[mdawson]

The Cinema Displays are designed to serve as mid-range professional displays — and given their price, I do not understand why Apple does not offer a line of general purpose displays — so, even out of the box, they should not be excessively bright. The 24-inch iMac’s display is another matter, as it is a consumer display. I have worked with a 24-inch iMac that an immigrant family that I have assisted purchased last fall and while the display is bright, I do not find it to be too bright. Regardless, one of the first things I did when I set up their computer was use the Display control panel to do basic calibration of their screen by creating a ColorSync profile specific to their display.

For people that are not performing color-critical work, using OS X’s built-in calibration software is good enough. In your case, you may wish to consider using Pantone’s Huey. The Huey not only assists with color calibration, but it also maintains the display’s output based on the ambient light in your room. That way you can adjust your display to a level that is comfortable for you eyes and maintain that level automatically regardless of the light levels in the room.

[dude]

bump for the next version feature request.

[neilfred]

Certainly it makes sense that the default background color should be white since probably the most common use case involves designing things that will be printed on white paper. But even if you don't buy that the people who don't require absolutely perfect WYSIWYG-ness have a valid reason to want a non-white background ("just recalibrate your display if it's too bright"), it's still a useful feature because not everything is printed on white paper. I happen to be designing something that will be printed on a black t-shirt, so having the option of selecting a non-white background would be quite useful for me.

[dude]

Exactly why we need an inverted canvas for white and black. It is just a toggle switch selection.

Other shades of color are not touched. This is how AutoCad has handled it and it works great. It's easy on the eye's.