Do you take your friends with you to express your opinion? – The poor ones.

Glasses are not just about emphasizing your vision.

On the contrary, they serve something more important – the health of your eyes.

The choices you make for your appearance often lead to fluctuations.

With just a few easy steps, you will gain your consent and the approval of your loved ones, and why not everyone else?

WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW

The glasses are designed to be an accessory as well as to protect the eyes from health problems.

According to the needs and preferences that we have, we make our choice whether it be sunglasses or goggles with diopter, accessory or for computer, driving, and even anything in between.

DISCOVER THE SIZE

If you had previous glasses that you found comfortable.

Either they have stood well in your face, or for the first time you have the choice of deciding what to look like now, it is good to know their size before you buy them.

It is especially important if you buy glasses online.

It is also important to have the measurements handy.

This will reduce your hesitation and be able to focus on the best fit of the next pair.

Understand the basic shapes of the face

Everyone’s face is different, but it has 7 common shapes: round, heart-shaped (inverted triangle), triangular, square, rectangular, oblong and oval.

• Round faces: mostly have fuller cheeks and rounded cheekbones, full forehead, and chin.
• Heart-shaped faces: resembles a triangle inverted, with a wide forehead and pointed chin. It can be long and graceful or more rounded.
• Triangular faces: Mostly have narrow foreheads and wide jaw.
• Square faces: They have strong, wide foreheads and equally wide, strong chins. In proportion to the length and width of the face.
• Elongated and oval faces: They are also very similar. Rounded and proportioned. The oval face has a more pointed chin.

Select frames using face shape

They must be in the correct proportion of the face.

That is, do not distract from your appearance or have the striker sideways.

• Be sure your frames are neither too big nor too small – correct.
• Too big glasses make you look ridiculous. Eyeglasses that are too small may look outdated or attention-grabbing.
• The top should follow the curve of the eyebrows. You look best if you see your eyebrows just above the borders.

Choose the color that best suits you

The color was always attractive, especially if you choose the right one.

Different border colors may look better on you and reveal a little of your character.

• Determine if you have a cool or warm tone to your skin.
• To embody the cool skin tone you must have blue eyes, pale skin, blue veins in the skin. In this case, a cool color frame will complement your coloring best.
• Warm colors include brown eyes, tanned skin, and green veins. Then you can look your best in warm colors within the frames.
• Neutral skin tones can be framed in any color.

SUNGLASSES

The American Academy of Ophthalmology offers advice on buying shades that provide the best protection against harmful UV rays.

As we all know, they serve to facilitate seeing on sunny days.

However, wearing the right sunglasses is also the best protection against ultraviolet light, which prevents short or long term damage.

As studies show, sun exposure can increase the risk of cataracts, which is a leading cause of blindness worldwide.

Even intense UV exposure can lead to temporary blindness, also called photokeratitis.

No one is immune to diseases like these.

In particular, children and people with sensitive and bright eyes should pay particular attention to their choice of sunglasses.

Because the intensity of the light reflected on the eyes is much higher, they are susceptible to sun damage.

WHEN BUYING

“When shopping for sunglasses, some people concentrate on the appearance, not the sun,” says ophthalmologist Brenda Pagan-Duran.

The most important thing to do when buying sunglasses is to make sure they block 100-percent of the UV rays.

• Look for a sticker or label that says 100-percent protection.
• Dark glasses definitely look cool but don’t necessarily block more UV rays.
• Color is irrelevant. Because you have a choice of different colors, they sometimes increase the contrasts that are appropriate for different sports enthusiasts and even professionals.
• Polarized lenses block glare, not UV rays. They are suitable for driving or swimming.
• Price is not a factor. Sunglasses definitely do not have to cost too much to “offset” well.

THE RIGHT LENSES FOR GLASSES

When choosing lenses for your glasses, the following elements should be appropriate: Appearance, comfort, vision, and safety.

The most common mistake is to ignore it.

Hasty decisions do not produce good results.

You have to think carefully about your choice, but these are your glasses.

So pay attention to the material that made the glass cover and the design.

Prescription eyeglasses, whether you need single vision lenses to correct myopia or hypocrisy and/or astigmatism.

Through visual problems, I will offer advantages and features.

CHOICE FOR EYES

• Glass lenses – Although glass lenses offer exceptional optics, they are heavy and break easily. They can injure the eye when broken and are therefore no longer used.
• Plastic lenses – Due to their lightweight, which is about 50 percent of the weight of glass, the low cost and excellent optical properties of CR-39 plastic (developed in 1947) remains a popular material even today.
• Polycarbonate lenses – they are lighter and more impact-resistant, making them the preferred material for goggles, safety goggles, and sports goggles. In 2001 it was upgraded to Trivex.
• High-index plastic lenses – Thinner and lighter, with a higher refractive index.

COMFORTABLE, DURABLE, GOOD LOOKING

A refractive index is a number, which is an important measure of how effectively it bends light, it depends on how fast light passes through the material.

The higher the refractive index of a material, the slower the light moves through it, which results in the greater the refraction of light rays.

Lenses are considered mandatory when scratched.

All lightweight goggles have a smaller scratch factor.

Softer and more susceptible to abrasion than glass.

Stick to the following items.

• Anti-reflection coating – makes all lenses for glasses better. They reduce contrast and clarity, especially at night.
• UV blocking radiation – polycarbonate and almost all high-index plastic lenses have built-in 100% UV protection.

CONCLUSION

Now walk without much hesitation and shake with your new look the environment you are in.

Be unique, even if you do not have to follow these recommendations.

No one can take away your sense of style.

Seek a better future without hesitation.

We at IRIS support you when it comes to health and well-being, not only to your eyes but also to your lifestyle.

Author: Nikolay Tasev

Read more:

Will blue light blocking glasses help with eye strain?

Should I get glasses with ‘blue Light blocking’ coating?

Glasses to Protect Eyes From Blue Light

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Yeah… Me neither.

Maybe we’re pushing it with the whole excitement thing, but it’s a fact that whether we like it or not we have to do our jobs.

And a good amount of those jobs require working on a laptop, which may sound better than laying asphalt, but they still carry risks for our health and can be exhausting.

Staring at a computer screen for 8 hours a day and then a few more if you like video games, killing time on YouTube or watching Netflix can make your life unnecessarily harder.

All that screen time is undoubtedly going to lead to eye strain, which inevitably will lead to headaches, dry eyes, tiredness and all kinds of things we wish we didn’t have.

Digital eye strain is something we all should fear and be wary of. People tend to not think about their eyes as much when they’re too busy having the time of their lives watching Stranger Things, The Office, Game of Thrones or something else that glues you to the screen.

But trust us, we could do some serious damage to them and we need to start taking care of them just like we would take care of our favorite kitten or puppy.

Thankfully, there are things we can do, which will battle the Computer Vision Syndrome or at least help us keep our eyes as healthy as possible.

Visit a Doctor

Of course, seeing a doctor should be the first thing you do, so you can get a better idea of what is going on and what steps to take next.

Even if you think that your vision is fine, visit a doctor once a year – that way if there is a problem you will be able to fix it at the beginning.

Control the brightness

Turning it down to around the same brightness as your workplace will not only save you battery but limits your exposure to excessive light.

Which is exactly what we want to avoid digital eye strain.

Remember – too low brightness will strain your eyes and cause you a headache.

Proper body position

Correct sitting is also important.

Not just for your eyes too, but for your back, your spine.

It’s important to try and make it a habit or get a chair that supports proper sitting form, our whole body will thank it. The eyes will too.

Note: This is not a correct sitting position:

Take a break

Taking a little break, a short walk or even closing your eyes for a little would rest your mind and your eyes alike. 

And if you can’t remember to do that, our app Iris will help you!

Iris offers you a Timer – it will remind you to take those breaks once in a while.

Blink

This might be an obvious one, but remember to blink.

Studies show that people who use computer tend to blink less. This causes dry eyes and eye strain.

Avoid staring for a long time without blinking.

Drops

Something that helps against dry eyes are eye drops.

So if you have that problem, the drops would help you.

However, this can’t be a temporary solution.

Try blinking and yawning more often – this will help you with the dry eyes too.

Blue light filters

Something very helpful and important is the Blue Light filter.

It can reduce the eye strain significantly and help you feel better and sleep better.

It is a must if you’re using any device in the night time.

Iris is a software that reduces the blue light like this:

Anti-glare screen

There are anti-glare screens we can purchase for both our monitors and smartphones or we can at least try to sit somewhere away from a window.

If your monitors reflect the wall or something else that surrounds you your eyes will strain to focus.

Monitor position

Your device needs to be at arm’s length from you, which prevents visual as well as neck and back strain.

Glasses

You can always try the glasses that block blue light.

However, they can be uncomfortable, they may cause headaches in some cases and they don’t solve the problem – once you take them off or forget them somewhere the blue light is still going to be there.

We owe it to ourselves to take care of our eyes and all the ways available to help us protect them to make our job easier.

What makes it even easier is Iris, which will make you battle all the eye strain symptoms at once and effectively.

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Your eyes just like any other muscle can get sore and start to hurt.

That’s why it’s important to let them rest properly and exercise them to keep them healthy and strong.

Here is a collection of some eye exercises that can help you be productive, eliminate headaches and reduce the risks of serious eye diseases like glaucoma and cataract, and help recovery from previous eye surgery.

Keep palm and carry on

Rub your hands firmly in one another as if you’re starting a fire the medieval way.

Once they’re warm cup your eyes with your palms and let them rest on.

It’s best if you’re in a laid back or lying position.

Make sure there are no cracks between your fingers where light can go through because that would stimulate your eyes, not relax them.

Keep your palms on your eyes until the whole heat is transferred.

Gaze into the darkness meanwhile and imagine a beach perhaps. Repeat 3-5 times.

Binge Blinking

Sit down and relax.

Blink really fast about 15 times.

Then close your eyes for about 20 seconds. Repeat 4 times.

Zoom in on this tip

Hold your arm outstretched in a thumbs up position or holding a pencil upright.

Focus on your thumb or the pencil.

Slowly start bringing it closer until you can’t focus on it anymore.

Then stretch your arm again to the starting position.

Repeat 3 times each once a week.

FLEX!

Kinda like flexing your biceps on Tinder, but not quite.

Sit in a chair and without moving your neck look to the most extreme up you can.

If you want you can just try looking at the space between your eyebrows.

Then look to the extreme down (or your nose).

Repeat 10 times.

Then shift in looking to the left and the right the same way.

Repeat 10 times.

To infinity and beyond

Look towards the floor or a wall about 10 feet in front of you (approx 3 meters).

Imagine you’re drawing a giant figure 8 or the infinity sign with your eyes.

Trace it one way for a couple of minutes and then the other way.

Eye spa with my little eye

There are a few ways to make a DIY spa for your eyes (or a D’eye’Y spa, get it).

One way is to do a hot compress.

Soak a towel in hot water and then slowly and gently massage your closed eyes, your forehead and your cheeks. Repeat a few times.

You can also do that with your hands, again by soaking them in warm water and lightly massaging your eyelids.

Don’t press too hard! The other way is with a hot&cold compress.

Have one towel soaked in hot water and another in cold water.

Put one on your eyes for about 3 minutes, then remove and put the other one.

Switch between the two as long as you wish just make sure to always end on a cold compress.

Focus!

Like in the zooming exercise hold your arm outstretched with your thumb up.

Focus on your thumb, then focus on something in the distance, then again focus on your thumb.

Repeat for about 2 minutes.

Roll, roll, roll your eyes

You know that moment when you’re getting off the bus and some fool takes 50 minutes to get down the stairs and then stops right in front of the door and you don’t want to be rude so you just roll your eyes at them.

Yes, imagine that and slowly roll your eyes 360 degrees.

Repeat 5 times in one direction and 5 times in the other direction.

Leave a message

Similar to the figure 8 exercise, sit in front of a wall (preferably with no pattern) and imagine you’re writing a message on it.

