Washed out colors in macOS, but HDR looks great

Thanks. The replies from the two Community Specialists is as good as it's going to get on this site, but I don't think they completely understand the nature of the problem either.

I can think of no reason Finder windows would appear "washed out" and dull while videos and (possibly) other images don't. The question of how or why the monitor would render them differently remains unanswered.

It's a classic example of finger-pointing. Apple says "not our monitor, not our problem" while Asus says "that's how Apple renders images, not our problem either".

Lacking any definitive answer I tend to agree with you: there is something about Finder windows that lack the ability to render HDR content the way you are expecting that monitor should render them.

Follow the links leroydouglas provided. Gather the patience to describe the problem in a way they understand and gets past their first layer of support without arbitrarily dismissing your concerns. Perhaps they will forward your concern to a macOS engineer that may take an interest in it.

lyonell04 wrote:

Hi, I'm experiencing the same issue. Washed out colours in the OS but YT HDR looks great. Do you have any news or did you go back to SDR?

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I had no idea "fake HDR" was a thing.

It certainly seems LG is being deliberately vague about it. They describe what HDR is, but they're very lacking in providing an exact specification compliance for that monitor. Perhaps there is no such thing.

Would that knowledge have affected your decision to purchase that monitor? Is it just an example of "you get what you pay for"?

I did look at the Apple Pro Display recently. It's impressive, but of course the Apple Store had nothing else for a side-by-side comparison.

Thank you for the enlightenment. When I designed my home theater years ago I learned how difficult it was to cut through all the marketing bs. It hasn't gotten any easier.

HDR is a gimmick and a complete waste of everyone's time. Here's a short blurb on it:

HDR expands the range of both contrast and color significantly. Bright parts of the image can get much brighter, so the image seems to have more "depth." Colors get expanded to show more bright blues, greens, reds and everything in between.

Read that as; all it does is increase the contrast and boost the color saturation of everything. That's it. Translated; unrealistic representation of the subject matter to give it an artsy look. You can do the same thing yourself with any of your images in a photo editor.

And they still do that. Walk into any Best Buy, Target, Wal*Mart, etc. and look at the TVs. They're all cranked up to practically max contrast, color saturation and brightness. Nothing even close to realistic color. All for the purpose of, "Look how much better our TV is than theirs!"

And the settings of every TV out of the box is the same. A great choice if you want wear out the colorants of the screen in less than a third of the time the TV should last. But that's about all.

Hahahahaha!!! My favorite in that realm is commercial DVDs where they run an ad touting how much better the quality of Blu-ray is than a DVD. They'll run a clip from a DVD, followed by the same clip from Blu-ray. All while the narrator exclaims how much better Blu-ray is. Uh, dumbbells. You're displaying BOTH on a DVD. They don't, and can't look any different from one another. If you want to make that comparison, you have to do it on a Blu-ray disk.

Okay, I take it back. Everything I've read on HDR up to this point has been pretty lame. The video you linked to doesn't really help since I already know about calibration and profiles. But without question (for me, anyway), this is the best explanation of HDR I have ever seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAszTBHEqFQ

Finally! Someone who explains what HDR actually does, and more importantly, why you may want it.

But, that brings us back to, will anyone use it? Will it catch on as the standard for all video display? In short, will it end up being a fad, gimmick, or just plain ignored by must users. In a similar vein, they've tried pushing 3D three times over xxx number of years, and it has failed to catch on three times.

Blu-ray caught on just enough for the original 1080 resolution as it was an obvious leap in picture quality over SD. But buyers balked at UHD (4K). To make use of it, you had to replace both your TV and Blu-ray player. Not only that, 4K had barely arrived when the industry started pushing 8K screens. That gave buyers the impression 4K was already obsolete. So why would you buy into it?

Here's the biggest obstacle by far for HDR ever catching on, and it's the same as it has been forever for TVs and computer monitors. It's this: Color is all over the place because the TVs and monitors the world over display their images in a dizzying array of incorrect color. And that's because most people have no idea how to properly calibrate a screen, or what it should even look like to start with. You can walk into any office where they may have hundreds of monitors in use. Good luck finding many that look the same. The white balance is anywhere from yellow, green, prink, or bright blue. Blinding bright to dimmed almost to off. And people wonder why when they order something online, the color of the item doesn't look anything like their screen.

And we have television to thank for sending us down the wrong path from day one in the 1950s and the first color TV broadcasts with intentionally incorrect color. The early cameras and TVs weren't very good with reds and other warm colors, but they were great at blue. So they pushed the blue to get as much color as they could. Ever wonder where the idiotic 6500K default came from? That's where. And it's been with us ever since. Look outside on any sunny day. Does it ever look that blue? No. Not even close. And yet, the TV and monitor industry still insists on setting every screen out of the box to 6500K.

Anyway, time will tell if HDR sticks.

In a similar vein, they've tried pushing 3D three times over xxx number of years, and it has failed to catch on three times.

Gimmicks can't compensate for lack of quality. Life of Pi was sublime. Avatar was wretched. Everything in between is long forgotten.

True. There's 3D done well, and 3D done badly. Plus, your Blu-ray player and TV both must support 3D. So there's that expense. Then you have to wear special glasses for most sets. They tried TVs that did 3D without the need for glasses, but they were silly expensive and didn't work well.

Writers have also noted more than once, 3D loses its effect when something is going off the perimeter of the screen and it suddenly just vanishes. The illusion is lost. That, and not much in a scene is given a 3D characteristic, so you can't help but notice most of what you're watching is plain ol' 2D with some things set above the plane. Basically, an expensive pop-up book.

Your question is not clear to me.

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Indeed. Reminds me of the days of RCA televisions when the local retailers would crank up the color until they were practically day-glo and tell customers, "Look how much better the color is".

If my suspicions are correct, even "real" HDR is fake HDR? Nothing but hype?

Perhaps dimming the lights in your office accomplishes the same thing 😂