Mac and PC gamma
At times it can be a real pain trying to design cross-platform especially when you have worked with a Mac your entire career and are designing for the web. It’s easy when you design for print, you’ll have the colour guides as a reference although it always seems to be a surprise each time you open up the package that contains your printed artwork.
It’s kinda funny that certain web applications are called WYSIWYG* (html) editors because it’s not really appropriate: an html document will have an inconsistent appearance on various platforms and computers. An example is the difference you’ll notice when you check a Mac designed web page on a PC: it’s always darker on PC…
This is because a PC has a gamma of 2.2 whereas a Mac uses a default gamma of 1.8: something you really need to take into consideration while designing. It seems that Apple has changed it’s gamma setting in the latest operating system ‘Snow Leopard’ from the previous 1.8 to a default gamma of 2.2 which is the same as Windows.
I wonder why Apple seems to be eager to slowly change it’s outstanding products into expensive Window clones? I actually know the answer to that and I can’t say I’m happy about it. I also wonder if this gamma change is really going to make a difference for the web designers out there. In my humble opinion: I don’t think it will…
* WYSIWYG stands for: What You See Is What You Get