Remember that argument you had with a classmate when you were in fifth grade and you couldn’t think of a good reply.

Well, think of it now and slowly write it out on the wall with your eyes.

Make sure to write out every letter well to strengthen your eyes better.

Don’t make it too long though.

Additional care tips

Keep in mind that if you’re already wearing glasses or have some kind of eye issue these exercises won’t magically cure you.

If you’re not feeling well constantly schedule an appointment at the optometrist and listen to what he has to say.

Make sure to eat and sleep well too.

If you don’t have time to do these eye exercises or you still feel like you need more help to keep your eyes safe and healthy don’t hesitate and install Iris today.

Iris is a software for eye protection that keeps you healthy in front of any device all day.

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Does this sound familiar to you?

Long work days grinding in front of the computer.

Even longer sleepless nights. Swollen eyelids, puffy eyes.

You coming home looking like a vampire.

The kids cry when they see you, the dog hides under the table.

Do you want to feel better? Sleep better? Be healthier?

Check out these 7 tips for protecting your eyes in front of the PC.

Tips for eye protection

1. Visit a doctor

The first and most important thing you can do is to examine your eyes at least once a year.

That way every problem with your vision can be caught at an early stage before it evolves into something more serious and you will have the best chance to prevent that.

Especially if your work requires long hours in front of the computer you should tell the doctor so that he can suggest a proper treatment if necessary.

2. Blink

Monitors tend to make you forget to do that. But this is simply the easiest way to protect the eyes.

A lot of people complain about dry eyes when they spend hours in front of the PC.

That is because they don’t blink often enough and just stare at the screen.

You should avoid doing it and the best way to remember to blink is to:

3. Take a break

Even if you are at work you can give yourself a break from time to time.

Stand up, look through the window for a while so that your eyes can rest a little.

You can follow the “20-20-20” rule – every 20 minutes look for 20 seconds at an object that is 20 feet away.

Your eyes will shift from short- to long-distance perception.

This will help you relax not only your eyes but also your brain and will help you work better.

While you sit you can do some exercises like moving the eyes around in circles, which is good for the eye muscles.

4. Use proper lighting

Your screen should be the most brightly glowing thing in the room.

Pay attention to the position of the monitor – if it is possible the windows should not be right in front or right behind the screen, but to the side.

When something reflects on your screen your eyes strain to see what is written on the monitor and to ignore the reflection.

All kinds of reflections on your screen – from the window, from the wall or from a lightbulb, can cause eye strain.

Considering the fact that you probably spend 8+ hours in front of the monitor daily, make sure that you minimize the glare.

If it is necessary then cover the windows so that the bright light from the outside doesn’t affect your eyes.

If the room is too dark, your brightness should not be at its highest level either, because the difference between the light around you and the one of the screen will be too big.

5. Keep your screen an arm’s length away

You will probably be shocked to find out how unnecessarily close your screen is.

One simple rule says: If you can high-five your monitor, then it is too close.

This refers to the screens of all kinds of devices – mobile phones, laptops, tablets, etc.

Especially when it comes to our smartphones, we tend to keep them close to the eyes because of the smaller screen.

Here’s a piece of advice: Keep all kinds of monitors away from your face and you will feel the absence of eye strain.

6. Block the blue light

It is known that blue light is harmful to our eyes. There are different ways to reduce it.

You can buy a blocking screen protector and use it on your computer.

The negative side here is that you have to buy an individual protector for every computer and there is no such thing for all kinds of smartphones so the problem won’t be fully solved.

You can also buy special glasses for computer, but they don’t remove the blue light, they just filter it for you and the problem still remains.

Plus glasses can feel uncomfortable and you will have to wear them almost all the time, so that is also not the best solution.

So here we come to the next opportunity:

7. Install Iris

Iris is a software for protecting the eyes from the harmful rays of the screen.

Easy to install and to use, Iris can change your life immediately.

You can get the 7-day free trial to see if it works for you. You can choose from the different versions depending on which one you like best.

The advantage here is that you can install Iris on all of your mobile devices and never again worry about the blue light that constantly affects your eyes.

More about Iris

There are different versions of Iris. Let’s take a look:

• Iris – This version has different modes like automatic, manual and paused. There are different types – health, sleep, reading, etc. There is also a Pro version.

• Iris mini – This is a smaller version of Iris, which does not have so many settings but still helps you decrease the blue light that your screen emits. Here there is also a Pro version.

• Iris micro – Even smaller than Iris mini and very fast. It has only manual mode and looks like this:

In conclusion… 

Do not hesitate, because your eyes won’t wait for you forever to start taking care of them.

If you are stuck in front of the computer daily and there is no way to use it only once in a while, you can ease your life and get Iris now.

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Hi Gamer,

Have you ever imagined that there is a way to play more and harder without getting your eyes red, sore and strained? There is!

Actually… there are a lot of easy and quick ways on how to do it so you can practice more and become just like one of the mega cool guys in the picture above or you could just enjoy the fun more. Let me show you how to do it.

Digital Eye Strain is one of the most common eye problems of the modern society. It is the discomfort you feel in the eyes after using a technology device for a couple of hours.

It may be caused by a lot of things – your screen brightness, the lightness around your PC and many more.

Here are a few ways to reduce it’s symptoms and feel better when using your PC and especially while gaming.

Blink, blink, blink!

Just like a mage… or anti mage if you prefer.. (if you could this it would be awesome actually).

Yes, blinking (in real life) keeps your eyes hydrated and doesn’t let them get sore. It is very important because if your eyes are sore for a lot of time it can lead to more serious problems in the long run. I know it is hard to blink consistently in the middle of a team fight, but please remind yourself now and then.

Take regular breaks

The 20-20-20 rule.. Every 20 minutes go look at something 20 feets away for 20 seconds. Actually for a hardcore gamer this isn’t so useful but try to adjust it as per the games you play.

Every now and then stand up from the computer and go focus on something away. This helps muscles in your eyes relief after you used them to focus. Also try getting a 15 minute break after an hour or two of gaming.

Adjust the lighting in your room properly

Always keep a light on in the room where you play or use your PC. Try to avoid playing in the dark because the light difference between your PC monitor and the surrounding area could really harm your eyes in the long run.

Avoid using fluorescent lamps. Also try to avoid screen glaring at all costs.

Try Flicker free monitor

Nowadays there are a lot of less harmful monitors on the market.

These kind of monitors are made without using the Flicker technology in which the brightness of your monitor is controlled by the monitor turning on and off hundreds of times in a second.

Our eyes actually cannot perceive this movement and they start to hurt after some time.
These monitors also come with a blue light filter and IPS display which is the best for our eyes. The problem is that they can be pretty expensive.

Eat healthy

Maintaining a healthy diet is also crucial for your overall health and eye wellness. Eating healthy can make you feel better and let you be more active while gaming.

Fish can prevent your eyes from getting sore due to the omega 3 acids it contains. Another great foods for your eyes are:

• Green vegetables
• Citrus fruits
• Nuts
• Seeds

Try to consume more foods which contain vitamin A – it has very good effect on our eyesight.
Also try to exercise more.

Being fit increases our overall happiness and calmness and helps us being more productive and active. Hitting the gym for an hour will help you pwn the noobs ingame later.

Use a software designed to protect your eyesight

And now the most interesting part, especially for me. Use a blue light blocking software.

Blue light is one of the main eye killers in the technology we use nowadays. The blue light emitted from monitors of modern PCs, laptops, smartphones and other devices is artificial and has a negative effect on our overall health and eyesight.

The problem is that most devices emit more than the healthy amount of blue light which our brains cannot perceive and our head and eyes start to hurt.

Basically the lower the amount of blue light is and warmer the colors of our display are, the more healthy our monitors become.

The amount of blue light conserved by our brains and eyes is highly related to sleep issues.
Iris is a software which lowers the amount of blue light emitted from your monitor and removes the PMW flicker.

The best part of this software is that you can control the brightness and the amount of blue light you want to reduce. This helps you adjust the colorness (the warmer colors you use, the better) of your display so you can see every object in game.

This software will help you feel better after long gaming sessions and will reduce your eye strain. Another great feature is that Iris does not use a lot of CPU or GPU power and wouldn’t affect your overall gaming experience.

You could try it right now for free and see the difference.

With a software like Iris you can enjoy playing a lot more without getting your eyes stressed and tired.

How does this sound?

Iris also adjusts your screen brightness and warmness of colors automatically depending on the time of the day.

Let’s summarize all information

Long gaming hours spent in front of a monitor can be devastating to your eyesight if you don’t have an eye hygiene. Our overall health and wellness is closely related to our eyesight.

• Remember to blink often
• Take breaks now and then
• Consider the lighting in your room and the PC monitor you use
• And last but not least consider trying a software which reduces blue light and makes the colors of your screen warmer, just like Iris.

Thank you for your time, I would be really happy if you know other advices and ideas on how to protect our eyes while gaming.

See you in the Rift or World, or the battlefield… you name it!
You can also check out more about Iris and it’s functionalities.

The post How to Easily Remove Eye Strain While Gaming appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

Here are a couple of things you can do:

1. Take regular breaks from your computer, you can use some sort of timer to remind you so you don’t forget to take a break
2. Reduce PWM flicker, your monitor turns on and off 20–60 times a second. Our eyes can’ spot this but our brains can and it’s really harmful
3. Reduce Blue Light, the monitors nowadays emit blue light, which is really harmful to our eyes, sleep and overall health.

You can do all 3 things and much more with a program like Iris

It is the only program that can block the PWM flicker of any monitor and one of the best blue light blocking applications out there

Download Iris

The post What can we do to protect our eyes when working for long in front of a computer? appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

You will only be able to see with your peripheral vision which is almost considered blind

This is not 100% but you will certainly experience some problems with your eyes if you keep doing this

One thing you can try that’s going to help is Iris

It will reduce the blue light that your screen emits and remove the PWM Flicker

This will help you sleep better and feel less eye pain

Read mode on Macular Degeneration

Download Iris

The post My eyes are almost always red because of my computer Will this damage my eyes in the long term? appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

Apart from the seemingly insignificant fact, that it can be extremely distracting, placing a desk to face the sun burns your retina and you can go blind in the long-term

Having the window behind you is also a bad idea because it can reflect the light off of your monitor and make the image more “dirty” which is bad for the eyes too

Because of that, the best decision would be to have the screen placed left or right of you

If you want to go a step further you can reduce the Blue Light that your monitor emits and remove the PWM flicker so that you can have a better sleep and less eye strain

There are programs that can do this for you, probably the best one is

Download Iris

The post Is it a good idea to put your desk facing a window? appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

Blink

Blinking more often helps moisture your eyes better, you’d be surprised by how much this little thing can do

Take Small but regular breaks

Apply the 20–20–20 rule:

Taking a break also helps will actually also help you study better

Use a Blue Light Protection Software

You can try a software like Iris:

It will not only reduce the Blue Light of your monitor (which basically prevents you from having a nice sleep) but is also the only program that can completely remove PWM Flicker from monitors (which makes your eyes hurt and become red).

I suggest you at least give it a shot and see the difference

Download Iris

The post How do software professionals take care of their eyes? appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

This is a problem concerned with the retina of the eye.

In this disorder, the nerves of the central part of the retina are affected, and this is called the macula.

This condition causes loss of vision, especially in tasks where concentration focuses on one point such as in driving, writing, reading, studying, painting, crafting, stitching, etc.

In this condition, the central vision is blurred whereas the peripheral vision of sides is normal.

The effect is so intense that the affected person is considered to be blind.

Save Yourself

Download a program like Iris. It will remove the blue light from your screen and the PWM Flicker, they will not only save your eyes but you’ll get to sleep better and to feel less eye pain

Read more on Macular degeneration

Download Iris

The post How do I stabilize or improve my eyesight? appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

So, long story short, monitors emit Blue Light and have PWM Flicker

These are both extremely bad for your eyes and can cause a lot of problems in the short and in the long-term

What you can do is download a program that takes care of both these things, its called Iris

Download Iris to save your eyes

More on:

Blue Light

PWM Flicker

Download Iris

The post How do I improve my eyesight naturally? appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

But that’s not really feasible in the world we live in today

So here a couple of things that you can do to save their eyes:

Reduce the PWM flicker, monitors turn on and off, thousands of times per second.

