White balance for the whole X desktop

[Brendan Kidwell]

On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 10:29 PM, Dan Ritter <dsr-mzpnVDyJpH4k7aNtvndDlA at public.gmane.org> wrote:

>  There are proprietary things that can be done with NVidia or
> Radeon's closed drivers, but the only native all-X11 color change
> system I know about is xgamma.
>

Yep, I was aware that some tools exist attached to binary blob X video
drivers, but in my case I'm using the open source Intel GPU driver and I
don't see anything similar NVidia's control panel. :^(

I found xgamma too. I wonder if it can be extended to allow specifying three
separate channels and correction curves that aren't a simple exponential
function. I'll look into it (after checking that xgamma actually works as-is
on my system). If I get anywhere with that I'll put it up on launchpad and
report my progress here.


On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 6:38 PM, Tom Metro <tmetro-blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> Brendan Kidwell wrote:
> > - my new Dell Vostro v130 with a decidedly blue backlight that's
> > rather depressing
>
> Is this a trend? My ASUS VW266H also has a cold color temperature.
> Something I saw noted in several reviews. Easily noticeable when placed
>  along side my laptop's display and a window spans across both displays.
>

I think it's a tradeoff among reliability, cost, and color temperature. The
blue color probably comes from an array of "white" LEDs that provide more
even, longer-lasting and lower power illumination than the old
electro-fluorescent backlights. And unfortunately their color temperature is
ugly, but they probably tested well enough with focus groups to warrant the
change considering all the upsides.


> At first I found it objectionable, and tried adjusting the monitor's
> built-in settings, which I was never able to get to match the laptop's
> display. Now I've gotten used to it, and by comparison the laptop now
> appears unnaturally yellow (warm).
>

My issue really became obvious when I used my laptop next to my family's
desktop PC over the weekend while doing some troubleshooting and cleanup
there. Their 7-year-old free-standing LCD display is quite yellow/red, but I
find it less objectionable than the blue tint of the LED-lit one I have.

Brendan Kidwell