Sudden COLOR DIMMING on dual monitors

A

Amnesiac7

macrumors member
EDIT: Pictures of problem located a few posts down.

Hey,

I'm concerned about this problem that has recently cropped up. I'm running a 40 inch SAMSUNG monitor and a 15 inch MBP. Now, recently I noticed that the color on my MBP just suddenly and randomly dimmed down... colors that were more vibrant and slightly less so, and seem more de-saturated.

Anyways, I hooked up the MBP to my TV and I noticed that suddenly the color dimming leapt from my MBP and onto my Samsung. The weirdest thing is that if I slowly drag a window from my MBP (which is now, for whatever reason, displaying its normal and vibrant colors/brightness) onto my TV, I can see that the colors remain bright and vibrant until I drag it further in the screen and then there's this sudden dimness. So, when I peek a Safari window or a picture at the edge of the screen, it stays vibrant on the TV, but then when I drag it entirely into the middle, the monitor seems to readjust and dims down the color.

What's going on here?
 
Amnesiac7 said:
Hey,

I'm concerned about this problem that has recently cropped up. I'm running a 40 inch SAMSUNG monitor and a 15 inch MBP. Now, recently I noticed that the color on my MBP just suddenly and randomly dimmed down... colors that were more vibrant and slightly less so, and seem more de-saturated.
Click to expand...

If you're having an issue with your MBP and an external screen, you're going to hear a lot of crickets posting in the Apple TV forum.
 
chrysrobyn said:
If you're having an issue with your MBP and an external screen, you're going to hear a lot of crickets posting in the Apple TV forum.
Click to expand...

Then where should I post?

Hey,

I'm concerned about this problem that has recently cropped up. I'm running a 40 inch SAMSUNG monitor and a 15 inch MBP. Now, recently I noticed that the color on my MBP just suddenly and randomly dimmed down... colors that were more vibrant became slightly less so, and seem more de-saturated.

Anyways, I hooked up the MBP to my TV and I noticed that suddenly the color dimming leapt from my MBP and onto my Samsung. The weirdest thing is that if I slowly drag a window from my MBP (which is now, for whatever reason, displaying its normal and vibrant colors/brightness) onto my TV, I can see that the colors remain bright and vibrant until I drag it further into the Samsung screen and then there's that sudden dimness. A drop in color vibrancy. So my external monitor has absorbed the dimness that suddenly popped up on my MBP originally. Basically, I don't want either screen to be dim! But, when I peek a Safari window or a picture at the edge of the Samsung screen, it stays vibrant on the TV, but then when I drag it entirely into the middle, the monitor seems to readjust and dims down the color.

What's going on here?
 
I have a 4 year old LCD and recently bought another one as a second screen. Without a newer screen to compare it to, I never really noticed that my screen was fading, it happened so gradually but side by side, the colours on the new one are so vibrant, I instantly used the older one as the secondary display and the new one as my main monitor.

I think the back light on LCD display gets weaker over time, maybe we've got the same problem?
 
Display color profiles may not have loaded properly. Just open the Display preference pane to reload them.


happens with my MBP sometimes when it wakes or the internal display is woken up from idle.
 
barkmonster said:
I have a 4 year old LCD and recently bought another one as a second screen. Without a newer screen to compare it to, I never really noticed that my screen was fading, it happened so gradually but side by side, the colours on the new one are so vibrant, I instantly used the older one as the secondary display and the new one as my main monitor.

I think the back light on LCD display gets weaker over time, maybe we've got the same problem?
Click to expand...

My SAMSUNG is one year old. When I drag a picture file (for instance) from my main MBP LCD screen onto the SAMSUNG monitor and keep the picture partially revealed on the edge of the SAMSUNG, I can see that the picture is being displayed as it should be (with full, vibrant colors). However, when I MOVE the picture closer into the center of the SAMSUNG, the picture quality readjusts and the color dims. Thus, I know my SAMSUNG is quite capable of producing vibrant colors and that the MBP is, somehow, forcing the dimness.

e12a said:
Display color profiles may not have loaded properly. Just open the Display preference pane to reload them.


happens with my MBP sometimes when it wakes or the internal display is woken up from idle.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. How do I reload from the Display preference pane, though? The color profiles are as they should be, though, at least as far as the Display preference pane goes.
 
Amnesiac7 said:
My SAMSUNG is one year old. When I drag a picture file (for instance) from my main MBP LCD screen onto the SAMSUNG monitor and keep the picture partially revealed on the edge of the SAMSUNG, I can see that the picture is being displayed as it should be (with full, vibrant colors). However, when I MOVE the picture closer into the center of the SAMSUNG, the picture quality readjusts and the color dims. Thus, I know my SAMSUNG is quite capable of producing vibrant colors and that the MBP is, somehow, forcing the dimness.
Click to expand...

Try re-calibrating your displays to match. The gamma settings of each monitor could be a lot different.
 
I don't understand how that will fix it.

This is so aggravating. Like, the monitor can display better colors than this and it teases me by properly displaying said colors when I drag a picture ever so slowly before plummeting down to dullsville.
 
Anyways, I just realized something:

The color ONLY dims in Preview and Quicktime. If I place an image in Safari, and drag it over to the SAMSUNG, everything is as it should be. The colors liven up, are vibrant. Yet, that same picture, when dragged over onto the SAMSUNG in Preview, looks dull.

It's program specific! How the heck do I fix this then?

So, it dims on:

Photoshop
Quicktime movies
Images opened in preview

It stays appropriately vibrant on:
- Files played in .mkv extension via VLC (but I can't play a Quicktime movie that is vibrant on MBP screen side on the SAMSUNG side simply by changing it .mkv and playing it in VLC, it still stays comparatively dimmer)
- Images opened in Safari (here its opposite of above paranthesis; exact images opened in Preview can display their appropriate vibrancy once opened in Safari and dragged over to SAMSUNG)

So what's the deal?

The colors also stay at their expected vibrancy in iPhoto as well.

So, vibrant and consistent colors on some programs and not on others.

What an irritating problem that no one has ever seemed to have heard of ever.

HERE:

SAMSUNG on left, MBP on right:

Example4-1.jpg


And this is a screenshot taken from the SAMSUNG only:

Example2.jpg


Notice how the image opened in Preview is exactly the same as the image opened in Safari and yet they are drastically different in quality. Similarly, the John Goodman/Speed Racer Quicktime video should have the exact same vibrancy on both screens, and I know the Samsung is capable of such vibrancy b/c if I sneak the video ever so slowly onto the left, it appears bold and vibrant, until it goes further and readjusts and becomes the dull John Goodman screengrab you see above.

So, program specific color dulling.

Is this as utterly baffling t everyone else as it is to me?
 
cluthz said:
http://dev.null.org/blog/item/200807121618_osx105pre

Preview have a sort of built-in blurring to photos, same goes for QT.
Click to expand...

I appreciate your reply. However, this does not account for my problem. As you can tell in my screenshots above, the pictures aren't blurred, they're less vibrant. And the Preview pic on my MBP is vibrant but when dragged out onto my Samsung it suddenly isn't. Yet, if the same picture is taken out of Preview and into Safari (or iPhoto) it looks similarly vibrant across both screens (but appropriately more so on Samsung since it's a better screen).

lol.
 
It's colorsync.

When you move something to the other monitor, the Mac re-renders it with the colorsync profile used on that display. I'm guessing that if you chose the same generic profile on both, you wouldn't see this effect.
 
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