It is so fast that our eyes can’t even see it but our brains can and it’s really harmful

Take regular breaks from the computer, you can use some sort of timer to remind you so you don’t forget to take a break

You can apply the famous 20–20–20 rule here:

Reduce Blue Light, almost everything emits blue light, screens of any time are especially dangerous. This is really harmful to our eyes, sleep and overall health.

You can do all 3 things and much more with a program like Iris

It is the only program that can block the PWM flicker of any monitor and is probably the best blue light blocking application out there

You can read more about blue light here:

How Blue light Destroyed our Sleep? –  Iris – Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity

And PWM Flicker:

How Мonitors Destroyed our Eyes? –  Iris – Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity

Download Iris

The post How to protect our kids from the harmful computer screen? appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

It is a really good thing to expose the eyes to blue light during the daytime.

It is this natural short wavelength light which helps to keep us energized, awake and to boost our moods.

However, this blue light when emerges from the mobile devices during night time is not good for our sleep.

Blue light is emitted from avaricious types of digital devices, fluorescent lights, and LEDs.

All these devices only suppress the body’s natural hormone formation named melatonin required for comfortable, good night sleep.

Hence, some sort of eye protection app is needed.

If you are health conscious and eager to protect your eyes and sleep, then it is essential to find out ways and means to ensure getting proper and complete sleep.

There are blue light screen filter apps present like the Iris app that can do a lot of good for the eyes and to improve sleep quality and duration.

Dimming the lights

According to blue light technology facts, presented by Wikipedia, LED lights although are found to be environmentally friendly and consumes less energy, are considered to produce blue light in plenty, similar to that of fluorescent lights.

Hence, using screen light dimmer can help protect eyes and act as a highly effective blue light filter, especially during evenings.

Switching off unnecessary lights when not in use can be much more eye and sleep-friendly.

Using lights in the room that are essential will ensure to limit exposure towards blue light.

Also, it will save a good amount of money on energy bills.

Device downtime

A good number of health-conscious people are found to be aware of the importance of sleeping early.

However, the majority seem to use their mobile phones to check their social network accounts.

The reason – to ensure they do not miss the interesting happenings and to not be missed out by anyone!

It has become a common practice among people of all ages to sleep with their tablets, smartphones, and laptops besides their beds.

They simply cannot resist those mysterious messages received from friends or someone known.

Also are present few people who just prefer to wake up at night, just to check their phone!

All this only increases their getting exposed to blue light, which is equivalent to waking in the morning having the sun gleaming through the window.

The eyes’ back portion is struck with blue light from the device.

That compels the body to get ready for the morning.

Use blue light filter apps to reduce eye strain and get good sleep

Even though special filter screen glasses are being sold in the market to help good sleep, there are many who may feel uncomfortable wearing it all the time and would want to remove it.

Wearing the glasses can also be disturbing especially when going through the mobile phone messages at night. With the Iris app, nothing can go wrong.

It is effective enough to filter blue light from the tablet or smartphone.

It can effectively nullify the negative effects that come with blue light harm when using devices during evening and night time.

Such eye protection apps are much smarter and also completely safe to be used by almost all types of devices.

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Opposed to popular belief, deteriorating vision is not automatically linked with aging. It’s mainly a side effect of modern lifestyle.

Habits such as staying for long hours in front of the screen, not wearing eye protection, rubbing your eyes and overexposure to blue light are seriously harming your vision.

Even though your eyes are so small, they pay a big role in helping you navigate the world around you. Protecting your eyes is in your hands, and yes, you can totally do something to avoid eye injuries and save your sight throughout the years.

So, what’s the key?

Lutein and Zeaxanthin

• What are they?

Good nutrition is crucial in order to keep your eyes healthy and functioning their best throughout your lifetime.

The two principal nutrients that may reduce your risk for macular degeneration are Lutein and Zeaxanthin.

The macula is the small central part of your retina which is responsible for detailed central vision. It is protected by a yellow pigment made up of lutein and zeaxanthin.

The two nutrients are found in high concentrations in the macula and their function is to absorb light and protect the macula from high-energy light rays, called blue light and also from UV light.

What they do in nature is to absorb excess light energy to prevent damage to plants from too much sunlight, especially from blue light.

• Daily intake 

As our body does not produce lutein and zeaxanthin, we should consume them through lutein-rich foods.

Though it’s not recommended how much of the nutrients is good for us to consume, studies have found that we can derive a lot of benefits simply by taking a dosage of 10 mg of lutein per day, and 2 mg per day of zeaxanthin.

• Where can you find them?

You can find lutein and zeaxanthin in green leafy vegetables such as kale and spinach. You’ll also find these nutrients in orange- and yellow-colored fruits and vegetables.

Most of the foods containing lutein also have zeaxanthin, so here are the top 10 lutein-rich foods.

1. Dark leafy greens (Kale)
2. Green herbs (Basil)
3. Salad greens (Lettuce)
4. Summer squash
5. Broccoli
6. Brussels sprouts
7. Asparagus
8. Green peas
9. Leaks
10. Green beans

Try to eat them raw when possible to derive maximum benefit.

Check the graph below to see how much lutein can you get from your foods. 

Eat your way to good eyesight

Maintaining a well-balanced, healthy diet is vital to keep your eyes healthy, and may help lower your the of developing eye conditions or of making existing ones worse.

A lot of people have eyesight problems caused by their lifestyle but just a few know they may be avoided if we include foods that contain a range of vitamins, nutrients, and minerals, known as antioxidants in our diet.

Eye conditions that you may be able to prevent with a proper diet are:  

• Macular degeneration
• Glaucoma (often provoked by Diabetes)
• dry eyes
• poor night vision

That’s why a number of antioxidants such as those given below can help. 

• Vitamin C
• Vitamin E
•  Lutein
• Zeaxanthin
• Zinc oxide
• Copper oxide

Here are some of the foods to add to your diet.

• Fish

On the picture above, you can see what the rule is. Each time when 20 minutes have passed, look away at an object(20 feet away from you) for just as little as 20 seconds.

3. Just blink 

It seems a bit silly to remember to yourself to do something absolutely normal but the truth is we tend not to blink when sitting in front of computers, tablets, and smartphones. Blinking is crucial  because it moisturizes the eyes and can save us from itchy and dry eyes.

So, the next time you feel discomfort- just blink, blink and blink again.

4. Install an eye protecting software

Installing an eye protecting software will solve most of your computer-related problems. It will make the monitor healthy for your eyes by:

• Blocking the emitted blue light
• Detect the blinking rate
• Reduce the brightness
• Remind you to take regular breaks

Iris is such software which you can install no matter what Windows type you’re using.

It will increase your productivity, improve your sleep and general health. If you want to learn more about it, click here.

Final words

If you’ve liked this article, share it on the social media, so that more people can learn about the natural alternatives for eye health.

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If you are someone who owns a mobile phone or a laptop then this article is a must-read for you because today we are going to explain you about the importance of adjusting the brightness of your monitor screen.

Also, we will tell you about an amazing blue light software that can actually make the screen of your device healthy for your eyes.

Yes, you read it right, after reading this article, you will never have to listen to people who tell you to stop using your mobile phones and laptops.

That way, everything will sort out for you and you will be free from the blue light harm of your smartphone or laptop.

Why Is It Important To Adjust The Brightness Of Your Screen?

A lot of people out there know that their screens are not healthy for their eyes but the sad part is that people don’t know why isn’t it healthy.

In short, only a few people out there actually discuss about the health of eyes and half of the world is just after weight loss tricks and healthy eating which is also good but let’s face it, you cannot just “not talk” about the most sensitive part of the body which is the human eye.

We’ve been told since childhood that eyes are quite sensitive but people don’t actually tell about the ways to protect these eyes.

It is but an undeniable fact that right now almost everyone owns a laptop or a phone and people don’t realize that the screen blue light is continuously damaging their eyes.

Yes, the light emission from your screen regarded as blue light and this light is so far the most dangerous thing you expose your eyes to. Prove can be cited by various sources like Wikipedia on this topic about the blue light effect.

Blue light comes with a lot of benefits too but just like the UV rays from the Sun, this light is not healthy for your skin and your eyes.

In fact, you can say that the excessive exposure of blue light is not healthy and unfortunately, we all spend almost all our day in front of our laptops and mobiles which is where all the problems like eye pressure pain and eye muscle pain begin.

Adjusting The Brightness Of Your Screen

We hope you now understand why is your monitor screen not healthy for your vision.

Now, we are going to tell you about an amazing screen brightness adjustment software that can actually make your life a lot easier than you’ve ever imagined.

Especially if you are someone worried about your vision and if you don’t want to end up wearing glasses or contact lenses then you need this screen light dimmer software right at the moment.

Here we are talking about none other than Iris.

Iris is a great software that has been making headlines since its introduction.

The sole purpose of this software is to make your screens healthy for your eyes.

How Iris Works?

Unlike any other software out there, Iris is the most effective one and this software is pretty intelligent as it regulates your screen brightness just according to the light around you.

The best part about this software is that it prevents any kind of eye strain.

What actually happens is that when you use too much of your phone or laptop, the light coming out of the screen starts putting a lot of strain on your eyes.

Afterward, this strain passes on to your nervous system which is why most of the times you are unable to get a good night’s sleep.

However, if you start using Iris, computer screen dimmer, on your screen, we assure you that you will be able to see a positive change in your vision, you will be able to sleep well and most importantly, there won’t be any strain or stress on your eyes ever again.

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From Iris, f.lux, Redshift and other blue light filter desktop softwares for blue light reduction to Android screen filters, blue blockers, transparent sheets and everything in between this is the biggest collection of tools to remove the blue light from your life but first, lets make one thing clear:

You are not going to die

Blue light is just blue light. Yes, it’s the most high-energy wavelength of the visible light but we have it everywhere around us.

Even if you place blue LED in front of your eye you are not going to be blind in a couple of seconds but still, prolong exposure to blue light may cause permanent damage in the long run.

I’m not going to go into details why you would want to block blue light from your life.

If you are on this page you probably know a thing or two about the negative effects of blue light on our sleep and eye health.

With our constant exposure to digital screens, we should be at least slightly aware about our blue light exposure and how much time we spend in front of computers daily.

Taking this into account let’s look at all known ways to block light around us from entering our eyes.

How to block blue light?

You have 6 ways to block blue light from your life and screens.

Glasses

The first one is to place something on your eyes. This is what blue light filter glasses, orange glasses, and just regular sunglasses are.

Plastic Sheets

The second is to place something on your screen. In the most basic case, it can be just some orange, red or yellow sheet but some companies make a little better filter sheets and they cut it in the right size for you plus some glue to look more beautiful.

Native Filter

The third is to use special software which can lower the blue light programmatically with the help of the video card. This is what Iris, f.lux, Redshift and every native blue light filter application does.

It’s super effective, cheap and customizable solution, but also has some drawback like it can’t block just blue-turquoise blue light or part of the spectrum of blue light. Effects like this can only be achieved with glasses or physical filters.

Some monitors also have something called Low Blue Light mode but most of the time it’s just a marketing trick for something that every monitor has from more than 10 years.

I will talk about this after a moment so let’s return to our ways to block blue light from your life and screen.

Screen Overlay

The fourth way is to place transparent overlay with software on your screen. This is what most Android apps for blue light reduction do.

You may notice how they are redder always and how they are a little worse than software alternatives for your PC but the truth is that there is just no other way for developers to make something better for Android.

On Android devices which are rooted, you can access the device drivers and this is what f.lux and CF.lumen does but most normal people will never jailbreak their phone.

