Laptop Screen Color Cast
November 24, 2020 10:18 AM   Subscribe

My new laptop, purchased for photo processing, has an apparently uncorrectable brown/yellow cast to the screen (HP Envy x360 Ryzen 4700U Radeon Octa-core 32GB). This was intended for processing 8-bit photos to be displayed on a computer screen. HP recognizes this problem on their help pages. All of the recommended solutions listed by HP were tried to no effect.

According to the Advanced Screen Settings the HP Envy x360 has a 6-bit screen. I do not understand this. Does this mean the screen will not properly display an 8-bit image? Does screen bit depth mean the same as the bit depth in a photograph? is bit depth in a computer a function of the monitor or the mainboard graphics?

The color cast is not present when an 8-bit auxiliary monitor is plugged into the laptop. If I decide the problem is un-correctable might there be restrictions in choices on a plug-in monitor for full time use?

I am over my head here.
posted by Raybun to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)
 
The monitor has less gradations than the photos, so may dither the color off of what it is. Touch screens tend to have poorer color rendition due to the extra touch elements included.

Bit depth of an LCD is how much control the electronics driving the screen have over levels of intensity.

So long as the external monitor has a good color gamut and quality, and you make sure Windows 10 recognizes the monitor (not muddled by some cable adapter or dock), it should setup itself the correct color profile for you. The internal Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) should be able to do 8-bit color output just fine.
posted by nickggully at 11:23 AM on November 24, 2020


A (cheaper) 6-bit display can only display 64 different shades for red, green, and blue -- while an 8-bit display can display 256. The 6-bit displays use dithering to simulate more colors, so it's a little harder to tell the difference.

You could try going through the Windows Display Color Calibration to improve your colors -- you could also do this on the external monitor.

Your display in theory covers 91% of the sRGB gamut (an iMac covers 142%, meaning it can display a greater range of shades than are in a typical JPEG photo) which might be enough for casual photo processing but someone with more experience in color spaces would be able to give a better answer.

That the colors are so off out of the box is worrisome, though, and might indicate bad drivers or a bad batch of hardware.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:43 AM on November 24, 2020


Response by poster: RobotVoodoPower Thanks for the tip on calibration. This monitor does not show any calibration information beyond the Display Properties Page. This information, unfortunately, is not available in the sales information for most monitors. I am shopping for a second monitor now. Thanks again.
posted by Raybun at 2:08 PM on November 24, 2020


Want to chime in to say that color calibrators (I have a SpyderX, but the i1Display products are also well regarded) can help a lot cleaning up dodgy color. They can't actually fix the underlying problems with the display (and a 6-bit panel is always going to be a bit less accurate than an 8-bit or 10-bit one would be), but they can do a great job of cleaning up color casts and making sure the colors on different displays match up.
posted by doomsey at 7:04 PM on November 24, 2020


(and, ugh, 60% sRGB? not really good for color work. I'd still recommend getting a calibrator in general, but for photo work an external display is probably a good choice.)
posted by doomsey at 7:10 PM on November 24, 2020


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