Display Brightness Control

[Bob87]

After about a year of very good operation, my Power Mac G5 has developed a problem. The following conditions now exist that did not exist in the past.

Dark photos now appear very under exposed and light photos appear very
over exposed. Mid-tone photos are OK. Lines on an Excel spreadsheet are very dim and difficult to see. Dimmed images in any application are very washed out and dark images very dark. Light colored desktop Icons are washed out and difficult to see. Light colors in the Excel menu “Fill Color” dropdown appear white, etc.

I have done the following --
Ran “Disk Utilities” – tests ok
Ran “Text Tool Pro” – tests ok
Reinstalled OS 10.4.4
Calibrated (expert) the display.
Printed a spreadsheet - the lines that appear very dim in the display are ok in the print
Printed photos -very dark photos on the display print very dark and very light photo print very light. Photos that show ok on the display print ok

I noticed that when the computer starts up, the screen will initially look normal and after about a second switch slightly darker and a window will flash by, too fast to read.

It would appear that something has failed or corrupted. Hopefully just a plist file that I can trash but I don’t know which preference files, if any, relate to the computers ability to manage lightness and darkness on the screen. Perhaps I have a defective display.

Any help will be very much appreciated.

Power Mac G5, dual 2.5Ghz, 1.5 G Ram, 160G HD, 20” Cinema Display
OS 10.4.4.
Epson 3170 scanner, HP 5740 printer operating with Airport Extreme
Programs: MS Office 2004, Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0, Quicken 2005

Bob87

[simbalala]

Did you experiment with the Colors Tab in the Displays Preference Pane? Maybe the monitor just needs recalibration.

Oops... Just reread your post, apparently you have. Try other Gamma settings maybe. Some people are happier with the PC settings rather than Mac.