Fortunately in the newest devices, Android includes something called Night Light which is native video card filter and it works at least but bad. No automation, no super low values and the things I really need in one blue light filter like Iris for computers have.

All developers of blue light filter apps would be really happy if Android and iOS open their API to the public but it’s understandable from their side.

If you do something bad with the video card you can make the entire screen of the person black and unusable and eye protection apps are tricky for development.

Aside from this, you can make the screen black the same way with the Screen Overlay on Android but it’s high-level API and I’m happy that it’s open to the public.

Display Buttons

I’m going to put the last two ways into this category because they are basically the same.

Some new monitors come with the so-called Low Blue Light mode this is just a marketing trick for the old Color Temperature menu that every monitor and TV has.

So you can lower the blue light via hardware way on near all monitors but what this is missing is the automation.

This is important because every change via monitor buttons take around half a minute for someone who is fast. Well, you can get this to 10 seconds if you are really fast, but it’s still cumbersome.

I will also mention how you can lower the blue light on every TV later in this article.

Which is the best?

As always there is no best way that some ways which are better for certain situation.

Glasses are great for blocking all blue light around you without touching anything. You can block blue light from your lighting, from the TV and even from the Sun.

Plastic sheets are set and forget and sometimes they don’t make the monitor to look orange, but blue light may not be blocked entirely.

Both Glasses and Plastic sheets are not customizable in their reduction so if you want stronger or lighter filter you need to buy new lenses or sheets.

Native filters are probably the best solution for PC but they do require Root or Jailbreak on your phone. They also can’t work on every device.

Windows Phone and TVs are examples on which blue light filter apps can’t be made.

Screen Overlay apps are great for Android but they decrease the contrast and are not the best solution for eye strain.

Display buttons are better are reducing blue light than any other software but you can’t automate the buttons with software. One thing I work on right now is to combine the automation of Iris with the hardware reduce of blue light via software. Basically to automatically click the buttons via software.

Aside from this, you can’t remove all blue light with Display buttons since they usually go no lower than 4000 K of color temperature which is still a really high amount of blue light.

Low Blue Light screens improve the condition a bit with stronger filters but they too can’t be automated based on the time of the day which is what most software products do.

In conclusion, each of the above methods has some pros and cons that we will discuss in greater details later.

History of Blue Light Filters

Photoreceptors

Before the beginning of this century, scientist knew that the eye contains 2 types of photoreceptor cells called Rods and Cones.

Rods

Out of all photoreceptors in our eye more than 95% are rods.

They are responsible for our night vision and are also really bad at recognizing colors.

Rods are not so sensitive to colors and this is the reason why it’s hard for us to see the color of things when it’s dark.

Cones

Cones are mostly around the center of our retina.

Thanks to cones we can see things in bright light be it sun or artificial lights.

There are 3 types of cones: red, green and blue and thanks to them our eye is awesome and detecting colors and distinguishing things with different colors.

Melanopsin

Then in 1998 Ignacio Provencio found new photoreceptor called Melanopsin and for the first time proved that light is not only useful for our vision, but it’s critical for many biological processes.

It turns out that Melanopsin is present in much more mammals and it doesn’t play any role in our vision.

The main role of Melanopsin is to control our biological clock and circadian rhythms.

It does this by detecting when blue light is present in our environment.

Melanopsin activates when blue light enters our eye and it sends a signal to our brain that it’s day and our brains stops the secretion of our sleep hormone melatonin.

Melatonin from his side controls a large number of processes in our bodies and is responsible for our good night sleep.

When we have melatonin in our bodies we feel sleepy and this is the reason why you can’t fall asleep when you sit in front of the computer at night.

F.lux

While Michael Herf didn’t know about Ignacio Provencio at the beginning he created f.lux to match his monitor colors to the light in the room.

The first version of f.lux was something like a command line app which gives you color filters when you request them.

After Michael and Lorna found that the orange screen filter makes them feel more relaxed at night they started researching the topic of light and sleep.

Lorna remembered from a biology class that birds migrated according to the season and the main reason for it was the blue light.

The first version of f.lux automatically synchronized itself with sunrise and sunset and actually, this is the main feature of f.lux even to this day.

Created in 2008 f.lux was the first blue light filter. A lot of other programs came into the following years, blue blocker glasses started to emerge and in one point monitor manufactures started to make low blue light monitors.

Several companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple integrated low blue light filters into their operating systems and opened the blue light research to the mass audience recently.

We may say that f.lux is the father of all blue light filters but during the years better alternatives started to emerge.

Part of the reason is that the app remains free even to this day and free software generally don’t pay salaries to people who can create great products.

Redshift

As everything in life, it wouldn’t be a complete story without an open source software.

Inspired by f.lux, Jon Lund Steffensen created Redshift in 2009.

The point of Redshift was simple. Bring f.lux to the Linux world.

Adjusting the screen color temperature based on the time of the day again Redshift was the first open source project for blue light reduction.

Free, open source and customizable the software gained popularity among Linux users.

Over the years the software became more user-friendly, it now has some simple UI and supports several different platforms like Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Twilight

F.lux and Redshift created the first blue light filter software for the PC but there were 1 billion devices running Android without any solution for lowering blue light.

You may have heard about Urbandroid Team but you probably don’t know about the mastermind behind it Petr Nalevka.

Several years after creating one of the most popular Android apps Sleep as Android somewhere in 2013 he came out with Twilight.

The first blue light filter app on Android Twilight found a way to lower the blue light on the closed Android platform.

While the approach of Twilight is really poor compared to the native gamma approach which computer softwares use, Twilight still made a huge step for improving the sleep and eye health of Android users.

The Color temperature values are not actually real because Twilight is using the Overlay approach with transparent red color but still it was the first solution for Android.

Iris

Back at 2015 nobody looked seriously into the eye problems caused by computer monitors.

There were the blue light filter tools like f.lux, Redshift and Twilight but most of the people who knew about them were mostly geeks.

On the other part of the spectrum, there were programs like WorkRave which reminded you to take breaks from time to time but they were just nice to have reminders.

I remember how I searched for weeks programs to help me with my eye pain.

My story was simple. I started working as a programmer at the age of 17 and wanted to become the best programmer in the company.

This goal of mine caused me to spend 14 to 16 hours per day in front of the monitor looking at digital letters and learning new things.

I was going to work for 8 to 10 hours then back home working on a side project which I really wanted to become my own business one day.

After a year of this “balanced” work routine and thousands of artificial tear bottles, I finally decided that maybe I need to go to the eye doctor to see why my eyes were hurting so much.

She prescribed me glasses and for the first time in my life, I felt hopeless about my eye conditions.

This was the turning point after which I started to read everything related to eye pain and eye health.

I started to do some exercises from time to time. I found WorkRave, EyeLeo and other break reminders.

I found f.lux and after some months of experimentation with blue light, rests, exercises and a lot of blinking I actually started to feel really good.

My problem with WorkRave and EyeLeo was that I always skipped the rests on the screen. Even on strict mode, Alt+F4 was closing the rest screen

As I test this again now several years later I see that the program has been improved a lot but you can skip the rest again if you want with some key combinations.

What I wanted at the beginning of 2015 was a break reminding timer which I can’t skip with my programming knowledge.

The first version of Iris was actually just that. I made myself a timer which locks my screen and disables my keyboard on a specific time interval.

I started using my own custom app for break reminding but was still using f.lux for the blue light.

My problem with f.lux back then was that it wasn’t able to go lower than 2700K back then.

It was able during the night to go to 1200K via a special menu but the lowest value during the day was 2700K.

I guess this was intentional but I just wanted to be able to manually customize it. Also, there was no way for manual control, only the day and night things based on the time of the day.

I remember how I wrote to the support e-mail several times and even tried to tweet and write to Herf several times to add manual control.

I never received a response.

After I realized that maybe f.lux will never get an update and my problem will never be fixed I started searching for alternatives.

I’m actually pretty sure that if it wasn’t for Iris f.lux indeed would never receive an update like the resent new version.

Back in 2015, there were no alternatives. A good version of Redshift was just not available and SunsetScreen was still not created.

So I decided to find a way to make this and add a blue light control to Iris.

After several months the first version of Iris was born and it was super ugly.

I didn’t know how to count versions so I just named this Iris-0.0.0. At least it was working the way I wanted a blue light filter to work.

From then on I started improving the program.

I found that eye strain is not only about blue light. There are also PWM flicker, font rendering, blinking, brightness automation, subpixel flicker and much more.

Over the next several years I gradually solved all problems I found.

Iris was free back then and I mean totally free.

After several months of non-stop work, I decided to place a donation button on the website.

I also quit my job to dedicate my life to help people feel less eye strain.

Back in 2015, I believed that people will send me some money because they appreciate my work and I would be able to sustain myself while working full time on Iris.

At the end of 2015 after I almost starved myself to death I realized that I may be wrong.

This was how Iris was looking back then. I actually still have all versions and you can still use these versions of Iris for free but I almost quit.

After 1 year of non-stop work trying to make the best software for eye protection and 0$ revenue from donations, I had 2 choices.

Abandon the project and start a job again or make it work.

As you can guess I choose to give my everything to Iris. I started selling all kinds of Chinese stuff to make some money and made Iris paid.

The software was still too bad for anyone to buy it but after several months I made my first sale, then the second then the third.

Many people these days ask me how I can charge for this kind of software but Iris actually drove the blue light filter revolution.

I chose to make a paid product because I didn’t want to show ads. And I chose to make a great product for few users instead of crappy product for everyone.

Iris was the first product to automatically pause itself when some program is running.

Iris was the first product to have flicker free brightness automation.

Iris was the first product to have a color inversion and black theme on everything

Iris became the first product to support USB monitors even before they made drivers for them.

The first product with UI for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The first product with native Chrome extension.

First product for iOS without jailbreak.

The first product to work per monitor and first to improve font rendering.

I can talk a lot but Iris inspired the renaissance of blue light filters.

Most of the features in the new f.lux are based on the things that were available for years in Iris.

This makes me happy and I am glad that competition made monitors more healthy for the eyes.

Which brings me to the biggest win for blue light filters which was

Native Solutions

Starting with Night Shift which was actually a really unfair move from Apple to f.lux, Native blue light filter solutions started to emerge.

The unfair thing is that f.lux for years was available for jailbroken devices via Cydia but because it’s using a private API it was against Apple rules and Apple didn’t allow it into the AppStore.

Tasks like this are really good to be handled by the operating system but most of the time their solution to the blue light problem is really bad.

So Apple came out with this groundbreaking innovation called blue light filter and removed the f.lux app from everywhere.

There was some kind of petitions about this but Apple was actually right.

Apps are eligible for Sideloading if they are open source so if the team behind f.lux really wanted to have their application available they could just open the source code.

Since the app was free I don’t see a problem but only they know what works best for them.

The good thing about the whole thing was that companies started to care about blue light all at once.

Microsoft added something called Night Light in the newest versions of Windows 10.

Android also introduced their implementation of a blue light filter also called Night Light.

The good thing about the native Android Night Light is that in comparison to Twilight it’s not a transparent filter but real gamma blue light reduction which works better and increases contrast.

And of course, Night Shift came to macOS.

Every day more and more people learn about the benefits of setting a proper light environment for their eye health.

Every day more and more people learn how to set up and customize their monitor and light for the best eye health and every day more and more eyes are saved from macular degeneration thanks to all these products and much more.

History of Blue Light Filter Glasses

I talked a lot about the software blue light filters but there was one parallel blue light revolution in the face of blue light filter glasses.

I’m not an expert in the glasses side but I think it’s proper to start with

Gunnar Optiks

Founded in 2006 way before f.lux came into existence Gunnar was actually the first product to try to fight computer vision syndrome and to filter blue light with the help of special lenses.

We can say that eye safety glasses were the first blue blockers but still Gunnar Optiks was the first commercial product of it’s kind.

The woman in the picture above is actually Gunnar co-founder Jenny Michelsen.

She started Gunnar in her garage in search of a solution for her husband’s digitally induced migraines.

