If you're feeling a little low this winter season, maybe Opera's improved Lucid mode—a video enhancement system—can help you brighten things up a bit. Add a sunny new wallpaper for your PC or Mac and maybe you'll feel even nicer.
While a web browser likely can't truly help with the very real cause of Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, Opera's Lucid Mode is aimed at making watching videos on the web a bit brighter.
Lucid Mode is an Opera feature that will brighten and sharpen videos you're watching whenever a video is loaded on a web page you're checking out. Just click the little button with the three stars on it to enable the mode. You can see the improvements in real-time, too, with a little slider that you can move around on the video.
According to the Mayo Clinic, SAD is a type of depression related to changes in the season, typically during the winter. Light therapy is often used to treat the condition, so associating brighter videos with feeling better during the winter months is clever, if not medically sound.
In addition to the video enhancement, Opera is offering two new bright wallpapers, Sunrise and Sunrise in Motion. They can be downloaded via Easy Setup in the Opera browser.
These aren't medically-approved interventions, either. As the company says in a press release, "It may not be a substitute for a SAD lamp, but it’s the best we could do from a software perspective – for now!"