I don't understand color.

[Gryz]

And neither do I seem to understand brightness, contrast and gamma.

Check out this little game.
Find the subtle differences between colors.
Just try, it's an innocent game that only takes a minute to play.

http://game.ioxapp.com/color/

Some of the colors are easy to see.
Some of the colors are very hard to see.
So I played with my brightness, contrast and gamma sliders. During the game.
I keep the nVidia control panel open on my desktop, so I can adjust sliders when I can't see the color difference.

First I thought that there must be an optimal setting.
But that's not true. Some colors are easy to see with high brightness, but impossible with low brightness. I need to sometimes switch from low brightness to high brightness, and vice versa.
High contrast seems to be better. But not on all colors.
E.g. I seem to have the most problems with colors that are close to pure red, pure blue and pure green.
Can anyone explain why ?

I wonder if this game would be easier on a 10-bit panel than a 6-bit panel.
I wonder if this game would be easier on an IPS monitor than on a TN or MVA monitor.

(PS. I have a Asus VE278Q 27". NVControl settings are usually: Brightness 40, Contrast 65, Gamma 0.7, Digital Vibrance 80% (I like strong colors)).

 

[nitromullet]

my results say, "After identification, you are:Goat lv35".

...not sure what that means.

 

[Cerb]

Level 20. I was getting eye burnin at the 9x9 yellow, and 9x9 dark blue I couldn't see any difference (I blame my old TN monitor for that one).

2nd try, changing my monitor off of sRGB preset, I got to 27 (9x9 tan).

 

[f1sherman]

41

I have very expensive monitor :biggrin:

 

[DominionSeraph]

Best I could do with these scratched glasses and this very free monitor.

(and weird that Chrome uses my unicode fonts some places and not others.)

E: Spoke too soon:

 

[Cookie Monster]

Only got to level 26 using a TN monitor at work.. Lets see if I can do better at home with the IPS. I thought the start was really really easy thinking "what? this is so trivial", then past level 20 *what am i looking at??*

 

[nitromullet]

39 is the best I can get on my EIZO. I mean, NEC. I sold my EIZO years ago. I guess looking at colored squares for extended periods of time makes you goofy.

 

[Railgun]

Yeah...this pos viewsonic isn't going to cut it.

 

[Seba]

My results (via Google Translate):

Identification results, you are [pervert lv28]! Not to notice little friends do?

鑑定結果，你是【色狼lv28】！要不要通知下小伙伴們呢 ?

 

[f1sherman]

working translation :ninja:

 

[Gryz]

Nobody tried to answer my question.

When you adjust brightness (or contrast), some parts become easier. But other parts become harder. Why ? My gut feel said that higher contrast would make all parts easier. But that was not true. Some are easier with low brightness, other are harder with high brightness. Why ? Why is there no setting (brightness/contrast) that makes all parts easy ? And why are the pure blue, red and green ones harder than the purple, brown and other mixed colors ?

 

[KingFatty]

I think it has to do with the following chart, and I'll walk through my understanding below:

Now, see how colors your eye can see are in the whole shape, but colors of a monitor/display will be more limited, like inside the triangles.

One display looks like one triangle, and another display looks like another triangle. So, each is limited, and might show more of some colors and not others, with lots of overlap.

I think the game will show you colors, eventually, where one color lies inside a given triangle, but the other color lies outside. The trick that I think you found is that when you adjust your monitor's brightness/contrast, you are actually moving and/or reshaping the triangle to include both colors.

You are adjusting the shape of the triangle for your particular monitor.

So in the game, the colors could be between toward the left of the triangle, where one color is inside the triangle and the other color is outside, for that part of the triangle. So, your monitor will try to display them, and they will look the same. When you adjust the contrast brightness, you move the triangle over toward that direction, to include both colors, so your monitor can show both colors meaningfully so you can tell them apart.

But, in a next part of the game, it will show 2 colors more toward the bottom of the triangle, or the right of it. So, you have to adjust again, to move your triangle toward that pair of colors, to where they are both included inside the triangle so that your monitor can meaningfully display them to where you can tell them apart.

Ultimately, colors chosen by the game that are outside the triangle (for your particular monitor/display and it's brightness/contrast settings) will not be displayed correctly, and will look identical to colors that fall inside the display, so you will not be able to tell them apart until you bring them both into the triangle.

If you had a perfect monitor, it's triangle would include all possible colors, so you'd never need to adjust it, and all colors would be meaningfully displayed without a need to move the triangle ever.

 

[Dankk]

I got to level 24 on my crappy TN monitor at work.

Edit: the bad translations are making me laugh, thanks guys.

 

[Gryz]

Thanks for the explanation, KingFatty.

In that chart, I assume that NTSC actually means: CRT display ? And the 4 types of display on that chart actually refer to the element that generates light, LED, CRT or CCFL. That chart tells us nothing about TN versus IPS versus MVA versus other TFT-technologies, right ? The problem of limited colors would then start with the light-emitter, not with the TFT-technology. Can I conclude that IPS would not be better here, if the IPS-screen used the same light-emitter as a TN screen ?

 

[lavaheadache]

level 30 on my 2005fpw. Gonna try at home on my u3011 and 34um95.


**edit**

ok, something very interesting just happened.

