This thread is a Public Service Announcement rather than news or something I need help with.
I may have discussed with some of you forcing lower gamma on a monitor to reduce washed out colours or you may have seen me mention it in various threads but I said the tool I used isn't available anymore. Well that is no longer the case.
CPKeeper (Color Profile Keeper)
Those of you messing with ICC profiles or manually adjusting colour settings in your graphics card control panel may not find this so special. Except that since the advent of Windows 7 Fullscreen programs have the ability to reset colour settings to defaults and disable ICC profiles, that means basically all games. CPKeeper however creates it's own colour profile type and locks it in place. It applies at Windows start-up, it applies ingame and it applies still whilst you exit the game. That's what makes the program so special.
All you do is copy the system's current colour profile when applying your favourite ICC profile or graphics card colour settings and then make it lock that in place.
So what I do with any monitor I use is I go to the lagom monitor test website.
LCD monitor test images
I load up the viewing angle page and focus the view on the top on with the lagom text. If the text is red the gamma is high and colours are being washed out. If the gamma text is turqoise then the gamma is too low and details are dark. The perfect point I have found is usually at the fade over point between the two either slightly low if you like your colours to pop, or slightly high if you are worried about details being lost in the dark.
So I then open the nVidia control panel and switch to the Adjust desktop colour window and start lowering gamma to the point previously mentioned. Once I reach that point I find a screenshot of a game in a dark area and start raising it again to a compromised level that seems about right. (For those of your with TN monitors focus on the middle of the screen, that's the gamma most of what you will see will have, whilst making sure the top doesn't get too dark)
Then in CPKeeper one presses the asterisk which brings up a standard save as dialog and I save the profile.
Set nvidia back to default (let other programs decide).
Load the profile in CPKeeper check the lock checkbox as well as the ones for load at startup and save.
Boom! Now your formerly washed out monitor is running at lower gamma with stronger colours almost all the time.
I may have discussed with some of you forcing lower gamma on a monitor to reduce washed out colours or you may have seen me mention it in various threads but I said the tool I used isn't available anymore. Well that is no longer the case.
CPKeeper (Color Profile Keeper)
Those of you messing with ICC profiles or manually adjusting colour settings in your graphics card control panel may not find this so special. Except that since the advent of Windows 7 Fullscreen programs have the ability to reset colour settings to defaults and disable ICC profiles, that means basically all games. CPKeeper however creates it's own colour profile type and locks it in place. It applies at Windows start-up, it applies ingame and it applies still whilst you exit the game. That's what makes the program so special.
All you do is copy the system's current colour profile when applying your favourite ICC profile or graphics card colour settings and then make it lock that in place.
So what I do with any monitor I use is I go to the lagom monitor test website.
LCD monitor test images
I load up the viewing angle page and focus the view on the top on with the lagom text. If the text is red the gamma is high and colours are being washed out. If the gamma text is turqoise then the gamma is too low and details are dark. The perfect point I have found is usually at the fade over point between the two either slightly low if you like your colours to pop, or slightly high if you are worried about details being lost in the dark.
So I then open the nVidia control panel and switch to the Adjust desktop colour window and start lowering gamma to the point previously mentioned. Once I reach that point I find a screenshot of a game in a dark area and start raising it again to a compromised level that seems about right. (For those of your with TN monitors focus on the middle of the screen, that's the gamma most of what you will see will have, whilst making sure the top doesn't get too dark)
Then in CPKeeper one presses the asterisk which brings up a standard save as dialog and I save the profile.
Set nvidia back to default (let other programs decide).
Load the profile in CPKeeper check the lock checkbox as well as the ones for load at startup and save.
Boom! Now your formerly washed out monitor is running at lower gamma with stronger colours almost all the time.
