HEL80 Color Saturation?

After recently acquiring and fiddling with a Macbook, I remembered an old thought that I never got around to dealing with. Though the viewing angles of this Compal are the best I've seen in a laptop, the color saturation (or maybe contrast?) is a bit lacking. Is there some way to increase this via software -- some sort of calibration program perhaps?

That is, in some web pages with paler colors, they don't come out that strongly. These forums aren't as blue as they ought to be, for instance.

 

Set Digital Vibrance +1 inside the nvidia settings. I think that is what you are looking for.

 

Thanks, but no cigar... this is a bit hard to describe for me since I'm not too into graphics. I don't quite know what I'm looking at. When I turn up Digital Vibrance, it seems to make for less detail overall, and just winds up making the brighter colors even brighter.

In these forums, for instance, the sidebar color looks nearly white, instead of a healthy light blue. The body of a post also looks a very similiar nearly-white, instead of a gray. If I turn up Digital Vibrance all the way, it looks more saturated, but still too light, and of course the bolder colors are all a mess.

There was this calibration application in OS X that had a lot of "drag the slider until these seem to match in intensity." and "click where the image is most white" that seemed to have a significant effect on addressing this sort of image issue. I just messed around with it a little -- didn't go for an accurate calibration -- but the difference was large, and along the lines of what I'd like to do with this screen.

(edit) I've got something approximating what I wanted now... it doesn't look quite right to me... but then, I guess I don't need to worry about it. At least the lighter colors in web pages aren't "clipping" now. I went into the advanced mode, and drug the top dot thingy downwards, like lowering contrast, and left the bottom dot thing in place. Good enough, I suppose.

 

I'm guessing vibrance is actually contrast. TV manufacturers have their own terms. (sony) for instance sometimes calls this "picture".. weird but why can't they all call it contrast. Either that or it's a white gain. Anyhow.. How do you like the Hel80's display vs a 15" Macbook Pro? Have you been able to see them side by side?

 

Digital Vibrance isn't contrast. It makes colors a little more saturated, and brighter, that is, lighter in tone. It's some kinda gimicky thing.

I did see them side by side once, and I don't remember how they compared. It's less saturated than my Macbook (13"), with better viewing angles.

 

There should be something in that tool near the digital vibrance that does a calibration to adjust "blacker blacks and whiter whites".. might be some magic to that? If you want I can dig around later tonight when I'm at my compal and find the exact name.

 

Well, I'm satisfied with how it is now. I'm still curious though, and I don't see anything like what you're talking about.. there is this "Display Optimization Tool", but it seems to just manipulate the controls that are already exposed.

 

Yeah, sorry, thought that was useful.... I know to get nice colors on mine I have to basically have Digital Vibrance +1 and max brightness. Thats what I set for gaming and video watching..

Currently I see the colors on this site as you describe they should be, but I'm using my interpretation of your words to state this so it may not count :/

HTH

 

I noticed the pale colors too - although the reason I sent the computer back was the sparkly screen.

Color photos looked very sharp, but missing some important vibrance - and digital vibrance didn't help. I loaded a beautiful almost monochrome city scene photo from flickr as the wallpaper for both the Compal and my old Toshiba UXGA. On the Toshiba the buildings in the front has a rich reddish brown color. On the Compal they were a duller brown. The photo was much more beautiful on the Toshiba. That said, if I hadn't had a comparison computer, I would have thought the colors were pretty decent.

The sparkly screen was unbearable. I'm still amazed that no one else comments on it. Powernotebooks got my computer back 9 days ago. They said it can take up to 10 business days to process the return, so hopefully by Friday I'll know if my screen was an anomaly or not.

 

I think what you call sparkle, the rest of the world calls 'matte'

Have you ever considered that maybe your Toshiba was the anomaly compared to the rest of the screens?