Nocturne: Free "night vision" app from the maker of Quicksilver

nocturne:nocturne [docs]

Fans of working in troglodyte mode should have a look at A1c0r’s latest creation, Nocturne, an application that generates a “night vision mode” for your Mac – similar to looking at a negative of a photo.

For years, you’ve been able to do something similar by hitting “ctrl-opt-cmd-8,” which invokes “Switch to black-on-white” in Universal Access options (go ahead and try it, then hit it again to return to normal).

While A1c0r’s improvements on this may seem subtle, they’re very useful for allowing you to tweak your own preferences and minimizing distracting, full-color solarization effects.

• Proper color correction in monochrome modes - you don’t lose all your blues or reds when you tint the screen.
• Window shadow toggling - if glowing windows aren’t your thing.
• Background removal - hide the desktop picture so you don’t see a inverted version.

I love that you can pick your own tint for how the monochrome image is colored. Want an old-time sepiatone writing environment? No problem.

My tip? If you enjoy sitting outside with your laptop, but the sun is making your screen almost illegible, try flipping Nocturne on – the contrast and darker backgrounds should help make reading and navigating much easier.

Like all Blacktree’s stuff, Nocturne is free of charge.

[Direct download]