Thinkpads Forum

I have a T61 SXGA+ I have been trying to figure out the best way to set brightness/contrast/gamma but I have been unable to do so. Is there anyone out there that knows of a program that will help you to set the brightness/contrast/gamma on your screen so that it is optimized? Am I going about this all the wrong way? Can anyone with this same screen (TMD 14.1" SXGA) post what their settings are?

I found a brightness setting in the bios, it allows me to set the brightness to high, instead of normal. Is anyone out there using this setting that is happy with the results?

14" SXGA+ displays in T have no contrast by design You can set gamma in advanced Display Properties but you can not correct the excessive backlight bleeding anyway.

Puppy wrote:14" SXGA+ displays in T have no contrast by design You can set gamma in advanced Display Properties but you can not correct the excessive backlight bleeding anyway.

Fair enough, I'm not looking for a spectacular display by any means. However, one thing I just noticed when comparing the whites in this LCD vs my SONY LCD, the whites in this thinkpad look a little red. In the nVidia control panel (I have the Quadro 140M) I can change contrast/brightness/gamma for red specifically, so which one do I want to change if my whites have a bit of red in them? Or do I want to beef up the other colors?

It's never a good idea too beef up the other colors in order to tone down the red. If you do this, you'll lose nuances of blue and green, i.e. it will be over-saturated, and will "bleed" more quickly than it should.

Instead, tone down the red color somewhat.

I'll look for a few of those webpages with guides to "calibrate" your monitor, but the bets you could would be either to lend or buy a hardware calibration unit like a Spyder

I would suggest the app below. I've used it over the years to get a decent color calibration (hey it's free!).

http://www.hex2bit.com/products/product_mcw.asp

duffy wrote:http://www.hex2bit.com/products/product_mcw.asp

Nice tool, thanks for sharing this link.

duffy wrote:I would suggest the app below. I've used it over the years to get a decent color calibration (hey it's free!).

http://www.hex2bit.com/products/product_mcw.asp

Thank you very much this is exactly what I was looking for. The colors no longer look so "off." Great program!

duffy wrote:I would suggest the app below. I've used it over the years to get a decent color calibration (hey it's free!).

http://www.hex2bit.com/products/product_mcw.asp

Thanks for the link. Is there a way to change the settings back to factory default after you have applied the new settings using the software?

The German computer magazine c't – magazin für computertechnik – provides an online utility for setting contrast and brightness. It can be found at
http://www.heise.de/ct/ctscreen
You need a browser which will support Java to be able to use it. Before you use the utility, set screen brightness to a medium value. On the page which will display in your browser, leave the resolution at "auto" and activate LCD support if you use a LCD screen. Then click the uppermost button, it's called "Helligkeit/Kontrast". A new page with the two ends of the greyscale will now show. If you should want to exit from this page later on, then press "Esc". But to start, set your notebook screen's contrast to a level which will allow all five tones in the light end of the greyscale to be well distinguished from each other. I tend to set the contrast as high as possible, while still being able to distinguish the five light grey tones from each other. The reason is that a screen, whose contrast is set to a too low value, has a grey hue all over it. The more you raise contrast, the more of this grey hue will go away. In such cases, a screen, which should be white but which is too dark, will change from grey to white and the backlight will appear to become brighter. Actually, the backlight's intensity doesn't change, the screen just becomes more translucent. Then set your notebook's backlight brightness to a value which will show the darkest of the dark grey tones as black and which will allow you to distinguish all five of the dark grey tones from each other. Unfortunately, if the notebook's display backlight is physically too weak or if the display's maximum contrast is too low and if the notebook came with optimized display settings, all of this will probably improve nothing.