Nice photo prints can typically show something like 100:1 to 200:1 contrast (~6.5–7.5 stops) between white and black, or at the top end, some dye transfer prints under carefully controlled lighting can get up to about 500:1 (9 stops).
Nice computer displays (and mobile device displays) without glare and with the brightness cranked all the way up can get up to something like 9.5–10.5 stops.
Of course, that range still pales in comparison to the contrast between shadows and highlights on a sunny day, which can be more like 16+ stops.
The contrast ratio (how bright whites are to black) is the important thing, and the contrast ratio of printed text in sunlight is a lot greater than your average LCD.
Your perception of contrast is entirely dependent on the ambient light level.
If you're in a room with big windows and direct sunlight, a cheap Dell will have a good contrast ratio. If you're in a windowless room in pitch darkness, a MacBook Pro XDR display will show clear blooming.
I have a 2017 iPad Pro that I use in what I would consider moderately dim lighting, and the contrast / black levels are fine.
One topic of conversation in the house is how the dynamic range of prints (say Inkjet) interacts with the viewing conditions.
For instance if is relatively dark and you are far away from the print it makes sense to lighten the dark areas so you can see more in them. Under good viewing conditions though the original looks better.
It is like gamma correction but it applies to prints and not just screens.
That article is missing the important thing which is knowing how to pick contrasting shades algorithmically, even if you never look at them. The accessibility guidelines for contrast are half of the knowledge, the other is knowing that contrast ratios are defined in terms of the L in the Lab color scheme.
Does anyone know what the contrast ratio for black ink on white paper roughly is? I was once a big fan of black-on-white on my computer screen, until I read that Solarized aimed for the contrast of "shaded paper" [1] and realized that the contrast ratio on a computer screen was much greater than the contrast ratio in printed material.
Also, it seems to me that monitors have improved in being able to display more contrast than was previously possible. Is that true? Is that another reason why lower-contrast designs have become more popular?
100% contrast. People went to great effort to achieve the highest possible contrast in print, e.g. with barium sulfate coated paper, optical brighteners in paper, single-use carbon film typewriter ribbons, oil based inks so pigments could be used instead of dyes, etc. Contrast is good. The only good reason I can think of to use less than 100% is for syntax highlighting.
Yes, my intent was to emphasize that lower-than-maximum contrast through paper (and not grey ink) is typical of most high-quality printing, to avoid giving the impression that it implies age, wear, or low quality (pulp/newsprint), which designers probably want to avoid.
(There was an 18th-century fad for extremely high contrast, but fortunately it passed. And current printer/copy paper is excessively bright (often even using fluorescent brighteners), but no one considers photocopies to be the height of good taste.)
The photo I linked to supposedly is how the tablet looks like in full sunlight, which I would assume would exhibit the best possible contrast. But the background is awfully dim (around #987 in the photo) (also in comparison to the white frame), and the text isn't very black (around #433). This looks like a contrast ratio of roughly 4:1. The photo probably isn't the best, e-ink displays usually have a contrast ratio of around 15:1. But that's still very low, printers can achieve a 100-200:1 contrast ratio for black ink on white paper.
> The contrast between 'black' and 'white' is still extreme relative to what people normally have around them.
It's actually the opposite. The truth is, our eyes are able to easily register extreme levels of contrast -- clearly taking in a bright sunlit day through the window next to a dark but still clearly visible interior.
Computer screens (and film and camera sensors) don't achieve anything close to the level of contrast our eyes can take in, which is why things like exposure and blowout require so much careful attention -- why you simply can't take a photo of a bright landscape in the window of a dark room without artificial-looking HDR.
If you stand in an office and look around, it's not like computer screens stand out as blazing white with inky black figures on them. To the contrary — they fit in rather harmoniously in terms of brightness. (And in dark rooms, we tend to reduce brightness in order to keep the harmony.) The idea that computer screens have extreme levels of contrast in comparison with the surroundings is simply not true — it's entirely the opposite.
A data point to support your claim: The main body text becomes white on dark grey with a contrast ratio of 14.22, compared to the original dark blue text on white background with a contrast ratio of 14.93.
> Remember, the contrast between white and black on computer monitors is greater than on the printed page, because computer-monitor white is brighter than a page usually.
Only if the lights are off in the room.
There may be such a thing as too much contrast. I haven't encountered it. But it doesn't make the text completely unreadable the way too little contrast does. When I copy+paste the text of a website into a text editor, it's always because the contrast was too low.
Nice computer displays (and mobile device displays) without glare and with the brightness cranked all the way up can get up to something like 9.5–10.5 stops.
Of course, that range still pales in comparison to the contrast between shadows and highlights on a sunny day, which can be more like 16+ stops.
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