, which behaves very differently. And it should be understood exactly how to do anything to interfere in this process.
The secondary conclusion is that it is worth less to believe the revelations of various kinds of “gurus” who, as they used to say, “heard the ringing ...”.
Let's see what the real problem is.
What is the "black color"?
This question is clearly not obvious to those who take to talk about the dangers or benefits of black.
Just because they constantly confuse conventional numbers like # 000 in the palette, the ability of the surface to reflect and absorb light (the true color of the surface), lighting conditions (the presence of so-called “shadows”) in the scene in question, as well as the human perception of the color-brightness pair ”, Which is not even in the eyes, but in the brain.
')
If there is no black, can we get it at all?
The conditional number # 000 only assigns the screen pixel minimum brightness and neutral density (that is, equal values in the R, G, B channels). So what is next:
- The LCD monitor turns this color into its “best black”, which is no longer black (turn off the light in the room, fill the screen with solid black, and you will see that it still glows, even if in the case of a TN matrix - with almost all colors rainbows, if you look closely);
- plasma or OLED monitor does the same thing, only the weak point is not the clipping of the backlight, but the reflection of external light from the screen surface;
- the projector, as well as the liquid crystal monitor, has the same problem of the optical density of pixels through which the light of the lamp still penetrates.
So when someone says that “there is no black in nature, therefore it is impossible to use it in the design of interfaces” - it contradicts itself - after all, the screens obey the same laws of nature, and therefore the mythical “absolutely black” cannot be on them .
“We want black!”
I note that other people for the mysterious reason, on the contrary, need the deepest black on the monitor, but because screen makers are struggling to make the surface as absorbing as possible, and the pixels even better cut off the backlight.
Other strange people need the deepest black on the print, so they print black not just with K-colored paint, but add the rest of C, M, Y to it, in equal proportions, to increase the optical density, because paper is a low-contrast carrier. And some even resort to all sorts of tricks, such as glossy paper or varnishing black areas, so that light reflects off the surface in only one direction and not scatters, from which the black depth effect is enhanced.
Why do they do all this? It's simple: a person on a sunny day is able to distinguish more than 1: 10M contrast in the scene (including thanks to the brain, not just his eyes), so the stronger this contrast, the more realistic the image looks. And you can increase the contrast in only two ways - by increasing the brightness of the light and reducing the brightness of the dark.
Black or dark blue?
Part of the "campaign against black" is usually the statement that you need to use not black, but dark shades of different colors. The examples are paintings and photographs. We'll throw out the photos right away, especially - those that are on Instagram, but the rest too, because what is the white balance put on by the author, there will be shades of this color: blue, brown, red. And with the paintings (made in a realistic manner, because it is very difficult to vouch for the adequacy of the perception of the surrealists or the impressionists) we will understand further.
The atmosphere is complex, the mixture of gases with water vapor and dust lets in and reflects light very differently, making the lighting on a cloudy winter morning blue, and during the summer sunset with a weak cloudiness - red-orange. So it is easy to understand how in the picture “Sunset under a clear sky in a seaside town” there can be blue shadows and houses illuminated with orange light: where the direct sunlight that turned orange when passing through a thick layer of atmosphere does not reach, reflected blue light falls giving a clear sky a familiar shade. A similar situation arises in a variety of real scenes where there is a main strong light source and secondary ones whose color characteristics differ.
Another situation is easily explained - when there are strong sources in the scene, but the attention of the person is concentrated in the shadows. Then the eyes adapt to better see the dimly lit parts, and the bright details turn out to be "overexposed" and their color in the human perception is distorted. Here the shadow also seems to be colored, because the person really sees the colors of the objects in it.
Fine, we figured out the shadows in the painting. But what does this have to do with interface design? Absolutely none. The “shadows” and “lighted areas” of the flat interface are not really illuminated by any light sources, they are simply drawn. Yes, when creating volumetric elements, you can make the highlights a little warmer, and the shadows a little colder. But wouldn't it look “dirty”? This is largely a matter of user habits. Most people are accustomed to the severity and purity of colors on the screens, so such a decision in the spirit of "sunset under a clear sky ..." can be very controversial.
I'm not talking about what disgrace such “embellishment” can lead to on the press, if we are talking about printing screenshots of the interface of the application or site, which does not have a separate printing style. A low-cost, low-priced printer happily spits rare colored dots across a dark gray field. And let's also recall the matrix of monitors with 18-bit color, which significantly distort just colors with weak saturation ...
The pursuit of color rigor - subjective?
Is the habit of seeing clear colors and high contrast limited to habit alone? Definitely not. You can put a simple experiment. In any program, change the neutral (white or black) background to a close in brightness, but with a slight shift in some color. For example, a very light yellow (like old paper) or a very dark blue (like a clear sky at night). After working for several tens of minutes in such conditions, the brain will begin to subtract this new “constant component” and the background will appear white or black.
Likewise, people working on monitors with a faded backlight do not notice a pink tint, and when reading an old book, they stop noticing the yellowness of the pages. And this is not explained by habit - the subtraction of the constant component of color is a natural property of the work of the visual center, which allows us to see the situation on an overcast gray day rather than blue, and to distinguish other colors against this background.
For this very reason, it makes absolutely no sense to bring a weak color into the neutral-colored interface elements — the brain will bring these efforts back to neutral colors.
Or maybe it still makes sense?
In some places, yes. For example, there is a recommendation not to use solid backgrounds of neutral color (gray, white) for Android applications, because when displaying such backgrounds with OLED screens, the slightest unevenness in the color rendition, which they sometimes suffer from, is clearly visible.
Plus, if you make the background very dark (no matter what color), and on top put the inscription in white letters with black shadow, it will make the text even more contrast than just white on black. You only have to make sure that the audience will consider this text with anti-aliasing, otherwise you will get the impression of “torn” letters.
findings
The main conclusion - color, light, their display and perception - a single complex of phenomena, which behaves very differently. And it should be understood exactly how to do anything to interfere in this process.
The secondary conclusion is that it is worth less to believe the revelations of various kinds of “gurus” who, as they used to say, “heard the ringing ...”.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/149685/
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