Screen resolution problems

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?

What version of the OS are you using?

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

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.

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,

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.

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.

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

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