Image Persistence/LCD "burn-in": Details of Symptoms and Cure

Summary:
1) This post presents text, images, and video of a new laptop LCD developing Image Persistence after only a couple months of continuous use. The laptop was kept ON nearly 24/7 and did not use a screensaver.

2) The Fix for this problem involves three different applications of the widely described treatment of repeatedly flashing alternately white and black images across the full screen for hours or days. One of the two "ghost" images required 30 hours of treatment. The other "ghost" image required 80 hours of treatment.

3) The Fix also employs two free software tools that were specifically useful for this approach. Substitutes can be found, but these two were effective and convenient. They are IrfanView and JR Screen Ruler.


Full Report:
The unassailable usefulness of screensavers in protecting CRT monitors from burn-in notwithstanding, I hate screensavers. Screensavers are always a brutish challenge to the professionalism of any office and always an overt attack upon the peace and tranquility of every civilized home. I hate screensavers, but LCD monitors do not suffer from burn-in. So, it was with self-satisfied confidence that I allowed my new HP Envy 17, purchased only four months ago, to remain on and bright, 24/7, for nearly every day of its four months in my possession. This is why I had to discover and learn about LCD Image Persistence.

In short, Image Persistence is the LCD counterpart to CRT burn-in. A persistent image is a "ghost" of an original image created after the original image has been displayed many days or weeks on an LCD. The ghost can be seen when the original image is moved. The ghost is usually displayed in shades of the background color or the color of any new image applied to that part of an LCD monitor. Image Persistence has been described within the Web for many years, but it really has become an issue with the popularity of less expensive LCD TVs.

Fortunately, unlike CRT burn-in, Image Persistence can be removed most of the time.

I purchased an HP Envy 17 in July, 2010 and have been running it almost nonstop since then. After the first month or so, I began to notice a cloudy streak running horizontally across the top-center of the screen. This streak was subtle, and, to the extent that I thought about it at all, I speculated that it might be an artifact of the lights behind the LCD. Recently, I accidentally clicked the left button while sweeping the mouse cursor across the screen and dragged away one of the Windows gadgets I have had displayed on the right of the screen since I first configured my new laptop. This was when I first discovered an unambiguous, persistent ghost image of the gadget window previously in that place on the screen. This was also when I started to reconsider the cause of the horizontal ghost image I had previously been noticing.

Here are three photographs that Display the Problem. Click on the image for a more detailed view:

Image Persistence 1 of 3 Horizontal Band in Top/Center

From Image Persistence Treatment

Image Persistence 2 of 3 Horizontal Band in Top/Center - Another View Note: Curving Bands are Moire Effect and Exist Within the Camera Only

From Image Persistence Treatment

Image Persistence 3 of 3 Gadgets Moved to Reveal Ghosts of Clock and Calendar in top/Right as well as Horizontal Band in Top/Center

From Image Persistence Treatment

After a bit of Internet research, I discovered a number of sites describing Image Persistence and offering related solutions. Some describe turning the screen off for 24 hours as a treatment. Some describe displaying a fullscreen, all white image as a treatment. Others describe switching between white and black screens as a treatment. One author claimed a fix can be achieved in as little as one hour. This was NOT my experience. Other authors describe a fix being achieved after many days. A few authors acknowledge that a fix may not be possible.

Here are a few of many links to be found with a simple search on Image Persistence:
Image persistence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
How To Fix Image Persistence On LCD Displays
LCD Image Persistence
Can Image Persistence Be Fixed on a LCD? | eHow.com

Although not technically correct, the following terms will also provide good search results (include the quotes): LCD "burn-in"

The primary problem or difficulty with all of the treatments offered for Image Persistence is that they prevent the computer from being used while the treatment is being applied. This is important when considering that, in my case, the ghost of the gadget required 30 hours of treatment before it was gone; and, that the horizontal line required 80 hours of treatment before it was gone.

Below, in summary, are four techniques I used to remove my LCD ghosts while still making use of my computer. I used them all, depending upon the circumstances of my computer use. Detailed descriptions follow.

Technique #1
Create a "slideshow" with the Windows Screensaver to display alternately fullscreens of a white image and a black image via the screensaver's photo slideshow feature.

Technique #2
Create a self-executing "slideshow" with Irfanview to display alternately fullscreens of a white image and a black image.

Technique #3
Create a self-executing "slideshow" with Irfanview to display alternately SMALL windows of a white image and a black image located over the ghost image(s) only. This approach leaves the remainder of the computer screen available for work.

Technique #4
Use a view of a single color image as a lens to inspect the progress of these treatments without the need for moving windows or shortcut icons to identify instances of image persistence. This will make more sense in the detailed description below.

