This is driving me nuts....

s162216

s162216

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Samuel
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I just got a new laptop (Toshiba Satellite Pro C660-2JR) after the fan in my old one decided to die and thinking of its age I decided to just get another better one. After the initial excitement of getting a new 'toy' had worn off I've noticed something quite annoying, it seems unable to show any shade of grey without it being tinted!

As the brightness, contrast, gamma etc are initially, set this tint is a magenta colour and also makes some blue colours (like TP's blue theme) look more purple than blue. I've tried using test patterns so I can alter the brightness, contrast, gamma etc to 'optimum' but despite everything that I do theres still this bloody magenta tint unless I up the green contrast which ends up turning it into either a very slight magenta or very slight green tint (nothing inbetween!) which also affects other colours. All the drivers are up to date and other than this tint everything else seems fine. It does this in all lighting conditions and screen angles.

I did think of getting a Pantone Huey or Spyder or something similar to get a a correctly 'calibrated'/normal looking screen but I only do limited photo editing as I mainly shoot film so I don't really want to have to spend quite a bit more money when the laptop should come with minimal/no tint etc.

Has anyone got any suggestions as to what I could do before I get onto where I got the laptop for a replacement or onto Toshiba for an answer?
 
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Are you able to go and look at / test another laptop - same model etc, just to make sure it's not an issue with yours ?

If it is okay, then as Matt says, suggests it needs a calibration...
 
I brought it online from Ebuyer and after having a quick look around it doesn't seem like any of the 'physical' shops like PC World etc stock it so I can't go and check it unfortunately.

I don't really want to have to spend a lot of money on buying something to calibrate it, does anyone know of anywhere where I can rent something for a couple of days to do this or a fairly cheapish service as I imagine this isn't covered under warranty etc?
I know you need to re-calibrate occasionally to keep the monitor in calibration but I just want a fairly accurate result as anything is better than this because viewing B&W images at the moment is more like viewing purple tones, black and white!
 
Have you tried the Win7 calibration tool? It's in Control Panel->Color Management->Advanced->Calibrate Display
 
I've tried that and several other test patterns, I can get the brightness and contrast fine and have adjusted the gamma but as I said theres still a purple tint unless I up the green constrast where I get either a slight green or purple tint with nothing in-between.
 
I might have solved it, I went back and started calibrating it with the test patterns from scratch and then after looking at the gamma test pattern again I noticed that the green one was distinctly different to the red and blue ones, after adjusting the green gamma slightly it now seems to be much better than before and after decreasing the blue channel brightness slightly to compensate for the increased green in the blacks, it seems a pretty neutral grey and black although I wouldn't mind getting it properly calibrated at some point.

TBH I think its disappointing on the behalf on Toshiba that I had to go through all of that just to get a neutral grey image, I know its just a 'consumer' laptop with a basic display thats turned up too bright by default but you would at least expect a it to be fairly neutral and without a colour cast at the very least.
 
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s162216 said:
TBH I think its disappointing on the behalf on Toshiba that I had to go through all of that just to get a neutral grey image, I know its just a 'consumer' laptop with a basic display thats turned up too bright by default but you would at least expect a it to be fairly neutral and without a colour cast at the very least.
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to be honest its exactly that reason, its a consumer laptop and the average consumer doesnt care about exact colour representation.

even so with a professional display it should be hardware calibrated on a regular basis to keep it correct.
 
neil_g said:
to be honest its exactly that reason, its a consumer laptop and the average consumer doesnt care about exact colour representation.

even so with a professional display it should be hardware calibrated on a regular basis to keep it correct.
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I would call having a fairly obvious purple colour cast on anything grey or dark blue a more extreme than 'exact colour representation'! I expect most people would complain at that. This is the only screen I've every had where I've had to do more than basic brightness/contrast etc adjustments to get an acceptable looking image, most people would not expect to have to adjust every colour channel to just be able to get that.
 
Update: whilst I have 'corrected' the purple cast issue to an extent, one consequence of raising the green gamma/brightness is unfortunately that deeper greys and blacks now exhibit a green colour cast which I did not notice at first. I've emailed Toshiba about it and they've asked me to send it in for a screen repair/replacement under warranty :(
 
What type of panel is it. Many laptops have poor to average colour reproduction.

It keeps them cheap as Neil said.
 
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