Why is the powerbook display so dark?

[Maxx Power]

Yeah, second that.

Even if I try to keep my head in the same place, I feel as my screen has quite a cold tone (if that makes sense in the colour world). Unlike what you said, I think the colours on my screen appeared too warm before, not too cold. Anyway, it doesn't matter. The point is that the white in all my settings appear white. Its just that the metallic finish in Safari is noticeably cooler than before (I'm using that as my guide, as grey is such an easy thing to compare...), and I'm not sure if what I'm looking at is better or worse.

Whatever. The colour doesn't seem as washed out to me (not sure if that's true, either), but when I take a look at wood or something (wood = another good comparison point for me), it doesn't look right with my new calibration. Maybe it just takes some time for my eyes to adjust after having used my PB for the past year (?).

The three PB's i checked out, the newest 12", 15" and the previous 17" all had screens that were low on contrast. The screen was bluish on first sight. The colour temperature is cranked way up to something past 10,000 degrees to appear bright to the uneducated customer. If you could, and sat down and fooled around with the RGB values and bring that colour temperature down to a comfortable 6500 under room lighting or 5000 under no or little lighting, you'll see the display has very washed out colours because of its inherent low contrast. Calibration do not increase your contrast of the display, remember, the contrast of LCD's can not be adjusted, the factory spec (usually several hundred to 1) is what you will have to deal with. Judging by the usual laptop screen manufacturer's specs for their panels, i'd say the Powerbooks have a contrast of approximately 200:1 if i'm not over estimating. The 17 appeared a little better than the rest, with the 15 and the 12 being lower. I found a source before that tells me what panels and from where were the Powerbook's LCD panels from, but i have lost that link, i'll try and google it up again. And regarding brightness, typical laptop brightness is a mere 150 nits, again, they appear more bright because of the colour temperature exaggeration.

 

[MacFan26]

I remember my powerbook (titanium) was a lot brighter than my roommate's gateway from last year. That was one of the first things I noticed, along with the much better viewing angles.

 

[RubberChicken]

Yeah, and apparently, so can the angle of your screen! Crap!! 😡

Even if I try to keep my head in the same place, I feel as my screen has quite a cold tone (if that makes sense in the colour world). Unlike what you said, I think the colours on my screen appeared too warm before, not too cold. Anyway, it doesn't matter. The point is that the white in all my settings appear white. Its just that the metallic finish in Safari is noticeably cooler than before (I'm using that as my guide, as grey is such an easy thing to compare...), and I'm not sure if what I'm looking at is better or worse.

Whatever. The colour doesn't seem as washed out to me (not sure if that's true, either), but when I take a look at wood or something (wood = another good comparison point for me), it doesn't look right with my new calibration. Maybe it just takes some time for my eyes to adjust after having used my PB for the past year (?).

Welcome to he gritty world of colour. Unfortunately our brains are very poorly equiped for this job. Generally you could create a calibration with a massive colour caste, pink.. blue whatever, and after 30 min you won't really notice. Unless you have something constant to compare to. Our brains even out our perception.

The publishing industry target is a colour temperature of 6500°K (D65) which is the equivelent of daylight. Most monitors ship set at 9300°K which lends a cool blue cast to eveything. D65 should look more balanced. The other adjustments in expert mode are just a way of telling the computer how the balance looks to you, compared to what it thinks it looks like. The gamma should stay at 1.8 (and I recommend the light setting for font smoothing in Appearance control panel).

The one thing you can be certain of is that each time you do it, you will pick a slightly different result. Our brains are very influenced by ambient light and surrounding colour. If you can see something red behind the screen, the screen will appear more blue. Even your desktop picture will influence your perception. Thats why most designers will set everything to a boring grey. In other words do it once, or you will never stop. Otherwise try to borrow an electronic calibrator, like Gretag Eye One or similar, and just remove that pesky human element from the whole process.