Two Free Tools
Irfanview is a rich image manipulation and display tool. To use it as I describe below, you will need to download the Irfanview installation program AND its Plugins/AddOns. These are free for non-commercial use.
IrfanView - Official Homepage - one of the most popular viewers worldwide

JR Screen Ruler is a tool of convenience. I used it to size the small slideshows as well as to position them on the screen. A "real" ruler would also work, but JR Screen Ruler was slightly more accurate and offers pixels as a unit of measure. JR Screen Ruler is free for non-commercial use.
Free Tools - Screen Ruler, Split File, Directory Printer, URL Generator

The following techniques all require the use of two image files, one solid white and one solid black. Techniques #1 and #2 require each image to be equal or greater in size to the LCD screen to ensure that the colors manipulate every screen pixel. These images can be created with many different and freely available programs. The following instructions are specifically for doing so with Irfanview, but the general concepts are applicable to any other program.

1) Open Irfanview
2) From the Image Menu option, click Create New (empty) image
3) A window will prompt for the image size in pixels. The image must be the same size or larger in both dimensions as the LCD screen. Accept the default DPI settings. Accept the default background color of White.
4) Save the image with a filename of choice that indicates the color (e.g., white.jpg).
5) From the Image Menu option, click Color corrections.
6) On the bottom left of the new window will be found three sliders for Color balance that are marked R,G,B, for Red, Green, and Blue. The sliders will be centered by default. Computer screen colors are identified in absolute with the numbers 0 - 255 for each R G B. This Irfanview color tool allows for adjusting an existing image up or down the color scale by a possible 256 steps or -255 - 0 - +255. Move all three sliders to the far left (-255) to create a black background and Click OK.
7) Save the now black image with a NEW filename that indicates black.

Techniques #1 and #2 require the white and black image files as created above. It may be convenient to store them in a folder unique to this task.

Technique #1
Even though I hate screensavers, the Windows screensaver can be used to display the black and white image files as "photos". Set the display speed to Fast. I set the delay to one hour so as not to be bothered by the screensaver when I am concentrating on work on the screen.

Technique #2
For those moments when I left the computer for a length of time, I created an executable that displayed the white and black screens immediately. This freed me from having to alter the screensaver settings to force the screensaver to start. Irfanview made this possible. Please refer to the image below as a guide in the following instructions.

Irfanview Slideshow Interface. Click on the image for a more detailed view:

From Image Persistence Treatment

1) Open Irfanview. Do not bother to open an image file. Any image file open when the slideshow is tested (Step 9) will be closed upon returning to the Slideshow Interface.
2) While in Irfanview, press the key " W" to open the Slideshow Interface.
3) Open Windows Explorer to display the black and white files previously created and saved to disk.
4) Drag the black and white files from Windows Explorer and into the portion of the Slideshow Interface I have marked with a red A.
5) Where I have marked with a red B, click the radio button: Play in Window mode: (Fullscreen mode would also work, but this will be an important setting for Technique #3).
6) Where I have marked with a red B, set the X and Y positions (xpos, ypos) to zero and set the width and height to match EXACTLY the size of the screen, in pixels. Leave the box labeled Centered UNchecked. Note that Windows screen positions are calculated from the Top-Left corner of the screen down and to the right. X values are vertical and Y values are horizontal.
7) Where I have marked with a red C, press the radio button for Automatic after and enter 1 second.
8) Where I have marked with a red D, check Loop slideshow, Suppress errors while playing, and Hide mouse cursor. Confirm that all the other boxes in this group remain UNchecked.
9) Where I have marked with a red E, press the Play Slideshow button for a test. Pressing ESC will return to the Irfanview Slideshow Interface.
10) If the slideshow filled the complete screen with alternating white and black images (the desired goal), then create a self-executing slideshow file by pressing the Save slideshow as EXE/SCR button where I have marked with a red F. Select the Create EXE file radio button, type a filename and location of choice, and press the Create button.
11) The executable file can now be run like any other program.

Technique #3
Techniques #1 and #2 both treat the entire LCD screen, but they make the computer unavailable for work. By shrinking the black and white images to only the size needed to treat the ghosted area, the remainder of the computer screen can be used for work. This assumes that the user can tolerate flashing images on the computer screen. Covering a Sticky Note with black electrical tape and then applying the Sticky Note to the flashing area may help here. This comes under the heading of, "it's better than nothing". Please, do NOT apply tape directly to the LCD screen . . .

