Bug: Gray Gamma 2.2 Images Appear Incorrectly in Screen Saver

Question

Bug: Gray Gamma 2.2 Images Appear Incorrectly in Screen Saver

I recently noticed that some images in my Apple TV screen saver were appearing distorted -- incorrectly cropped, shimmery, with vertical lines through them. I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out what the images had in common when I realized they were all black-and-white. I did a Get Info on the images and they ALL used the Color Profile "Gray Gamma 2.2". Opening the images in Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, converting their color profile to sRGB (Image > Convert Color Profile > select sRGB option), and then saving them back out eliminated the problem once I forced the Apple TV to refresh its cache of images.

Hopefully Apple will realize this problem exists and do something about it -- I am posting it here for the benefit of anyone else who may run into this problem and can't figure out how to solve it.

Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Oct 4, 2012 7:30 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 4, 2012 7:31 PM in response to Clayton C. Johanson

PS: This is the current 1080p model of Apple TV running the latest firmware (September 2012).

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Answer 2

Nov 30, 2012 4:08 AM in response to Clayton C. Johanson

I am having the same problem. I don't have Adobe so I don't know how to fix this. Any advice on fixing this using Picasa or some other program?

/Alex Volk

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Answer 3

Dec 5, 2012 8:07 AM in response to Clayton C. Johanson

The Gray Gamma issue appears to be fixed in the most recent build of the Apple TV software -- I can no longer reproduce it viewing a folder of Gray Gamma images in the screen saver.

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Answer 4

Dec 5, 2012 9:08 AM in response to Clayton C. Johanson

I am still having trouble with black and white pics from NASA of moons around the solar system.

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Answer 5

Dec 15, 2012 7:41 AM in response to Clayton C. Johanson

Please disregard my previous comment: The Gray Gamma 2.2 issue still occurs. I had mistakenly replaced my Gray Gamma 2.2 images with reprofiled images.

Sorry I can't help with any other programs -- all I have is Adobe Photoshop Elements. You might want to try searching for programs that can convert images to use different color profiles.

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Answer 6

Dec 15, 2012 8:34 AM in response to Clayton C. Johanson

"I recently noticed that some images in my Apple TV screen saver were appearing distorted -- incorrectly cropped, shimmery, with vertical lines through them. I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out what the images had in common when I realized they were all black-and-white. I did a Get Info on the images and they ALL used the Color Profile "Gray Gamma 2.2"."

I am having the same problem with certain B&W images - most of these images are fairly old, i.e., 1950s on back. The only info I can find regarding color is this - Get Info tells me the color space is gray.

Now, I can go back to the original photo source and re-download the photo and it displays just fine in Apple TV, whether slideshow or screen saver. But, it's a lot of work to go back and do that. Several hundred images worth of work.

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Answer 7

Feb 9, 2013 4:48 AM in response to Clayton C. Johanson

I found out this week that if I use the slideshow for photos instead of the screen saver then then gray gamma pictures appear correctly. Why this makes a difference, I have no idea, but it solves the problem for me.

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Answer 8

Feb 9, 2013 9:30 AM in response to Clayton C. Johanson

The very latest Apple TV software update appears to have fixed the problem. I set a folder containing nothing but Gray Gamma 2.2 images as my screen saver and they all appeared correctly.

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Answer 9

Feb 10, 2013 12:53 AM in response to Clayton C. Johanson

Thanks for the update. I did prefer using the screensaver.

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