Can you turn down color saturation?

Question

Level 1

13 points

Can you turn down color saturation?

As questioned in the subject: can you turn down color saturation in osx?

I have bought an external monitor for my Macbook, which i run trough the mini-dvi out. The screen is a nice 24" inch, but does not have an option to turn down color saturation. The colors are a bit to harsh, and i really want to turn the colors down a few notches, especially the reds. But in the built in osx calibration tool, there is not option to "turn down", the colors. I know there is a "grayscale" option in the universal access menu, but there is no slider to make a custom adjustement.

So do any of you have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

macbook black 2ghz

Posted on Sep 4, 2008 7:36 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 4, 2008 8:58 PM in response to checktrack

You can calibrate any screen attached to your Mac. I don't have a working Mac OS X in front of me at the moment, but I know you go to System Preferences and click on the Displays option. On one of the tabs there should be a calibrate option. You should also be able to select a pre-defined color setting and font smoothing setting. hope that helps.

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Answer 2

checktrack Author

Level 1

13 points

Sep 4, 2008 9:53 PM in response to kungfu.mushroom

Thanks, but i know there is a calibration tool built into osx. The problem is that there is no saturation option in it, not even in the "advanced" mode. You can determine white point, gamma and such but not turn down colors. You can "favor" colors, make the screen a bit more reddish og bluish, but not less bluish or reddish. So the tool still pretty much leaves me with an oversaturated screen...

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Answer 3

Sep 4, 2008 9:56 PM in response to checktrack

hmmm... I'm sorry. I was certain you could change it. But my mac partition has become corrupted so I'm forced to use Windows right now and can't check.

My new suggestion: Try hitting the monitor with a blunt object or something. (don't that that seriously, please).

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Answer 4

-g

Level 4

3,695 points

Sep 4, 2008 10:46 PM in response to checktrack

you probably have a 'high-gamut' screen, sorry, I took mine back...

http://www.gballard.net/photoshop/srgbwidegamut.html

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Answer 5

orangekay

Level 5

4,085 points

Sep 4, 2008 11:12 PM in response to checktrack

If your monitor has no controls on it whatsoever then performing a hardware calibration with a colorimeter is really the only other option.

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Answer 6

checktrack Author

Level 1

13 points

Sep 15, 2008 4:18 PM in response to orangekay

Ok. I am not able to send back my display, so now im stuck with a wide gamut screen. I do not want to just throw it out. There must be some way, a third-party program maybe, that can tweak the way osx shows color. I just want to desaturate the image a little, i shoud not be very difficult, but after hours of searching on google i cant find anything.

Is there a program with extended calibration features, compared to the ones system preferences?

Thanks in advance!

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Answer 7

Oct 5, 2008 2:01 PM in response to checktrack

I have the same problem as yours. I've calibrated the external display as best as I can, but there is too much saturation in the picture, making everything look Technicolor! I want to work on photos with this screen, but it's impossible. Please anyone, help us with a solution!

Would a hardware calibrator work? Would it calibrate both displays at the same time?

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Answer 8

checktrack Author

Level 1

13 points

Nov 19, 2008 8:43 AM in response to Christian Pursell

Well, i still do not want to buy a new screen right now. And a wide gamut screen should be able to be desaturated a bit, its just a software problem, according to my understanding of the technology. I dont get why something this "simple" needs to be a problem...

hmm...

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Answer 9

Jan 6, 2009 2:12 PM in response to checktrack

Unfortunately there isn't much you can do. Photoshop and Firefox are color-aware, so if you turn on the proper settings then at least those applications will look fine.

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Answer 10

Mar 4, 2009 7:57 PM in response to checktrack

Yeah seems like an obvious oversight and sure the Intel integrated graphics are probably capable of it as per the new Nvidia chipsets on the new models but Apple provide no interface for it. I'd look down the *nix path & see if you can find any Linux / Unix drivers / utilities that you might be able to get some saturation settings out of.

Matt

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Answer 11

orangekay

Level 5

4,085 points

Mar 4, 2009 8:47 PM in response to Matt Hall

No Linux driver is going to do anything on a Mac.

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