How do you not get eye strain?

[Belle2Be]

Originally Posted by maxbookworm

Also, has your NC updated to the latest firmware? Because it's supposed to let you lower the brightness more.

I think it's 1.1? It said it was updated in the bottom corner yesterday. I think my eyes are just really sensitive, but I love the interface(I think thats what its called) of the NC, the bookshelves and little pictures, I'd like to read from it. I'm going to try the sepia thing in a bit

[jhempel24]

It's the reason I don't have a Nook Color. If I need to read in the dark, I make sure my Calibre Library is always up to date with my Dropbox, and use my smartphone. I can go for short bursts on my smartphone LCD screen (Droid X) but not extended periods. I even use a book light or my nook at night.

Originally Posted by maxbookworm

Also, has your NC updated to the latest firmware? Because it's supposed to let you lower the brightness more.

Yes! There is only ONE WAY to change the screen brightness below the NC system's lowest setting while reading though. As @Bookworm_Girl stated, "Open your book in the reader. Tap in the middle of the screen. A menu window pops up at the bottom." On the right side of this popup menu is a brightness control item, click it and use the popup slider bar to lower the brightness below the system default low.

There are two other brightness control menus, but they only adjust the overall system brightness. Use the menu listed above to lower the brightness even lower for books only.

BTW, if you know how to strip the DRM and use calibre to convert/modify ePubs, you can change all text to BOLD via modifying the CSS. It is rather complicated so I won't cover the technique here, but search in the MobileRead forums for instructions. I modify all my ePubs to use BOLD text because my eyes are not that good either. I find that the bold text helps significantly for both the NC with its LCD as well as eInk screens.

[Belle2Be]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

Hi, Belle2Be. My NC is not rooted. It may be that LCD just may not work with your eyes. Here is what I suggest. Open your book in the reader. Tap in the middle of the screen. A menu window pops up at the bottom. Click on the Aa text option. Here is where you can select font. Many of us have been using Georgia. Here is where you can also select the background color. Many of us use Sepia so the screen is not bright white. Some also like gray & night mode. You can also change the font size, line spacing and margin size in this box. Hope that helps!

Where is the sepia mode? I found the brightness, and lowered that the most..

[Belle2Be]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Yes! There is only ONE WAY to change the screen brightness below the NC system's lowest setting while reading though. As @Bookworm_Girl stated, "Open your book in the reader. Tap in the middle of the screen. A menu window pops up at the bottom." On the right side of this popup menu is a brightness control item, click it and use the popup slider bar to lower the brightness below the system default low.

There are two other brightness control menus, but they only adjust the overall system brightness. Use the menu listed above to lower the brightness even lower for books only.

BTW, if you know how to strip the DRM and use calibre to convert/modify ePubs, you can change all text to BOLD via modifying the CSS. It is rather complicated so I won't cover the technique here, but search in the MobileRead forums for instructions. I modify all my ePubs to use BOLD text because my eyes are not that good either. I find that the bold text helps significantly for both the NC with its LCD as well as eInk screens.

I have calibre, but have no idea how to do the DRM stripping. I've even read alf, and tried to use my apple program, but apparently I'm not as comp savvy as I like to think.

[AzB]

Just a random thought, I was dealing with eyestrain issues and solved the problem by turning the brightness UP. This increased the contrast between the letters and background and is much easier on my eyes. I know it's counter-intuitive, but it might be worth a try.

Az

[AzB]

Sorry, double post.

Az

[leday]

Originally Posted by Belle2Be

I have calibre, but have no idea how to do the DRM stripping. I've even read alf, and tried to use my apple program, but apparently I'm not as comp savvy as I like to think.

I believe Calibre has plugins that will do this for you. See the Calibre forum for more information.

[=X=]

Originally Posted by Belle2Be

My eyes hurt nearly 3 minutes after I started reading on the NookColor, at the lowest brightness setting I did read about changing the color or something though, but I did a search and can't seem to find out how? THanks!

Studies have shown that low contrast puts a lot of strain on the eye.

Using low brightest and grey/sepia backgrounds is hard on the eye. What I resort to reading on is using night mode (Black background and white fonts) this helps reduce the amount of light at night but keeps the fonts crisp.