Jenny son name is actually Gunnar and the name of the company comes from his name.

Here is the full story:

The idea for the glasses was born out of one woman’s frustration with her husband’s digitally induced migraines and worry about the eyes of her child who was fascinated by technology.

Jenny Michelsen’s husband, Matt, was suffering from the headaches he had after hours sitting in front of six computer screens.

The headaches, the Michelsens would learn, were a symptom of Computer Vision Syndrome, a collection of minor ailments that build up over time.

As the Rancho Santa Fe woman urged her husband to see a doctor, she wondered whether her 3-year-old son, Gunnar, was getting a jump-start on similar problems.

If she and her husband believed the computers were getting to their eyes – and they didn’t start using electronics until they were in their 20s – what would happen to Gunnar’s generation?

An estimated 125 million Americans suffer from what is now commonly referred to as Digital Eye Fatigue or Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS), according to the American Optometric Association.

Matt and Jenny Michelsen reached out to their close friend, Joe Croft, a former Oakley engineer, about the issues surrounding CVS.

They wanted to learn more about the effects of focusing on a digital image projected on a screen just inches from one’s face for hours at a time and years on end.

The Crofts and the Michelsens began their five-year road to launch by talking to medical experts.

One of those experts was Dr. Jeffrey Anschel, a Carlsbad optometrist who has become an expert in Computer Vision Syndrome and Visual Ergonomics.

He noticed the problem about 17 years ago when employees of a nearby computer company began complaining about dry and tired eyes and difficulty focusing.

They were problems that people generally didn’t experience until they were in their 40s, but these patients were in their early 30s.

It didn’t take him long to make the connection between their work and the required time spent in front of a computer screen.

“You can work, shop, communicate and do just about everything from your computer now, and people just don’t realize how much time they’re spending looking at the screen.

The digital images that computers project are one factor contributing to Computer Vision Syndrome.  The eye focuses on the hard edge of an image, but digital images don’t have a clean edge.

As a result, the focus drifts forward and back, causing eye fatigue.”

Anschel also noted, “that when people spend long periods focusing on something close to their face, eye muscles tend to lock into a singular position, which is tiring and can push the eye down the path to becoming farsighted.

Meanwhile, the eye has to deal with light from conflicting sources, such as sunlight, that are much brighter than the computer screen.

There’s also glare from the light shining into the eyes.  And the angle of view for the computer screen, which is straight ahead, isn’t desirable.

People tend to focus better at objects when looking down, such as reading a book.”

Croft and Michelsen eventually took a prototype to Anschel and explained the important components of the glasses.

They had an amber-tinted lens, which makes images appear clearer.

Yellow makes images sharper by adding contrast and filtering out blue light.

The lens is also shaped to pre-focus the light into the eyes, so the eyes don’t have to do all the work.

There’s also an anti-glare filter that allows light from the computer in but keeps out distracting reflected light from other sources.

The lenses are also designed to be fitted close to the face, creating a “micro-climate” that keeps away the dry air currents.

This helps keep eyes moist by reducing squinting and maintaining a closer-to-normal rate of blinking - a leading cause of dry eyes.

Croft and Michelsen set out to create a product that addresses the issues associated with digital eye-strain.

They completed their first prototype in 2006.  In early 2007, they founded the company and in October of 2008, they launched their first product.

Investors in the company include Peter Thiel (a founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook), 50 Cent, Carl Zeiss Vision, Monster, Inc., Christopher Burch and Happy Madison Productions.

I think the Gunnar glasses were the first and main innovator of blue light filter glasses so I will not talk much about others.

Note that many big names and hundreds of different brands make blue light filter glasses so Gunnar is not unique in any way.

Almost all blue blocking glasses do the exact same thing and they do it badly.

I will review many different brands but here are some things I want to make clear now.

Sunglasses block more blue light than many blue blockers.

You can find a test how Sunglasses block as much as 40% of the blue light while some blue light filter glasses block less than 10%.

You can also find Orange safety glasses which are under $10 and block more than 90% of the blue light.

If you have ever been to a dentist for whitening they place you red glasses so your eyes don’t get damaged from the UV light used for whitening your teeth.

Well if you are really concerned about the blue light I suggest you to buy a Dental safety protective glasses which are also under $10 and block all blue light.

This and all other fully red glasses block 100% of the blue light.

I will talk more about the different model of blue light filter glasses but you need to know that most slightly yellow glasses don’t do anything.

They don’t help you to sleep better and they don’t stop a lot of blue light. The truth is that software like Iris is way more if you want to use them in front of a computer.

The only reason to buy blue light filter glasses should be if you have bad lighting or watch a TV a lot and software don’t support your screen.

Another reason is if you want to do some biohacking and wear them outside.

How much Blue light software Blue light filters block?

There is not much information on the internet about how to check if your monitor emits blue light so I did a simple Blue light filter Test:

With your blue light filter look at the image above and if all squares look black all blue light is blocked.

GIF test

You can also use this GIF test here

If the image is black and you don’t see any blue all blue light is blocked.

The latest medical researches, however, point the melatonin secretion is also effected by green light so to test if all blue and green light is blocked use this image:

Ideally, if your monitor doesn’t emit blue or blue and green light you shouldn’t see a change in the color.

You should only see black square without any change of the color or hue like this

For more info about the Iris blue light filter test visit How to check if my Monitor emits Blue light?

Here is an example of how Iris blocks all blue and green light

Test with the images

When no blue light is blocked the white color should look like this

When 10% of the blue light is blocked white color should look like this

When 20% of the blue light is blocked white color should look like this

When 30% of the blue light is blocked white color should look like this

When 40% of the blue light is blocked white color should look like this

When 50% of the blue light is blocked white color should look like this

When 60% of the blue light is blocked white color should look like this

When 70% of the blue light is blocked white color should look like this

When 80% of the blue light is blocked white color should look like this

When 90% of the blue light is blocked white color should look like this

When 100% of the blue light is blocked white color should look like this

If your blue light is 100% blocked white color will actually be yellow.

Note that you can’t actually test how much blue light your blue light filter blocks and if you really need to test this you need a colorimeter.

Here is an example of Iris with Groot color scheme which blocks only blue light without affecting the green light:

If you want to test if both green and blue light is blocked you need to use some other test images.

When no blue light is blocked the white color should look like this

When 10% of blue and green light is blocked white color should look like this

When 20% of blue and green light is blocked white color should look like this

When 30% of blue and green light is blocked white color should look like this

When 40% of blue and green light is blocked white color should look like this

When 50% of blue and green light is blocked white color should look like this

When 60% of blue and green light is blocked white color should look like this

When 70% of blue and green light is blocked white color should look like this

When 80% of blue and green light is blocked white color should look like this

When 90% of blue and green light is blocked white color should look like this

When 100% of blue and green light is blocked white color should look like this

You may notice that most blue light filter softwares actually don’t look like this at high values.

This is because there is a legacy to use Color temperature instead of linear reduction dating to the first versions of f.lux.

However, if all blue and green light is removed the result is always red.

Here is an example at Iris set to 0% blue light which actually removes both blue and green light:

RGB test

While the first test was made for easily test if all blue and green light is removed from the screen it was not really good for finding what percentage of blue light is blocked.

The second test is really good for finding what percentage is blocked but you need a really sharp eye to see the difference in the colors.

This RGB test is something in between. You can test if all blue light is blocked and you can also see some percentage.

Look at the image below with your blue light filter

If you don’t see the blue color all blue light is blocked

If you don’t see the green color all green light is blocked

And here how most blue light filter softwares work at 3400K

To remove all blue light you need something bellow 1900K

and going down even move will remove also the green light

These were basically the test you can do to see how effective is you blue light filter.

You can test this way both software and glasses.

The difference is that with software you will not see emission while with glasses the lest will block the light.

Blue Light Filters Market

In this fictional market, my goal is to collect all products on Earth for reducing blue light.

I’m going to the deepest parts of the web in search of the No Blue Light World.

Blue light blocking Glasses

There are really a lot of ways to block blue light via glasses. There are blue blockers with a yellow tint, with orange, with a red tint or the regular sunglasses also block some of the blue light aside from the UV light.

The best blue blockers look something like this:

To write the best and most comprehensive article about blue blockers I basically opened Google and contacted more than 100 blue blocking glasses manufacturers and brands.

In the beginning, I expected something like 1000 brands but it turned out that there are not many blue light blocking companies in the words.

While there are so many companies for regular glasses only some of them produce also blue blocking glasses and fewer than that actually specialize in blue blockers.

Most of the best companies for blue blocking glasses turned out to be recently founded companies.

What really struck me that the big brands actually had no interest in talking about their products.

I wrote to them and most of the time they ignored me or redirected me to a chain of customer support which I just thought it will not be helpful for this article.

Here are some of the companies I write to actually:

What surprised me actually was that the small companies are much better at answering questions and their response time is usually lighting fast.

Well, I guess it was not so surprising because this is true even with Iris and most companies who succeed in the long run are really great at responding and customer support.

I remember how at the beginning of Iris I personally responded to every mail under 1 minute and if I was sleeping when I get some question I had an alarm sound to wake up and respond faster.

What was also not surprising is that I already knew some of the guys behind this projects in one way or another.

I guess our industry is still really small and there are not a lot of people who care about the negative effects of blue light and technology on our lives.

So in this section, I will present everything on the internet I found about blue light filter glasses.

I will also include some quotes from the founders or from the team behind the companies.

There is not a lot of ordering here and the first companies are just the ones which responded me the fastest which I guess is also a really good measure of how good is their customer support and product but this is not always the case.

However, I guess the people who responded the fastest are this who care the most.

I am not going to include companies which may have a great product but don’t respond to user questions because I think this is bad user experience and they don’t deserve a spot in this article.

Swanwick Sleep

I actually just recently saw the Swanwick Sleep glasses after some ad on Facebook.

They have some campaign going on IndieGoGo right now with some discount here:

Swannies Model X: Created to Help You Sleep Better

and here is how the “Swannies” actually look like

BLUblox

What I like about BLUblox is the huge variety of lenses which they have and that they actually have red lens for night usage which blocks both blue and green light.

At first glance you may think “Why do I need to use different lenses?” and I want to spend some time to explain the reasoning behind using different lenses during the different parts of the day.

During the day, you actually need full spectrum sunlight to be more healthy but the light from monitors and other light sources are different from the light of the Sun.

The first graph on the picture above shows the light spectrum from the Sun and the next 3 graphs are from different light sources.

You probably know that red light causes growth and blue light decreases growth, red light promotes health, while blue light most of the time is degenerative.

The first lightbulb which Thomas Edison made was actually really healthy lightbulb because it emitted mostly red light and a little blue light.

We know this light bulb as Incandescent and it creates light mostly by generating heat.

This is why it’s not energy efficient and emits a lot of red light.

The more energy efficient the light bulb the more blue light it emits most of the time.

So I’m telling you all this because almost all modern energy efficient light bulbs are LED and they emit a lot of blue light.

Looking at the picture of light distribution again you see how different is LED light from Sunlight and why it’s actually not normal to look at monitors or use LED lighting not only during the night but also during the day.

Computers, TVs, Cell phones, Tablets and all sorts of lights around us emit harmful blue light and this is why I and so many other people recommend blocking blue light even during the day.

If you use Iris on your computer you may have noticed how even during the day there is a small blue light reduction exactly for this.

This is intentional to try to make the LED light more like the Sunlight by reducing some of the blue light during the day. But Iris doesn’t work on everything.

What about your TV? What about your tabled, phone or all other blue light emitting devices.

What about all these LED lights around the house?

This is where the blue light blocking glasses are the only alternative and this is why you need to get BLUblox.

BLUblox is a relatively new company but what makes the project unique is this huge variety of lenses suitable for the different parts of the day.

I don’t know other company which manufactures both day and night lenses.

Most companies focus only on blocking blue light or on the eye protection with not so stronger lens and an anti-reflective coating.

What makes BLUblox unique is that they cover everything.