And my Powerbook screen is plenty bright, and the ability to adjust to ambient lighting is exceptional. It is actually bad for your eyes to look at excessive contrast for long periods of time. So in a dark room the screen brightness comes down and in brighter conditions it goes up.

 

[cb911]

my 1.25GHz PB seems pretty good.

but i did use it with those 'auto ambient light' sensing options, that almost always made me have to turn it up myself. but i usually use the screen on full, looks fine to me, but i might be used to it...

actually, the other day i was using a dual-screen setup with a new 19" BenQ (i think) LCD that we got, the PB screen seemed just as bright as the 19". 😱 or maybe just slightly dimmer.

also, my bro has a new Celeron laptop, 1600xSomething res, i'll have to compare the PB screen to that as well... might post some photos if i do this...

 

[Abstract]

The publishing industry target is a colour temperature of 6500°K (D65) which is the equivelent of daylight. Most monitors ship set at 9300°K which lends a cool blue cast to eveything. D65 should look more balanced. The other adjustments in expert mode are just a way of telling the computer how the balance looks to you, compared to what it thinks it looks like. The gamma should stay at 1.8 (and I recommend the light setting for font smoothing in Appearance control panel).

Yeah, I was wondering if I should actually stick to those values, but I did eventually. Now I can't even know if anything is wrong. 😉 All I know is that since I've calibrated my PB monitor, the metallic finish in Safari looks more.....metallic grey than before, and more blue than before. Whether there's too much blue is another question.

And when I performed the calibration, it was 11pm. I shut my room light so that the only light in the room came from my PB. Woods still look a bit too bluish, but what can you do?

And I found that the instructions for the calibration weren't very clear, so I've been doing it my own way. 😱 I think I understand the purpose of the Left-side calibration, but not the one on the right --- something about the shape. Anyway, I just move the knob down to the bottom of the square area, and directly along the centre of the square (if moving it left-to-right).

 

[RubberChicken]

Yeah, I was wondering if I should actually stick to those values, but I did eventually. Now I can't even know if anything is wrong. 😉 All I know is that since I've calibrated my PB monitor, the metallic finish in Safari looks more.....metallic grey than before, and more blue than before. Whether there's too much blue is another question.

And when I performed the calibration, it was 11pm. I shut my room light so that the only light in the room came from my PB. Woods still look a bit too bluish, but what can you do?

And I found that the instructions for the calibration weren't very clear, so I've been doing it my own way. 😱 I think I understand the purpose of the Left-side calibration, but not the one on the right --- something about the shape. Anyway, I just move the knob down to the bottom of the square area, and directly along the centre of the square (if moving it left-to-right).

When using the expert options, the entire sequence aims to get you to pick a gamma and hue adjustment which compensates for the variation in the current unadjusted state compared to a standard. It's a bit like getting your eyes tested. When you fiddle with both squares the system throws the next choice back the other way, each time trying to get your choices more accurate. This is becasue of what I said earlier about our brains being quite hopeless at consistently choosing between subtle colour variation. So by the time you get to the screen selecting the desired colour temperature and gamma, in combination with your own compensation calibration, the result should equal the selected settings.

FIRST - Turn off the auto ambient light adjustment and make the screen as bright as possible. Turn it back on after. Do the calibration under lighting conditions that represent average usage ie not outside and not in a dark room (unless you maybe live a dark room of course).

The left square with the vertical slider, adjusts the gamma. The right square with the horizontal and vertical slider adjusts the hue. Squint your eyes until the lines behind the apple blur into each other, then adjust the gammer slider until the grey value of the apple matches the background. Then move the XY slider in the hue square until the colour of the apple looks neutral to the background. Notice each corner of the hue square has a different cast. I find it easy to make a few big movements to decide what the existing cast is and then fine tune. Don't take too long with each choice, make it as intuitive as possible, otherwise it can just get more difficult to decide. Each screen you go through will get more accurate, providing your choices are reasonable consistent.