Color issues with Safari 6 on rMBP - anyone else?

[duckrabbit]

I was just using Safari and thought something seemed off with the color, and it turns out I was right! Safari exhibits banding in gradients and other color abnormalities where Firefox has no issues. I'd really appreciate it if anyone else with an rMBP (or other machine, if others are affected) could confirm the problem:

Try visiting this test page in both Safari and Firefox and check if there is vertical banding in the gradients.

Also, you could try checking the background of Ars Technica for horizontal banding.

Lastly, look at this gamma calibration test with both Firefox and Safari and check if Safari is way off the correct values (for me, Firefox passes the test but Safari isn't even close).

 

[duckrabbit]

200+ views and no replies? Could someone please perform the tests I mentioned on their machine? I don't have anything to offer, but I'll be super grateful 🙂🙂🙂. I'd just like to know if it's a bug or if my machine is misconfigured in some way. If this is a bug, I'm surprised it hasn't received more coverage, as it's pretty serious.

 

[Dyno-Mike]

I was just using Safari and thought something seemed off with the color, and it turns out I was right! Safari exhibits banding in gradients and other color abnormalities where Firefox has no issues. I'd really appreciate it if anyone else with an rMBP (or other machine, if others are affected) could confirm the problem:

Try visiting this test page in both Safari and Firefox and check if there is vertical banding in the gradients.

Also, you could try checking the background of Ars Technica for horizontal banding.

Lastly, look at this gamma calibration test with both Firefox and Safari and check if Safari is way off the correct values (for me, Firefox passes the test but Safari isn't even close).

I've seen this before on mine. A restart fixed it. I think its something to do with the GPU switching. Are you using gfxcardstatus ?

 

[duckrabbit]

I've seen this before on mine. A restart fixed it. I think its something to do with the GPU switching. Are you using gfxcardstatus ?

I think there're two issues:

First, I've figured out the gamma issue and it's unrelated to the gradient issue and isn't a bug per se. It's explained here. It also affects Chrome and other webkit-based browsers.

The gradient issue does appear to be a bug, however. It only affects Safari 6 (it doesn't affect Firefox or Chrome, and I don't recall experiencing it when I first got my machine and was running Safari 5). I do have gfxcardstatus installed, and changing the settings has no effect. Neither does restarting. The issue occurs 100% of the time in Safari and never occurs in any other browsers.

I notice that Chrome scrolls much more choppily than Safari on the gradient test page. I'm thinking the problem is a side effect of some optimization Apple did.

 

[ventmore]

I'm seeing definite banding on that test with Safari on the rMBP.

If I take a screenshot, and view it in Pixelmator, I can still see the banding. However, if I save the image from the webpage, and open that in Pixelmator, then it renders perfectly with no banding.

Conclusion......for some reason, Safari isn't rendering the image properly. I would however, be interested to know if others are seeing this banding on Safari 🙂

 

[ColdCase]

Difficult to pick out banding on 2013 rMBP 15 display but banding is noticeable on an external display. I don't see banding in firefox, either monitor.

 

[ventmore]

Difficult to pick out banding on 2013 rMBP 15 display but banding is noticeable on an external display. I don't see banding in firefox, either monitor.

Thanks for trying it out mate! 🙂

Just been across to PC World, and tried it on their 15". The banding is in exactly the same place. Definitely seems to be a rendering issue with Safari.