7 TIPS to Reduce Eye Strain while Color Grading
What’s going on guys. Welcome to yet another epic video. Today we are going to be talking about tips on overcoming eye fatigue when color grading. It just happens. I compiled a list of tips that helped me and hopefully it will do the same for you.
The first tip is paint. I have a dark gray paint (basically the color of the road).
It’s pretty dark, but more importantly when you are grading, you want to be in an environment where the background is competing with the screen.
My second tip is controlling your ambient lighting. You don’t want a light to dictate your color grade. My talking head is what you don’t want. There are too many competing colors.
When I am color grading, my room is basically dark except for some bias lighting on the back of my monitor. Bias lighting is a certain white balance that helps keep your colors neutral for when you are color grading.
My third point is going to be dim lights. I don’t like to grade in pitch black. It’s just too much going from the luminance of your screen, to pitch black. For that, I like to have dim lights. I usually keep those all the way down, so that they are just barely on.
Moving onto the fourth tip is to invest in a monitor that is at least half decent. I’m not talking about the Apple ProDisplay XDR, but a monitor with low hertz is going to kill your eyes. Just stepping it up a bit will really help.
But also, the distance from the monitors matter as well. When I am sitting away from my big 55”, I need to be about four feet away.
Moving onto tip number five, take short breaks. It is good for resetting your white balance, but it also breaks the monotony when you are grading non-stop. Your brain will play tricks on you. When I say short breaks, I mean like two minute breaks.
Tip number six is to go see an optometrist. One of my friends realized he needed glasses when he couldn’t stare at a screen for more than 5 minutes. Now I want to break a myth. Staring at a screen will not kill your eyesight overtime. There is no truth to that. My optometrist has actually said I’ve built up good eye muscles through staring at the screen.
Finally the seventh tip is to grade every day. Especially if you are starting out, I would say grading for four hours each day, in a row for 21 days, will help build up that stamina, but will also help you in the long run to improve your skills.
On that note, that will do it for this one. I hope you guys learned something and can take these tips and implement them into your own workflow. As always, I will see you in the next one!
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