11-19-2011, 08:30 AM

Last night while watching HULU shows I had to reboot due to network connectivity problems. Not sure that has anything to do with my problem, but when I did get rebooted my screen resolution was like I was looking at a photo negative. Not exactly black and white, cuz there were some colors but it was like looking at the a the plate that a printer would put on the printing press. Anyway, I immediately went to preferences and found that the "colors" had somehow been set to millions. That didn't make sense so I changed it to 256 and reset the resolution to 1280 X 800 which seemed to take care of the problem, but I'm still experiencing some graininess on my screen. It's hard to tell if it's a hardward problem or if I've missed some other setting that somehow got switched. Anybody got any ideas?

11-19-2011, 09:04 AM

What version of the OS are you using?

And how did you manage to set the screen color depth to 256 colors?

11-19-2011, 09:05 AM

Firstly, set your screen resolution back to what it was before. Make sure it's set to 24-bit color. LCD displays tend to look fuzzy when they are outside of their native resolutions.

Once that's done, if the "negative" color scheme is still apparent, press Command+Option+Control+8 and watch the color immediately flip back to normal.

It sounds like you mistakenly stumbled upon Apple's high contrast setting, which is supposed to help those with visual impairments.

11-19-2011, 11:26 AM

Louishen, changed to 256 on in preferences/displays. The drop down window on the right in the "displays" window had three choices, millions, thousands, and 256. Using 10.4.11. thanks,

11-19-2011, 11:28 AM

cwa, how do I "make sure it's set to 24-bit color?" Oh, and no doubt I "mistakenly stumbled upon" something.. hopefully i can get this fixed.

11-19-2011, 11:30 AM

I unfortunately, don't have access to 10.4.11 at the moment, but it should be an available setting in System Preferences => Displays. The same place where you changed your screen resolution to begin with.

11-19-2011, 11:39 AM

Mmmm.. I see a "color" button which takes me to a window where there is a "Display Profile" and opening that shows a table with a bunch of specs that mean nada to me but I still don't see anything about 24 bit. By the way, I recently tried to update my OS X version, but didn't because it said I had to purchase Snow Leopard or something. Do you know anything about that? Thanks

11-19-2011, 12:16 PM

Problem solved.. Universal Access, slid Enhance all the way left and restarted.