From lens to use when you sit in front of some device during the day to blue blocking day lens and finally deep red lens which blocks all blue and green light for night time usage.

Aside from the lenses, BLUblox has also a huge assortment of sizes and shapes which is also really unique to other companies which manufacture blue blocking glasses.

The Story

Andy and Katie Mant founded BLUblox in 2016 with the mission of supplying the most optimal blue blocker glasses in the world.

Andy told me that they started wearing blue blockers after dark in 2015 but they saw only minor improvements in their sleep.

We purchased our first blue blockers from a popular brand in the US so we wanted to know why we were not getting perfect sleep by wearing these blue blockers, as the company claimed.

Then we found the answer, some studies were showing that not just blue light but green light up to 550nm was negatively affecting our sleep.

We set to work in our laboratory and created a red lens that blocked all blue and green light from 400-550nm, in line with the latest science, called Ultra550.

The first night we wore our prototype pairs we slept right the way through the night and woke up feeling refreshed and full of energy.

We knew we had just created the most effective blue and green light blocking glasses ever made and we wanted to share this product with the world.

​We both work in office jobs, not a good environment as we are exposed to LED lighting overhead, LED computer screens and LED screens from our smart phones.

Even though our night range of red lenses were giving us a fantastic sleep we knew we had to address the digital eyestrain and headaches we were suffering from exposure to blue light during our office jobs during the day.

We tried a few popular brands and some cheap computer glasses from eBay but nothing improved. Then we discovered a post by a popular scientist who showed the light spectrum of LED lights.

Then in clicked, we had to block the nasty spike in blue light around 450nm, so obvious but none of our competitors were doing this.

So, we set about making two prototypes; a clear lens impregnated with an advanced blue light reducing material, which reduced the blue light spike from LEDs down, and a yellow pair which eradicated blue light from 400-450nm.

Being in an office environment we both tried out the clear pair and we were amazed how fresh our eyes felt and we did not have any headaches after working on our computer for 8 hours.

We had a colleague in our office who suffered from frequent weekly migraines, so we lent her our pair of yellow tinted Ultra450 lenses to trial for a month.

To this day we have not had them returned to us because they eradicated her migraines whilst working on computers in the office so we let her keep them, we felt so humbled.

With the lenses sorted we set to work designing frames that were in line with the latest fashions, making blue blockers more socially acceptable to wear and comfortable on your face.

You would not wear safety goggles to work or to dinner after dark, so we fixed that we ultra-sleek and stylish frames, with styles to suit everyone.

Did we also mention that unlike our competitors whose glasses are made in China BLUblox glasses are designed and made in Australia? This guarantees a high-quality product that does exactly what it promises.

Since launching BLUblox we have sold thousands of pairs of our blue blockers not just to people who wanted their first pair of blue blocker glasses, but to many people wanting to upgrade from their cheap amazon and eBay pairs and even from some of the other popular brands out there.

We have had many wonderful testimonials about how our glasses have improved the lives of our tribe who have trusted in BLUblox to give them their sleep and health back.

Review

The thing I love about BLUblox is that the team actually use and sell a red lens for night time usage which blocks all blue and green light instead of some yellow or orange one.

As I told many times before yellow and orange lenses don’t block the green light which also has an effect on our melatonin secretion at night.

Blue and green light after dark from the 400-550nm range suppresses melatonin production and disrupts your sleep.

BLUblox Ultra550 red lens block 100% of this range meaning zero sleep-disrupting blue and green light passes through their lenses.

While amber lenses only block some blue light and no green light the red lens of BLUblox blocks everything.

It’s clear that you must block all light that disrupts your sleep or your sleep won’t improve much.

If you want the best possible sleep consider getting a pair of glasses with red lens from BLUblox 🙂

BLUblox Ultra450 yellow lens are super useful at daytime to make the light emitted from LED digital devices more like the sun.

It has been proven that excess artificial blue light damages your eyes during the day.

The range of light that does the most damage is between 400-450nm.

BLUblox yellow lenses block 100% of the eye-damaging blue light in this range.

If you want to be more healthy and block the blue light during the day consider their yellow lenses and if you want to block the spikes of blue light but have more clear colors around you BLUblox computer lenses may be for you 🙂

Ra Optics

Matt Maruca created Ra Optics in 2017 because all effective blue light blocking glasses were pretty unattractive.

The good looking blue blockers were not blocking much of the blue light and the ones that actually worked were made for the safety of workers and looked pretty ugly.

What I love about Ra Optics is exactly this red lens which is super effective for blocking all blue and green light.

As I have said many times the yellow and orange lenses most of the time don’t block all blue light or if all blue light is blocked they do nothing for the green light which is emitted from the artificial light around us.

The latest medical researches point that light up to 550nm suppresses the secretion of our sleep hormone melatonin and actually, Matt showed me something even more interesting.

There is also evidence that even the healthy red light can cause some melatonin suppression.

I guess we just need to turn off all lights before going to sleep and what I love about the whole team behind Ra Optics is that they are experts in light and photobiology.

Another awesome thing about Ra Optics is that they manufacture both Daytime and Nighttime lenses and you can customize everything.

You can even send your own glasses and the team will place you the perfect lens which can block all blue light.

This custom tinting service is actually unique and no other company offers you to send your own frames and Ra Optics will make you a new lens and send the frame back to you.

I’m not going to go into many details again why the red lens is important for night time use and why you also need some blue blocking during the day but Ra Optics offer everything.

A great lens which blocks all blue and green light up to 550nm and great daytime lenses which block blue light up to 450nm.

Matt explains the difference this way:

In a perfect world, we would not need blue blockers. In our world, it would be ideal for most people to have both, but it depends on your lifestyle. Nocturnal Red lenses block all light wavelengths up to 550nm. These are the wavelengths shown to most affect our “biologic clock”, lowering melatonin levels and altering our sleep/wake cycle when present after sunset. This is because our body is designed to be not exposed to them after dark. Everyone who does not live alone in the forest or ever leaves their house should have a pair of nighttime blue blocking glasses; our are ideal because they are the most attractive on the market, making them something that will be used on a consistent basis without hesitation. These blue blockers can also be re-purposed for temporary daytime use if you enter someplace like a Target, Walmart, or Grocery Store.

Daytime Blue Blocking Glasses are for people who spend most of their day indoors under artificial light, which means most people. The reason we have a different tint is that it is not only not necessary to block all blue light during the day, as our Nocturnal Red lenses do, but it is functionally a new mismatch, telling the brain that it is nighttime, more or less, when it is not. Some may argue that, because almost all artificial light itself is already a “mismatch”, it is better to block all of the harmful blue light than to block none of it.

My Review

I strongly recommend Ra Optics and especially the custom tinting service which is the only one in the world right now.

We also did a talk with Matt about light, biohacking, blue blocking, sleep and everything in between which you can watch here:

BlueBlockGlasses by Somnitude

When I wrote to BlueBlockGlasses they provided me so much useful info that I’m going to first share it with you unchanged.

After this, I’m going to give you my thoughts about the product and why you should choose BlueBlockGlasses.

Sleep is essential for survival. Your brain is responsible for making you feel sleepy in the evening and keeping you asleep during the night. To do so, it has two processes that regulate sleep.

The first is called the homeostatic process. This is the pressure to sleep that accumulates throughout the day.

The second is the circadian (circa: “around” and diem: “day”) process. This regulates when you fall asleep and wake up.

These two processes work to ensure a good night of sleep.

Poor sleep has many consequences; some are decreased alertness, altered mood, and impaired memory. Long-term sleep deprivation has been linked with diseases such as diabetes and cancer.

One strategy to ensure a good night of sleep is to strengthen your circadian signal of sleep and wakefulness. The circadian clock is kept in sync by environmental inputs.

The most important factor is the blue component of light. The presence of light in the morning signals day time, and the absence of light in the evening signals night.

Special cells within your eyes detect blue light (wavelength 440 – 480 nm) and send a signal to your circadian system.

Historically, humans were exposed to blue light during the day (from the sun) and not exposed to blue light at night. Our circadian systems are geared to anticipate this pattern of light exposure.

Today, however, blue light exposure in the evening is very common, either because of screen use before bedtime or simply because the lights are on in the house.

Lights in living areas and washrooms usually have some blue component.

Blue light at night tricks your circadian clock into thinking it is the day, and prevents you from preparing for sleep. More specifically, blue light suppresses the release of a hormone called melatonin.

Melatonin is secreted and transmitted throughout your body in the evening to signal night time.

A delay in the release of melatonin, due to light exposure may result in delayed bedtime, sleep onset insomnia or poor sleep.

Eliminating electronic devices and lightning exposure before bedtime would improve sleep, but it is often unrealistic.

It is furthermore not necessary to cut off all of the light because the circadian clock is blind to most colors.

BlueBlockGlasses

This is why Somnitude has developed specialized sleep promoting glasses that selectively block harmful blue light while allowing other wavelengths of light to pass.

The glasses filter 99% of full spectrum blue light (spectra light until 520 nm).

Somnitude’s Blue Block Glasses allow you to pursue your regular activities in the evening, without having to worry that your circadian clock gets confused because of the surrounding light at night.

The glasses are ideal for those who use electronic devices in the evening or those who have problems with waking up on time.

The glasses are made from an optical grade polycarbonate, infused with a blue absorbing dye. The material is simple, yet durable and the glasses can easily survive being dropped.

The various styles allow for wearing of prescription glasses or not.

The glasses are tested at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Optical Sciences and were used by members of Team Canada at the recent winter Olympic Games.

Somnitude’s Blue Block Glasses have also recently been approved as a Medical Device by Health Canada and are now being used by sleep physicians to help those who have certain sleep disorders, such as Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome.

Why Somnitude?

We often get asked – What’s the difference between Somnitude and other brands?

The main difference between our glasses and those filters provided by Warby Parker, Gunnars etc. is in the degree of filtering and width of the spectrum of filtering.

Most other providers will filter a lower amount (for example 40%) at a smaller spectrum (440 – 470 nm).

These types of glasses are typically intended to be worn during the day, to prevent against eyestrain.

On the other hand, Somnitude’s glasses filter 99% full spectrum blue light and are only recommended for evening wear.   

Another important consideration is the effectiveness of the blue filter. For the untrained eye, it is almost impossible to detect how much blue is actually being filtered.

Many brands will claim things like ‘Full blue blocking effectiveness’ etc. but then fail to provide testing results or details on the company.

The only way to test effectiveness is by measuring the spectral transmissivity using a spectrometer.

Because we are affiliated with the University of Toronto we conduct rigorous testing on all our glasses to ensure that they are designed and manufactured to the specification of 99% blue light filtering.

My review

I decided to share the info that Somnitude provided me because they included so much useful and unique info but here are my thoughts and the things I think that are missed in the text above.

What I love about BlueBlockGlasses are they are a cheap and effective solution and effective solution for blocking all blue light.

I also like that they actually provide measurements for all their glasses not just talk about blocking blue light.

While other brands glasses may look better than some of the Somnitude glasses styles, BlueBlockGlasses are the cheapest option and they also cover the entire face.

What I mean by covering the entire face is that there is no place for the blue light to enter your eyes because they have Fitover glasses.

One thing that maybe they can improve in the future is to make also a red lens which can block green light also as we talked before.

Consider buying this glasses if you are from Canada and if you want to have Fitover glasses.

BlueBlockGlasses have a great price and work great for blocking all blue light.

BluBlocker

TODO

Blue light Screen Protectors

TODO

Blue light filter Apps

While everything can be effective for blocking blue light, my personal favorite way is by using a blue light filter app.

I guess this is also maybe the reason why I created Iris in the first place.

The good thing about a blue light filter app is that most of the time it’s super customizable.

For example with glasses and screen protectors, you need a different kind of lenses and sheets to block different parts of the light.

With Iris and apps like it, you can just move one slider and regulate how much blue or green light is blocked which is really cool.

You also have automation which means that during the day you will get a small blue light reduction and during the night it will be much stronger.

