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Comment by arthurk | Hacker News Reader

> Gamma 2.2. > The default gamma has been changed from 1.8 to 2.2

I've heard designers getting angry about this. Is there really such a big difference?

Enough to mess up color calibration for WYSIWYG workflows. (Though using ColorSync profiles is supposed to make this moot, not enough files contain such profiles, especially if they are Windows originated or unedited after camera capture.)

This seems to be a concession to web browsing. When visiting web pages, many Mac users complain about images showing up as too dark, when they appear "just fine" on Windows browsers. Safari was supposed to fix this, but third-party browsers like FireFox and Camino never bothered to deal with color correction, so this default is a work around, since so much work is done on the Web anymore. /-: (Funny how Windows users never complain about images appearing too bright or washed out. I guess Windows are used to problems dealing that OS. (-: )

(Not that this should 'ffect me much, I'm using a ColorSync profile on my home machine that changes the white point to a grey tinge to match the lighting in my apartment anyways.)

Too bright you mean. Gamma 1.8 is lighter than 2.2

I never could get the complaints straight myself. My personal Mac and the Macs at my former employer all religiously used color calibration, so we never had problems. It was mostly from end users, clients, and message boards was where I fielded complaints in the past.

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