Any way to put your monitor into grayscale?

yukichigai

Diamond Member
Apr 23, 2003
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I know back in win 3.x you used to be able to put your color setting to monochrome. Well I'm curious if you can do that with any of the newer versions of Windows, either through built-in means or with some sort of external plugin/utility. (In case you're wondering, I have a monitor where the red blew out. I figure monochrome will look a lot better than G+B)
 

Pete

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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I think grayscale still requires all three color guns. You won't get white or gray without blue, green, and red.

Did you try gently smacking the side of the monitor, in case the reason red went out is because of a loose connection?

FYI, I had the red go out on a Sony Vaio 15" monitor. Oddly enough, I disconnected it and sort of forgot about it for a month or so. When I plugged it back in, the red was working again, and it still is. If you have another monitor to use in the meantime, you may want to try giving yours a week's rest. :)
 

Abhoth

Senior member
Nov 13, 2002
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You might try playing with the gamma settings for the video card, see if you can come up with something more pleasing....
 

vshah

Lifer
Sep 20, 2003
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if you're intent on the monochrome, if you have an nvidia card, you can reduce the color saturation for the monitor...it may or may not work, depending on whether Pete was right about still needing all 3 guns for grayscale.....
i'm not sure about ati cards

-Vivan
 

yukichigai

Diamond Member
Apr 23, 2003
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Well the monitor seems to display grayscale properly, at least in a manner such that I can tell the difference between all 256 shades of it. I realize it won't be true gray -- more of a green/blue tint -- but that'll do.

I've tried everything to fix the red gun. It comes and goes whenever it pleases; no amount of hitting seems to fix it.

The color saturation adjustment is a good idea, but unfortunately I can't guarantee that I'd be using an nVidia card. Is there any separate piece of software that does that regardless of what video card you use?
 

anim8r

Member
Jan 14, 2004
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nvidia's saturation control is strictly for video overlay - not desktop/application color corrections. You might want to see if Power Strip or RivaTuner has the ability to do something for you. PS's authors have a few other utilities as well.
 

vshah

Lifer
Sep 20, 2003
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Originally posted by: anim8r
nvidia's saturation control is strictly for video overlay - not desktop/application color corrections. You might want to see if Power Strip or RivaTuner has the ability to do something for you. PS's authors have a few other utilities as well.

nvidia's drivers allow you to choose what is affected by the color adjustments, you can set it to desktop, overlay, or ALL, so i think it'd work for everything...it certianly messes up my desktop when i play with it. but if you're not using nvidia...powerstrip is a good suggestion

-Vivan
 

anim8r

Member
Jan 14, 2004
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That's true for color adjustemnts (rGB curves), but saturation (which is what he'd been referred to) is an overlay only adjustment.

EDIT: Turns out that neither PS or RivaTuner allow anything different than what adjustments are available via the nvidia driver. You're pretty much set with what you've got unless you can find some other utility. Time to save for a new monitor.