Also don't hold the nook so close. This part is completely personal, but I found that when I had the nook up close the pixilation of the fonts annoyed me and strained my eyes. Once I started placing the nook farther from my eyes the strain went away and so did the visible pixiels.

I did not experience this kind of strain with my LCD phone or my Kindle 2.

=X=

[kblair210]

Originally Posted by debteb

Do you even own a NC? If not, then please refrain from replying to someone who has one.

You'll have to ignore the troll.

In response to the OP..

1. Don't root the NC to try to solve your eye strain issues. It'll possibly prevent you from being able to return it if necessary. (At the least it will add extra work to do so)

2. Do you have issues looking at a computer monitor for any amount of time? If so, you may as well take the NC back now. If not, then there's no reason you should be having issues with the NC. Try a non-white background, increase the font, line spacing, whatever. You have it, you may as well tweak them to see if they help. Personally the 'night mode' (white text on black backgrnd) makes my eyes want to scream so I would never recommend that mode. Sepia is great though.

It could just be you're one of the odd few that can't look at LCD's long (computer or otherwise). Some people are alergic to plastic. Go figure.

[Belle2Be]

Originally Posted by =X=

Studies have shown that low contrast puts a lot of strain on the eye.

Using low brightest and grey/sepia backgrounds is hard on the eye. What I resort to reading on is using night mode (Black background and white fonts) this helps reduce the amount of light at night but keeps the fonts crisp.

Also don't hold the nook so close. This part is completely personal, but I found that when I had the nook up close the pixilation of the fonts annoyed me and strained my eyes. Once I started placing the nook farther from my eyes the strain went away and so did the visible pixiels.

I did not experience this kind of strain with my LCD phone or my Kindle 2.

=X=

How do I invert the screen? The only option I can find is brightness :/

[Belle2Be]

Originally Posted by kblair210

You'll have to ignore the troll.

In response to the OP..

1. Don't root the NC to try to solve your eye strain issues. It'll possibly prevent you from being able to return it if necessary. (At the least it will add extra work to do so)

2. Do you have issues looking at a computer monitor for any amount of time? If so, you may as well take the NC back now. If not, then there's no reason you should be having issues with the NC. Try a non-white background, increase the font, line spacing, whatever. You have it, you may as well tweak them to see if they help. Personally the 'night mode' (white text on black backgrnd) makes my eyes want to scream so I would never recommend that mode. Sepia is great though.

It could just be you're one of the odd few that can't look at LCD's long (computer or otherwise). Some people are alergic to plastic. Go figure.

I do have problems with my laptop after a little while, so I do think it's just me. I don't have an interest in returning it though, it's awesome for my work (photography), children books, and magazines etc. I have a Kindle 3 that I can use to read, I was just hoping to kill 2 birds with one stone

[NoName]

Originally Posted by Belle2Be

How do I invert the screen? The only option I can find is brightness :/

If you haven't found it yet - to the left of brightness at the bottom is text. Tap on that and you get the font size at the top, font type, and under that is Normal, Night, Gray, Butter, Mocha, and Sepia. Tap on whichever looks best to you.
Below that is pictures of line spacing and margins. Then at the bottom is Publisher Defaults - on or off.
Font and page color show one choice - tap on it and scroll up and down to see other choices.

[PegS]

NoName, are you looking in a book or just in the NC Settings? If you're just looking at NC Settings that might be the reason you can't get your brightness down to a comfortable reading level. What you need to do is open a book, tap at the bottom, and you should get both font and brightness choices.

[boswd]

Hi belle2be to change the color of the background : Open up your book you are reading or any book for that matter

1.tap the middle of the page
2. a tool bar should pop up on the bottom (content, search, share,text, brightness0
3. tap text
4. a pop up display box should appear, the top will have the A ranging in 6 sizes underneath you should see to long boxes first will will have your font style (ie mine is Georgia) the second long box should have your background color. ie normal
5. Tap on the second box (mine right now says normal)
6. A listing will appear for different backgrounds.
7. you finger scroll through your selectionss

my advice would be to try gray or night until your eyes adjust to reading on an lcd

Hope this helps and if something doesn't make sense please let me know and I try to explain it better.