I must have played 20 times and couldn't exceed lvl 30. Then I remembered when I brought this baby to my office I hooked it up with a d-sub 15 cord. I just grabbed a dvi cord and immediately got to lvl 40 on the first try and consistenly getting lvl 38.

Power of digital over analog!

 

[UaVaj]

good question gryz
thank for explanation kingfatty

also to keep in mind. even if your monitor "do" shows all available color. the most important factor is - can your eyes "see" all available color?

 

[hawtdawg]

I think it has to do with the following chart, and I'll walk through my understanding below:

Now, see how colors your eye can see are in the whole shape, but colors of a monitor/display will be more limited, like inside the triangles.

One display looks like one triangle, and another display looks like another triangle. So, each is limited, and might show more of some colors and not others, with lots of overlap.

I think the game will show you colors, eventually, where one color lies inside a given triangle, but the other color lies outside. The trick that I think you found is that when you adjust your monitor's brightness/contrast, you are actually moving and/or reshaping the triangle to include both colors.

You are adjusting the shape of the triangle for your particular monitor.

So in the game, the colors could be between toward the left of the triangle, where one color is inside the triangle and the other color is outside, for that part of the triangle. So, your monitor will try to display them, and they will look the same. When you adjust the contrast brightness, you move the triangle over toward that direction, to include both colors, so your monitor can show both colors meaningfully so you can tell them apart.

But, in a next part of the game, it will show 2 colors more toward the bottom of the triangle, or the right of it. So, you have to adjust again, to move your triangle toward that pair of colors, to where they are both included inside the triangle so that your monitor can meaningfully display them to where you can tell them apart.

Ultimately, colors chosen by the game that are outside the triangle (for your particular monitor/display and it's brightness/contrast settings) will not be displayed correctly, and will look identical to colors that fall inside the display, so you will not be able to tell them apart until you bring them both into the triangle.

If you had a perfect monitor, it's triangle would include all possible colors, so you'd never need to adjust it, and all colors would be meaningfully displayed without a need to move the triangle ever.

that pic is pretty misleading. The typical 8-bit White LED IPS panel is full sRGB (around 75% of AdobeRGB). what your pic calls "RGB LED" is just AdobeRGB colorspace, and there are plenty of CCFL wide-gamut monitors out there that can do AdobeRGB. In fact, most wide-gamut LCD displays were still CCFL up until like 2 years ago. Here is a pic that shows you the difference between sRGB and AdobeRGB. Not to be an AV snob, but your pic makes it look like RGB LED backlighting is some holy-grail of color gamut or something. Like i said, Typical IPS panel is full sRGB

 

[f1sherman]

LOL I bet this was all very helpful for OP :hmm:

OP it's essential to set correctly the basics of your display - contrast, brightness and gamma

If you don't have calibrator, use this:

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/
http://atrise.com/lutcurve/

Also Windows 7/8 have calibration Wizzard
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414252,00.asp

Digital trends calibration guide:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-calibrate-your-monitor/

 

[KingFatty]

that pic is pretty misleading. The typical 8-bit White LED IPS panel is full sRGB (around 75% of AdobeRGB). what your pic calls "RGB LED" is just AdobeRGB colorspace, and there are plenty of CCFL wide-gamut monitors out there that can do AdobeRGB. In fact, most wide-gamut LCD displays were still CCFL up until like 2 years ago. Here is a pic that shows you the difference between sRGB and AdobeRGB. Not to be an AV snob, but your pic makes it look like RGB LED backlighting is some holy-grail of color gamut or something. Like i said, Typical IPS panel is full sRGB

Good point, there is some info here about how the type of backlight source can affect the LCD gamut capability:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut#Light_sources

Liquid crystal display (LCD) screens filter the light emitted by a backlight. The gamut of an LCD screen is therefore limited to the emitted spectrum of the backlight. Typical LCD screens use cold-cathode fluorescent bulbs (CCFLs) for backlights. LCD Screens with certain LED or wide-gamut CCFL backlights yield a more comprehensive gamut than CRTs. However, some LCD technologies vary the color presented by viewing angle. In Plane Switching screens have a wider span of colors than Twisted Nematic.

I think the pic I used was referring to the older CCFL backlights, that were not wide-gamut CCFL backlights used in the displays you mentioned. But there is a good point, about how even the type of LED backlight can affect gamut. An LED claimed to be "white" may have a limited gamut, and I think the point of my pic was that if you use three colored LEDs to produce the white backlight, you could potentially approach a wider gamut.

But it's just easier to talk in terms of how your display is rated, because you know it would just support that colorspace regardless.

 

[geoxile]

Tests like this usually reflect the correctness of the gamma curve and the contrast ratio. It just shows a hue and two shades, or tints? I guess technically it's a tint surrounded by the hue. A calibrated VA monitor would probably show the colors distinctly.

I only got to lvl 24 on my old TN and 34 on my HTC One S (which has one of the older AMOLED screens)

 

[Dankk]

I only got to lvl 24 on my old TN and 34 on my HTC One S (which has one of the older AMOLED screens)

Oh, I didn't even consider trying this on my cell phone.

I up to lvl 37 on my Nexus 5. Much better than my crappy old work monitor.

 

[biostud]

lv25, but I'm red/green colorblind so that would probably give me a disadvantage.