This helps to build a habit of blocking blue light easier.

With glasses, you may forget them and the sheets block light all the time which may not be what you need.

I will try to present and compare all different blue light filter apps here.

As you can guess I’m a little biased towards Iris but I will try to explain why I believe it’s the best software for eye protection.

Native Filters

Big companies started to create native solutions for blue light reduction from the beginning of 2017 and these settings are a really popular choice for a lot of users.

However, as everything integrated into the operating system it’s not working perfectly for specific needs like improving sleep and better eye protection.

The reason is not that the filters don’t block blue light, but they either don’t block enough blue and green light for better sleep or are not automated enough to match to screen brightness to the light around you and this makes them inefficient for eye protection.

Windows

After Apple introduced Night Shift in order to try to make an integrated into the OS way of lowering the blue light Microsoft also added a feature called Night Light in their new build of Windows 10.

If you have the latest version of Windows 10 you will probably find Night Light in the settings.

However, if you use Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP or Windows 10 which doesn’t support blue light reduction getting a blue light filter software like Iris or some other third-party program may be a good idea.

Night Light can also go to around 1200k of color temperature which removes most of the blue light but this may be ineffective if you want really improve your sleep.

Here is how measurement of 1200K of color temperature looks like:

If you want more reduction that this Iris can go to 0% blue and green light.

Otherwise, if you only need some eye protection going to 3400k  will reduce the spikes of blue light and will be enough and not much orange or red.

Something I don’t like about Night Light is that you can’t see the actual values of the color temperature anywhere.

It would be nice if there was some kind of percentage but this is also not present.

If you have some ruler you can calculate the kelvins via getting the length of the line and the position of the black slider then calculate the percentage.

From there you need to know that the most right value is 6500K and the most left value is 1200K.

You can then calculate the color temperature of the screen.

Another nice benefit of other third-party programs is that they show the current color temperature.

Iris, for example, also shows the percentage of blue light blocked from the screen.

Thank you for reading this whole massive article about blocking blue light from digital devices. I spend 3 months researching and creating it and I hope that I helped you to learn some new things.

If you liked my work click some of the share links or send this article to a friend 🙂

Daniel Georgiev
CEO
Iris Technologies

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The post The Ultimate Guide to Blue Light Filters appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

Mоnitоr Cоlоr Tеmреrаturе

Mоѕt сurrеnt LCD mоnitоrѕ еnаblе uѕеrѕ tо аdjuѕt color tеmреrаturеѕ utilizing thе OSD menu. Dесrеаѕing thе соlоr tеmреrаturе оn a mоnitоr рrоvidеѕ thе whоlе ѕсrееn аn inсrеаѕinglу rеddiѕh саѕt while inсrеаѕing the соlоr temperature influеnсеѕ thе colоr tо саѕt inсrеаѕinglу bluе. Thе mеnu itеmѕ fоr аdjuѕting соlоr tеmреrаturе diffеr frоm рrоduсt tо рrоduсt. Sоmе rеԛuеѕt thаt uѕеrѕ lооk over tеrmѕ likе “bluе” аnd “rеd” оr “сооl” and “wаrm”; оthеrѕ rеԛuеѕt thаt uѕеrѕ ѕеt numеriсаl vаluеѕ likе 6500 K оr 9300 K.

On thе оff сhаnсе thаt thе орtiоnѕ fоr ѕеlесting соlоr tеmреrаturе аrе “bluе” аnd “rеd” оr “сооl” аnd “wаrm,” pick “rеd” оr “wаrm” tо rеduсе thе соlоr tеmреrаturе аnd “bluе” or “cool” tо inсrеаѕе the соlоr tеmреrаturе. Whilе these орtiоnѕ mаkе it еаѕiеr tо соmрrеhеnd how thе еуе will dеtесt thе соlоr whitе, ѕinсе thе uѕеr iѕn’t given раrtiсulаr Kеlvin vаluеѕ, thеу саn bе inсоnvеniеnt whеn adjusting thе mоnitоr tо раrtiсulаr соlоr tеmреrаturе.

It аidѕ tо be аblе tо ѕресifу рrесiѕе Kеlvin values when wе аdjuѕt thе рiсturе ԛuаlitу оf a mоnitоr. Fоr inѕtаnсе, оn mоѕt LCD mоnitоrѕ, users can сhооѕе frоm аbоut 14 lеvеlѕ (in 500-K intеrimѕ frоm 4000 tо 10,000 K, рluѕ 9300 K). Sоmе оthеr LCD mоnitоrѕ еnаblе uѕеrѕ to dеѕignаtе соlоr temperature bу Kelvin vаluе. Most оffеr ѕignifiсаntlу fеwеr орtiоnѕ in the OSD mеnu: 5000, 6500, аnd 9300 K, for inѕtаnсе.

In a реrfесt wоrld, bесаuѕе оf thе nееd tо ѕеlесt the орtimаl соlоr tеmреrаturе аgrееing tо individuаl сirсumѕtаnсеѕ аnd аррliсаtiоnѕ, we ѕhоuld be аblе tо adjust соlоr temperature utilizing Kеlvin vаluеѕ. A fеw саѕеѕ аrе givеn bеnеаth.

A соlоr temperature of 6500 K iѕ official fоr common PC utilizе аnd fоr the ѕRGB ѕtаndаrd. Mоѕt LCD mоnitоrѕ оffеr a ѕеtting of 6500 K аmоng thеir соlоr tеmреrаturе орtiоnѕ. In thе еvеnt that a mоnitоr оffеrѕ a ѕRGB mоdе, ѕеtting it tо thiѕ mode ѕhоuld bring no рrоblеmѕ.

Muсh оf thе timе, еvеn рrоduсtѕ whоѕе соlоr-tеmреrаturе settings utilize tеrmѕ likе “blue” and “rеd” will bе adjusted to сlоѕе tо 6500 K fоr ѕtаndаrd mоdе, аlthоugh ассurасу mау be lасking. Thе mоnitоrѕ оn some lарtор PCѕ аrе inѕtаllеd tо highеr соlоr tеmреrаturеѕ.

Tооlѕ Required Tо Adjuѕt Mоnitоr Cоlоr Tеmреrаturе

Fоr аррliсаtiоnѕ likе rеtоuсhing digitаl рhоtоgrарhѕ оr соlоr аdjuѕtmеntѕ fоr рrinting оr vidео еditing, where uѕеrѕ аrе еxреrtѕ оr high-еnd аmаtеurѕ for whоm color rерrоduсtiоn fundаmеntаllу influеnсеѕ thе finаl ԛuаlitу оf thе wоrk, mаnаging mоnitоr color tеmреrаturеѕ with grеаtеr ассurасу iѕ сritiсаl.

In thе еvеnt thаt If соlоrѕ diffеr bеtwееn thе оutрut оf рhоtо rеtоuсhing аnd thе соlоr rерrоduсtiоn in рrinting, оr colors ѕееm unnаturаl whеn a video iѕ viеwеd оn аnоthеr PC, it соuldn’t juѕt wеаkеn thе wоrk itѕеlf, but аlѕо significantly diminish thе еffiсiеnсу оf imаgе рrосеѕѕing.

Tеnding tо thеѕе rеԛuеѕtѕ adequately rеԛuirеѕ a mоnitоr that ѕuрроrtѕ соlоr mаnаgеmеnt in light of hаrdwаrе саlibrаtiоn. A hаrdwаrе саlibrаtiоn ѕуѕtеm utilizеѕ a соlоr ѕеnѕоr tо ԛuаntifу colors оn ѕсrееn аnd соntrоlѕ thе lооk-intо tаblе (LUT) in thе monitor ѕtrаightfоrwаrdlу. Thiѕ mаkеѕ it роѕѕiblе tо аdjuѕt fоr diffеrеnсеѕ in соlоr tеmреrаturе аttributаblе tо differences bеtwееn individuаl mоnitоr unitѕ or аn аging diѕрlау аnd to рrоduсе ассurаtе соlоrѕ, аn еѕѕеntiаl fеаturе whеn handling соlоr.

CоlоrNаvigаtоr likеwiѕе оffеrѕ аn аdvаnсеd funсtiоn fоr еmulаting аnу соlоr gаmut. Thiѕ givеѕ uѕеrѕ a сhаnсе tо rерrоduсе оn ѕсrееn, with high рrесiѕiоn, thе Adоbе RGB, sRGB, оr NTSC соlоr gamut, utilizing a widе соlоr-gаmut panel. ColorNavigator can likеwiѕе bе ѕеt tо emulate соlоr gаmutѕ bу reading еxiѕting ICC рrоfilеѕ, inѕtеаd оf dереnding оn рrеѕеt ѕоftwаrе gаmutѕ. Fоr inѕtаnсе, fоr соmmеrсiаl аррliсаtiоnѕ, еmulаting thе customer’s LCD mоnitоrѕ utilizing thеir ICC рrоfilеѕ givеѕ thе сuѕtоmеr a сhаnсе tо ѕtrеаmlinе thе соlоr-рrооfing wоrkflоw by rерrоduсing thе соlоr rерrоduсtiоn оf thе сuѕtоmеr’ѕ mоnitоr оn a CоlоrEdgе mоnitоr.

CоlоrNаvigаtоr аdditiоnаllу inсludеѕ uѕеѕ thаt urgе сliеntѕ tо conduct реriоdiс hаrdwаrе саlibrаtiоn оf thеir mоnitоrѕ аnd tо kеер uр еxасt соlоr reproduction thrоugh precise mаnuаl аdjuѕtmеntѕ. Sinсе ѕсrееn brightness аnd соlоr rерrоduсtiоn change аѕ a mоnitоr iѕ utilizеd оvеr numеrоuѕ years, соlоr tеmреrаturеѕ will likewise сhаngе. In аррliсаtiоnѕ fоr whiсh accurate соlоr rерrоduсtiоn iѕ раrаmоunt, juѕt ѕеlесting рrеѕеt соlоr- tеmреrаturе ѕеttingѕ iѕn’t sufficient. It’ѕ a ѕmаrt idеа tо реrfоrm hаrdwаrе саlibrаtiоn оnсе реr mоnth оr ѕо.

Iris Software

Iriѕ is a ѕоftwаrе (blue light filtеr) fоr eye рrоtесtiоn, hеаlth аnd productivity. Thiѕ ѕоftwаrе iѕ capablе of Adjuѕt Mоnitоr Cоlоr Tеmреrаturе and thеrеfоrе реrfоrm the fоllоwing funсtiоnѕ.

• Prеvеnt Eуе Strаin – Iris орtimizеѕ ѕсrееn рulѕаtiоnѕ bу соntrоlling thе brightnеѕѕ withоut PWM. Yоu will bе аblе tо uѕе your computer for lоngеr withоut hеаdасhе.
• Rеduсе Eуе Pain – Iriѕ will match your ѕсrееn brightness tо the light around уоu. Different рrеѕеtѕ will аutоmаtiсаllу adjust уоur screen. Uѕing computers will feel likе rеаding a bооk.
• Imрrоvе Slеер – Iris will gradually regulate bluе light dау and night. This will help уоur body tо рrоduсе more mеlаtоnin at night. You will fаll аѕlеер faster аnd ѕlеер deeper.

NOTE: You may visit https://iristech.co for details.

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I may be the creator of Iris, which is blue light filter software but I will be honest with you.

Which is better depends on what you need and what you want to achieve?

Depending on why you want to block blue light and what do you want to achieve your best solution will probably be different than mine.

In this article, I will present to you all cases and what to choose in every case.

I will tell you when to choose glasses and when to choose software solutions.

I will also tell when screen protector may be a good choice.

But first, let’s give a fast overview for people who heard about the dangers of blue light for the first time.

Why do you need to block blue light?

You probably feel how when you spend a lot of time in front of the PC or your phone at night you can’t fall asleep really fast.

The reason for this is really simple.

In our eyes, we have a photoreceptor called Melanopsin.