1a) Using a "real" ruler or JR Screen Ruler, measure the size of the rectangle needed to cover completely the ghost image or images. Do this in pixels if possible, or in english or metric measurements, if need be.
1b) While measuring the size, also measure the position of the top-left corner of the rectangle from the top-left corner of the LCD screen in the same units.
2) Open the original white image file with Irfanview.
3) From the Image Menu option, click Resize/Resample.
4) If the rectangle size measurements were made in pixels, select pixels as the units of measure. If english or metric measurements were used, then use this trick to calculate a conversion for the X/Y position coordinates before creating the rectangle image file:

Tricking Irfanview To Provide Pixel Unit Conversions: If english or metric measurements were used, select the appropriate non-pixel unit and enter the X/Y position values, matching distance from the top to Height and distance from the left to Width. Then press OK. The image size will change. Then reopen the Resize/Resample window (as done in Step 3) and select the pixel units (if it has not already defaulted to pixels). The values listed as Height and Width in pixels will be the actual values for the position of the rectangle previously entered. Write them down. They will be used in the Slideshow Interface (Step 8).

Now, enter the true size values in the original units of measure for the rectangle desired to cover the ghost image and press OK.

5) Save this resized white image under a new name.
6) Repeat the process described just above the details of Technique #1 to change the color of the existing image from white to black, and save this image with a new name.
7) Open the Slideshow Interface by pressing " W".
8) Create a new slideshow as described in Technique #2, except enter the position values previously measured, or measured and converted to pixels, that were previously recorded in Steps 1-4. Make sure that the slideshow Window Width and Height match the size of the new image file exactly.
9) Create a new executable slideshow as was done for Technique #2.
10) Repeat these steps for each ghost image to be treated.

The following link points to a short video of my screen when running two small slideshow treatments. Only the individual user can decide whether this kind of distraction is tolerable or too much. The slideshows are flashing together in this video, but this is only a coincidence. They actually can play independent of each other.

Youtube "Screencast" Movie of My LCD Under Treatment
width='853' height='505'><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cwOswPX7IGQ?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cwOswPX7IGQ?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width='853' height='505'></embed></object>

Technique #4
When dragging a screenshot of my Windows Desktop across the screen, I noticed that the background green could "reveal" the Persistent Image ghost from "beneath" whatever other image happened to be displayed. This suggested a convenient tool for inspecting the progress of Image Persistence treatment.

As the original pictures within this post show, the Gadget ghosts were revealed only by moving the gadgets to a different part of the screen. This can be tedious: moving each icon and window away from its original position and back again. What would be convenient would be a magic viewer to discover or inspect ghost images without moving Desktop icons or windows.

Making A Magic Ghost Image Viewer
OK, the title is silly, but this simple trick makes checking for ghosts easy.

1) Create an image file with a solid green color, specifically, this green color: RGB 0,152,0
2) Open the file in Irfanview.
3) Switch to Fullscreen view to scan the entire screen at once.
4) Switch to a small window view and drag the window across the screen to inspect for ghost images.

Viewing the green image in a small window and in Fullscreen mode allows the eye to spot ghost images that might be missed by using one approach only. The difference is not about hardware or software, but about how the human eye and mind view subtle images. Something akin to two different astronomers' techniques of averted seeing and photo image blinking may even be at play.

Some Thoughts About Color
I experimented with a few primary colors and discovered that only green succeeded in revealing ghost images with detail. Blue worked only a little and the other colors not at all. Why?

I can think of two explanations:
1) The human eye can detect the color green better than other colors. This is why green laser pointers look so much brighter than red laser pointers even though both colors of laser light emit the same amount of energy (by law). If this is the reason, then the green image offers the eye the best contrast to detect ghost images.

OR

2) My Windows Desktop background color was green, albeit a different shade than my viewer color. The particular Image Persistence problem I am experiencing may favor green. Image Persistence created against a different color background may favor that color.

Readers with known Image Persistence problems are encouraged to experiment with different color "viewers" and to report in a response to this post.

Some Final Comments
The source of my ghost images in the corner were obviously the gadgets left on the Desktop for four months. The source of my horizontal band appears to be less obvious. My working hypothesis is that the default location of my browser has the clue. Here is a freshly opened window of Internet Explorer:

From Image Persistence Treatment

The boundary line between the toolbars at the top of Internet Explorer and the Internet Explorer main window correspond with the location of the horizontal band of my central persistent image. These white/dark boundaries are similar to the white/dark boundaries of my gadgets and their ghosts. This is the best guess that I have.

Of course, why I developed these ghosts, but not others beneath the other icons I cannot say.

As for screensavers, my working practice now is to let the screen go dark after an hour of use. If I walk away from the computer, I often run the fullscreen flashing slideshow as an LCD prophylactic. I even open my green screen magic viewer now and then to look for early signs of new ghosts.

Finally, here is a picture of the treated LCD. The treatment worked.

From Image Persistence Treatment