Brightness & contrast gradations question

[xmitr]

I bought an Acer AL1916 and the damn thing came out of the factory set so bright you need Ray-Bans. So if I adjust brightness or contrast to some value below 100%, does that mean I have lost the gradations that would be available at 100%? For instance if brightness has 256 values and I set brightness to 10% are there only 25 steps available in which to display an image?

 

[CP5670]

You should be fine as long as you're setting the brightness on the monitor itself and not in the video card driver or anything else on the software side. The brightness setting on the monitor will typically dim the backlight but not change the colors directly.