Display issues

[andyjayh]

Not sure if this is the correct section so mods feel free to move if not.

Since upgrading my PC and monitor I now have a strange display issue.

The PC is running Vista Home Premium with a NVidia 8400GS card. The screen is a Dell 2407WFP which is connected via DVI.

The problem, with any Windows menu based screen the display is sharp as a tack e.g. control panel, MS Office, IE etc However most other app screens are a bit soft and slightly blurred and this is effecting some of my PS/LR work :bang:

Now I have connected my old Viewsonic screen back with another DVI cable and the result is the same. I have updated the NVidia drivers and no improvement.

I can only think that it is either the graphics card of something to do with Vista.

Bit stuck here, any suggestions?

Cheers,
Andy

 

[Chappers]

What screen res are you using?

 

[Canon Bob]

Someone can correct me here but I believe you may have two different monitor profiles stored. Windows is picking the generic one for MS applications and PS and others are using a custom one which may not be optimised for the 2407...my 2407 looked disappointing before I calibrated it.

Bob

 

[andyjayh]

Screen res is 1920x1200 @ 60Hz

Interesting thought Bob, how do I check that?

I have been thinking about calibration since I printed a picture the other day and it was way off the screen version. Sypder3 was my thought so far??

 

[PsiFox]

Are you using cleartype?

 

[andyjayh]

Think I have found the problem. Seems to be the font DPI settings. When set to 120 all windows apps are ok with this but others are not and go slightly fuzzy. Change this back to 96dpi and everything is sharp but small :bang:

Be nice to have other apps ignore this and windws apps to use it :shrug:

 

[Canon Bob]

Screen res is 1920x1200 @ 60Hz

Interesting thought Bob, how do I check that?

I have been thinking about calibration since I printed a picture the other day and it was way off the screen version. Sypder3 was my thought so far??

Not sure about Vista but for XP.....
Control Panel
Display
Settings
Advanced
Colour Management....see what you have

From Explorer
Windows
System32
Spool
Drivers
Color....should give you a whole list of profiles

Spyder 3 does the job fine

Someone more IT literate may be able to offer better assistance though.

Bob

 

[Chappers]

Drop your screen res down to 1200 x800, does that make an improvement?

Now try 1680 x 1050. Probably not so good.

If so you need to change the way the fonts are displayed.

On the desktop right click: Select properties, Then click the Appearance tab. Click Effects: The second box asks how to display screen fonts. It's normaly Standard. Change this to Clear type and see how it goes.

You might also want to check the screen brightness. Some of these monitors will chuck out some 400cd/M. That's very bright. Normally, for a monitor you need around 120- 140 cd/M.

I do wonder that even on a 24" monitor ( and I've got one) 1920 x 1200 is not to high a resolution.

 

[andyjayh]

Thanks for all your help guys but with some messing around it is deffo the dpi scaling that was causing me the issue.

Went back to 96dpi and everything was tack sharp but small. Upped it to 120 but without xp type scaling on and non ms apps were fuzzy again. 120 but with xp type scaling on and all was good, both ms and non ms apps Incidentally this is the settings that it said it had in the first place :bang:

On the resolution setting, the screen warns if NOT set to 1920x1200 and the manual says this is the preferred option.

Once again, thanks for your speedy replies

Andy

 

[gman]

Just another thing to look out for as you mentioned about Windows based apps is that whilst in Windows your computer will be using 2D, however, in some applications OpenGL and 3D may kick in (normally games). Your graphics card may have settings to adjust for either Quality or Performance when operating in OpenGL mode - basically applications that use the 3D rendering power of your graphics card.

After Effects is an example of software that can be effected by this even though it operates within the Windows environment. Not sure about Photoshop, don't think so though.