When melanopsin detects blue light entering our eyes in blocks the secretion of our sleep hormone called Melatonin.

And when you don’t produce enough Melatonin you can’t fall asleep.

There are 2 hormones actually which control when we should be awake and when we should fall asleep.

Cortisol tells our body to be awake and Melatonin tells our body to fall asleep.

Cortisol levels are biggest when you wake up and Melatonin levels are biggest when you sleep.

They shift during the day and this is actually our Circadian clock.

Without boring you to death with science we evolved around the Sun and at night there was no light before.

Right now, however, we have all types light sources.

Some of them like LED emit a lot of blue light and cause a drop in our secretion of Melatonin.

Fluorescent light bulbs may flicker and this to cause eye strain and headaches.

Because it’s cheap, manufacturers use PWM to control the brightness which again is some sort of flicker that causes eye strain and headaches, etc.

So the one aspect of blue light is that it’s bad for our sleep if we get too much light in the night and the other is that too much exposure causes Macular degeneration and all other kinds of eye problems in the long run.

You know that UV light and X-rays are bad, but blue light is also really close to them on the light spectrum.

So because it’s so high energy it makes sense that it enters deep into our eye and may cause damage.

I hope you now have some general understanding of the science behind the blue light filters so without further due let’s start to talk about which blue light filter is best and when.

Blue light filter glasses

Blue light filter glasses come in all forms and shades and some of them are pretty effective and inexpensive.

The first bad thing about blue light filter glasses is that they can’t be customized.

You can’t control the amount of blue light which is blocked and some of them are actually really ineffective.

For example, I don’t think the yellow tint or without a tint will do a good job in helping you to sleep better.

They may help with eye-strain if they have an antireflective coating and they may be made to block only small part of the blue light to not change the world colors much.

But there is a lot of evidence that you need to block all blue light and even part of the green to stimulate proper melatonin secretion.

One recommendation from me for blue light filter glasses if you are concerned about your sleep is to use orange and red ones.

Orange ones will block all blue light and part of the green which will be awesome for your sleep.

If you want to really biohack your sleep the red ones will probably be one idea better.

They will block all UV, blue and green light and leave you only with a red world.

This will cause the biggest melatonin peak and will stimulate conditions close to complete darkness.

Why should I choose Blue light filter glasses?

Aside from the things above blue light filter glasses are great for several things.

Block blue light from the TV

It’s almost impossible to block the blue light from the TV with software.

For example, you can install Iris on your computer and then duplicate your screen on the TV and reduce the blue light from the TV.

But if you just watch some TV channel you will probably need some hardware device to connect to your cable.

The nice thing about this is that you can have automation from the hardware device but glasses are way simpler to put on your head.

Even there you can also place some blue light filter sheet on your TV so glasses are not the only solution for TV.

Their real power comes from.

Blocking blue light from your lightbulbs

If you have LED light bulbs which I don’t recommend they emit a lot of blue light.

The only real way to block the blue light from light bulbs is to use glasses or to change them.

The reason I don’t recommend LED light bulbs is that they emit a lot of blue light.

They also most of the time use PWM to be more energy-saving.

You can see this in the graphics that I also included before.

I recommend the standard Edison light bulb (Incandescent) because it doesn’t flicker and the spectrum is will really low amounts of blue light.

You see that here there are other solutions again for blocking blue light.

I left the one thing which glasses are the best solution for the end.

Blocking blue light from the Sun

If you are concerned about blue light from the Sun the only good solution for you are blue light filter glasses.

You can of course just don’t go outside but you miss the other part of the health benefits for your skin and general health that comes from full-spectrum Sunlight.

If you want to block blue light from the Sun, get blue light filter glasses.

Blue light filter Softwares

Really great for automation and customization there are lots of them.

Starting from Iris which is the most advanced eye protection and sleep improvement tool

Going to f.lux which is the grandfather of the blue light industry

And mentioning Redshift which is not only free but open-source

There are a lot of blue light filtering software which you can choose.

What are Blue light filtering softwares bad for?

Because software are based on computer code they may not work on every operating system.

Blue light filtering software will also not work for blocking blue light from the TV.

They will not work for blocking blue light from light bulbs and the Sun.

There are certain minuses for software solutions but there are also a lot of pluses which a will talk about later.

On Android, for example, the only way to block blue light is to use Overlay approach which decreases contrast and it’s not really great.

This is what Twilight app does.

The other method for Android is to jailbreak your phone but this is hard for a lot of people.

Putting glasses or screen filter, in this case, is much easier.

Same goes for iOS.

On iOS, you can make great blue light filter but Apple doesn’t allow the developers to publish their solution to the Appstore so you can’t get the most high-quality software.

Here again, it’s much easier to put glasses or screen filter.

Last year both Android and iOS presented integrated solutions called Night Light and Night Shift, but they are really bad copies of high-quality software like Iris or f.lux.

They do block the blue light but they are just not specialized in this.

It’s like comparing Photoshop and Paint.

You can go much deeper and make awesome solution if you really focus on the blue light sleep and eye issues.

However, for most people, the integrated solutions will also work well.

There are also solutions for Windows, macOS and Linux called again with some names like Night Light, Night Shift and Night mode.

Why should I choose Blue light filter softwares?

There are some downsides like that you can’t block the Sunlight but blue light filter software are actually the best solution.

This is why I work on this kind of software obviously.

If I thought that something else is better I would probably do it instead.

I told you some of the pain points with software solutions but let’s not talk about the benefits now.

I’m sure that the biggest benefit for you will be that some of them are

Free

I will not talk about the economic realities of this but most of the blue light filter software are free and they are super effective.

They can block all blue light, you can customize the amount of blue light being blocked.

Or you can block all blue and green light for best sleep.

You can customize them, schedule some things and some companies integrated filters into their OS.

You can find a free blue light filter in Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android.

You may know that Iris is paid and you may think that I’m super stupid and Iris don’t have even 1 user but the truth is that it’s not only the blue light.

Iris removes PWM pulsations, optimizes subpixel flicker, improves font rendering, adapts to the light around you and all kinds of stuff which are not the point of this article so it’s not like it’s not a successful project.

With over 2 million users, hundreds of positive reviews and a lot of people who pay for the software I’m really happy to do something which improves the people health.

Let’s go over the other benefits of blue light filters aside from that most of them are free.

Adaptation

Blue light filter softwares can adapt to all kinds of things.

They can adapt to the time of the day based on your clock or your position.

They can use sensors like the camera or adapt to the contents of the screen.

They can be paused when you need to and resumed when you want.

Some of them can pause automatically when certain programs are running.

Iris, for example, can adapt to the program that is currently running, stop itself when you need perfect colors or improve the image quality when you watch a movie.

Customization

With blue light filter software, you can also set how much blue light you want during the day and how much you want during the night.

In order to be really easy to use Iris, for example, has several types with preset values: Health, Sleep, Reading, Programming, Biohacker, Sunglasses, Dark, Movie, Overlay.

You probably understand why blue light filter softwares are the most popular solutions to block blue light.

It’s not only Blue light

It’s not only the Blue light.

There is also PWM flicker, Font rendering, Subpixel flicker, Temporal dithering, Rests, and ease of use.

Iris, for example, takes care of all things related to eye health and sleep.

For flickering, no glasses or screen filter will help you and your only solution may be software or to buy some really expensive monitor which is optimized for eye health.

Now let’s talk about the last category of blue light filters

Blue light Screen protectors

I will not enter into much more details here because I talked a lot about what blue light filter glasses are bad and good for.

With screen protectors the thing is similar but instead, you placing a glasses on yourself you place the glasses on your phone or screen or TV.

Blue light screen protectors again are bad for automation and customization.

They are also bad for blocking blue light from the Sun and from light bulbs.

With the new integrated solutions for every OS, they are also not the only solutions for smartphones.

One thing which screen filters are particularly good for is actually to make your glossy screen matte but most blue light filter screen protectors don’t do this.

I strongly recommend screen protectors which make glossy screens matte because this reduces reflections and will help a lot which eye pain and eye strain.

The other thing which blue light filter screen protectors are great is that like glasses they can block only some part of the blue light spectrum.

This is something which blue light filter softwares can’t do. Blue light filter softwares block the whole color spectrum at once.

Be careful however that there are a lot of scam into the blue light filter screen protector space.

While you can measure and see for yourself the orange or red tint made by glasses and software a lot of blue light filter screen protectors are a scam.

The reason for this is because regular screen protectors are really hard to sale.

They are all the same and super cheap.

This is why some people decide to change the name of their screen protector and make it blue blocking.

Sellers may tell you that it doesn’t change the image quality but the reason for this may be because it’s just a regular screen protector.

Sometimes the screen protector just protects your phone from scratches and don’t block any blue light.

I’m not saying that all blue light screen protectors are like this but be careful.

Look for measurements and what their tint is. If the tint is orange, yellow or red they probably work.

However, if the tint is transparent, there is a high chance that they don’t do anything.

Tell Friends

Thank you very much for reading and staying with me to the end of this long post 🙂

If you liked this article and you learned some new things about the blue light and how it affects our body

If this article helped you to choose the best blue light filter for you

If you think this may be helpful for somebody else

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The post Which is the best Blue light Filter? appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

Generally, Iris comes with almost everything preset for maximum eye health but there are some things you can do to improve the effect of Iris.

Set your Hardware brightness to the MAX

Set your monitor Hardware brightness to 100% using your monitor buttons.

This will stop the PWM flicker if your monitor has it.

Iris brightness is automatic and doesn’t use PWM. You don’t need to change anything else.

But if you do need to adjust the brightness to match it to the room lighting you can always do this from the Brightness page.

Video

The post How to Setup Iris for Maximum Eye Health appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

Computer screens damage our eyes.

Even you are not an expert in eye health you know that when you use your computer you feel more eye pain and eye strain.

You may get dry eyes, red eyes or headaches when you use your computer screen for longer periods of time.

In this article, I’m going to propose you several different solutions to protect your eyes from the computer screen.

1. Iris

Iris is software for eye protection which will improve your overall health and decrease the eye strain you feel when you use computer screens.

It will match your monitor to the light around you and make using computers more like reading a book.

There is a free version you can try and download from here.

The is also paid version which improves it work even more for even more protection from the computer screen.

Iris will decrease the amount of blue light emitted from the screen which is the main cause of macular degeneration and it will control the brightness without the popular and not so eye-friendly way manufacturers use called pulse-width modulation.

Both these things will automatically protect your eyes from the computer screen and the only thing you need to do is to install Iris.

2. Blink more

Normally we blink around 20 times per minute but when reading book or reading on a computer screen this number may drop to 2-3 or fewer blinks per minute.

We need to blink to moisture our eyes and when you are not blinking enough you will have dry eyes.

Blink more to moisture your eyes.

3. Rests

If you find reminding yourself to blink more to much, try to take some breaks from the computer screen from time to time.

Our eyes rest much easier when we look at a distant object so when you take a break, try to look at distant objects and to blink more.

Iris can also remind you to take a breaks from time to time in it’s Pro version.

4. Sit away

We usually sit to close to the monitor.

The rule is to sit at least one arm length away from the computer screen.

To protect your eyes from the computer screen sit away from the monitor and try to increase the font size if you can’t read some letters.

With Iris Pro, you can magnify your screen in real-time if some program can’t display larger letters.

5. Look down

You need to look your computer screen down.

This will close your eyes more while you use your eyes more and your eyeball will be better lubricated.

Place your monitor below your eye level for best lubrication.

6. Drink more water

One of the most major eye problems while using computer screen is dry eyes.

Dry eyes may be caused by too much computer use but the case may also be dehydration.

Drink more water to protect your eyes from computer screens.

7. Try Iris

Iris will automatically help you to protect your eyes from the computer monitor and will decrease the eye strain you feel when you use computer screens.

It’s great for treatment and prevention of Computer Vision Syndrome and other eye problems.

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The post How to Protect eyes from computer screen? appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

The post How to Protect your Eyes? appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.