I recently started wearing glasses for reading and using the computer. A fairly simple prescription. However, I'm sure that wearing them i perceive either horizontal strokes as a little thicker, or verticals a little narrower than I do when not wearing them. It's subtle, but it concerns me. Perhaps I'm seeing not only in better focus now but also more precisely, thought It doesn't feel that way. I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed something similar when wearing glasses.
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And that is not something my brain can sort out, I found out.
So, now saving up for a bigger screen.
Bert Vanderveen, thanks for your reply, I also see distortion when moving my head away from level - but I'm having to use a lap top at the moment and I'm really noticing the distortion - along with back and neck ache.
@Miles Newlyn – I have the same, and in effect it compresses the view through my glasses more in one axis than in the other.
It does take some getting used to, and I have to get used even when swapping between frames, but after nineteen years of wearing them, it doesn’t take long to adjust. A benefit I’ve found is that, if I need to take a step back from my work, I can just look over my glasses. A lazy, lazy benefit.
I found that it takes a bit of research and a lot of persistence to get to the perfect lenses. As we age and our eye muscles lose their elasticity, we need more help for specific circumstances, such as lenses for screen work, for general vision, and reading print. For those of us who work in type design and typography, it's really quite important to find vision care specialists who have board knowledge and a willingness to spend time helping you. The standard method for doing refractions is to work quickly, so your eyes don't have a chance to compensate ("do you prefer this or this"), but I find that it goes too fast for me and leads to bad results. When I persuaded an optometrist to slow down, the result was much better. One of the most important things for typography is to avoid halos that thicken or distort the lines, which is something that is difficult to perceive quickly.
Getting to the right lenses involve knowing the lens materials and coatings. Here is a link to an overview of the basic lens types: https://www.thevisioncouncil.org/content/lens-materials/adults. There are also special coatings that allow more or less light through, depending on your needs. The best coatings I have found are made by the French company Essilor, especially their Crizal coatings. They are expensive but worth it. I also found that they work best for me on Mid-Index plastic lenses rather than on aspheric polycarbonate lenses. It is also the case that different brands of lenses will give different results, even if they are classified the same.
Don't be satisfied if the results are not perfect! Gather together some type samples you know well to help you make a judgment.
This reveals one’s eye’s prejudices.
But it is impossible to escape the subjective nature of vision.
Most notably, I suspect that the optical illusion which causes us to make vertical stems thicker than horizontal ones affects different people differently.
So that when I have created what I think is a neutral sans serif that appears to me to be of monoline thickness, accomodating the illusion, others will see it differently.
This isn’t quite “Van Gogh painted the swirly sky he actually saw”, but it makes me appreciate Antique Olive as personal expression, as much as design theory.
I don't. A circle always looks like a circle to me. Mechanical and rigid, but symmetrical in every direction. Flat, solid state screens have been a boon to me. CRTs always had some distortion, and I could always see it with circles. I could never trust CRTs.
If you tilt your head, do circles look squarish?
I do notice all kinds of optical effects from the glasses, though. I like the extra crispness (I have my prescription really dialed in perfectly right now, which is fabulous), but for lack of distortion my vision is better with contact lenses. Having the lens right on the eye avoids the effects in question, for me.