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HDR Shortcut for PC

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Skyebaron

Skyebaron

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
4,416
Since a lot games apparently cant toggle HDR on automatically on Windows Settings, here's a quality of life change for those games that need more than the usual Nvidia Control Panel. These games include Gamepass PC games and the recent Ubisoft titles.

Ill provide a file that you put on your desktop that serves as a toggle for HDR on Windows Settings. First, if you have an Nvidia card, to go to your Nvidia control panel and change the output color format and output color depth. 4:2:2, 10bit or 12 bit. Youre set with Nvidia, no need to change the settings until the next driver install.

uq9UQag.png


Now, for those titles that require Windows settings HDR On too, you had to go to Settings>Display>Toggle HDR

But fuck that, I'm lazy and Windows should have an easier way to toggle HDR. Just "turn it on and forget it" you say? NO! The desktop and everyday browsing is atrocious in HDR. So here's a file I have on my desktop that toggles HDR on or off with a doubleclick.

HDR On and Off switch file download.

Credit to this site https://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/toggle-hdr-with-a-script-on-windows-10/ for reducing my first world problem to double click a file on my desktop. The link teaches you how to make the file yourself. Its copy/paste easy.

Update:

Have an OLED and want to reduce risk of burn in of static images, or just dont like files on your desktop? brain_stew got you covered: bradgearon's HDR toggle on Github zip download
 
Last edited:
Flandy

Flandy

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,445
It's so annoying that Windows doesn't have a toggle in the action center like they do for all sorts of other things.
btw I assume I can have it on 444 or RGB since I'm on 3080/HDMI 2.1?
 
CrichtonKicks

CrichtonKicks

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,211
Also, if you use Playnite (or similar) you can set up a powershell command to turn on Windows HDR when starting a particular game and then Turn off HDR when existing a game.
 
The Laughing Man

The Laughing Man

Banned
Oct 21, 2019
165
I have it set to 444 with DP; am I doing something wrong? Also, is HDR browsing that bad? I've toggled the sRGB option on my X27 and cannot see a big difference either.
 
ss_lemonade

ss_lemonade

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,659
Is there a way to have a shortcut that enables HDR and launches a specific game? Thinking if there was a way to launch games forced into Windows HDR mode for nvidia gamestream
 
For OLED TVs you can have this on tray. Thanks to brain_stew for the link. Thanks to bradgearon for the file on Github
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    • brain_stew

    Member
    Oct 30, 2017
    4,731
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    Skyebaron

    Skyebaron

    Banned
    Oct 28, 2017
    4,416
    brain_stew said:
    I use HDR Switch which adds the option to your taskbar, as desktop shortcuts are a recipe for burn in on an OLED:

    github.com

    GitHub - bradgearon/hdr-switch: turns hdr on while running for windows 10

    turns hdr on while running for windows 10. Contribute to bradgearon/hdr-switch development by creating an account on GitHub.
    github.com github.com
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Thank you for this. Works excellent. Heres a direct link to the download page on that github: Direct link to zip file OLED
     

    brain_stew

    Member
    Oct 30, 2017
    4,731
    Skyebaron said:
    Thank you for this. Works excellent. Heres a direct link to the download page on that github: Direct link to zip file OLED
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    It was someone here that recommended it to me and it was the catalyst for me to give HDR on PC a proper go again. I'm really glad I did as well as there's something fantastic examples on Gam pass like Gears 5, Crackdown 3, Tetris Effect: Connected and Forza Horizon 4 that are demo material. Running at 4k/60 in HDR on my LG B8 and RTX 3070, they all look incredible
     
    Calvin

    Calvin

    Member
    Oct 26, 2017
    1,583
    Skyebaron said:
    Since a lot games apparently cant toggle HDR on automatically on Windows Settings, here's a quality of life change for those games that need more than the usual Nvidia Control Panel. These games include Gamepass PC games and the recent Ubisoft titles.

    Credit to this site https://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/toggle-hdr-with-a-script-on-windows-10/ for reducing my first world problem to double click a file on my desktop. The link teaches you how to make the file yourself. Its copy/paste easy.

    Update:

    Have an OLED or dont like files on your desktop? brain_stew got you covered: bradgearon's HDR toggle on Github zip download
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Hey thanks so mnuch for doing this - out of curiosity, why is it a different file if using an OLED?
     
    Flandy

    Flandy

    Community Resettler
    Member
    Oct 25, 2017
    3,445
    Kaldaien do you have any thoughts on HDR Switch? It seems really useful since toggling HDR normally is a pain but it doesn't seem to have a 10 bit 444 option for some reason. Only 10 bit RGB or 8 bit 444. 10bit 444 would be best, right?
    68747470733a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f677a5a695673722e676966
     
    Kyle Cross

    Kyle Cross

    Member
    Oct 25, 2017
    8,431
    Skyebaron said:
    Its the reason i turn it off for desktop browsing. The image corrects itself once you turn HDR on the game that requires it.

    edit: Not grey but the colors and contrasts are messed up.
    Click to expand...
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    Do you have the SDR Brightness slider in Windows on 10%-13%? That's the average nits for SDR and it fixed SDR looking bad in HDR for me.
     
    Kaldaien

    Kaldaien

    Developer of Special K
    Verified
    Aug 8, 2020
    298
    Flandy said:
    Kaldaien do you have any thoughts on HDR Switch? It seems really useful since toggling HDR normally is a pain but it doesn't seem to have a 10 bit 444 option for some reason. Only 10 bit RGB or 8 bit 444. 10bit 444 would be best, right?
    68747470733a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f677a5a695673722e676966
    Click to expand...
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    That's built-in to Special K :)
    CJR3MG1.png

    Thanks to a quirk in the NV driver, what I intended to apply to only the running game, applies to the entire DWM :-\

    10-bit formats are hard to get with the NvAPI driver API that handles this. I can give you 6-bpc color of for some silly reason that's a thing you wanted :)

    On an HDMI 2.1 link, this display exposes the missing 10-bit YCbCr 4:4:4 and 10-bit RGB encodings. Setting the display to 24 Hz would as well, but who does that? :P

    -----
    There's a lot of other potentially useful stuff there too (fixes for Steam overlay, screenshots, re-tonemapping the game's HDR), can't recommend using SK in Cyberpunk enough.
     
    Last edited:
    Flandy

    Flandy

    Community Resettler
    Member
    Oct 25, 2017
    3,445
    Kaldaien said:
    That's built-in to Special K :)
    CJR3MG1.png

    Thanks to a quirk in the NV driver, what I intended to apply to only the running game, applies to the entire DWM :-\

    10-bit formats are hard to get with the NvAPI driver API that handles this. I can give you 6-bpc color of for some silly reason that's a thing you wanted :)

    On an HDMI 2.1 link, this display exposes the missing 10-bit YCbCr 4:4:4 and 10-bit RGB encodings. Setting the display to 24 Hz would as well, but who does that? :P

    -----
    There's a lot of other potentially useful stuff there too (fixes for Steam overlay, screenshots, re-tonemapping the game's HDR), can't recommend using SK in Cyberpunk enough.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Huh that's cool. I assume HDR still needs to be enabled on Windows and SpecialK doesn't automatically do it? Btw any suggestions on which Color Encoding setting I should use with my LG CX/3080 combo?

    Also does SpecialK generally work on most games similar to RTSS? Wondering if I should replace RTSS with this
     
    Issen

    Issen

    Member
    Nov 12, 2017
    6,820
    Keeping nVidia settings to default and keeping Windows HDR on and set to 50% brightness works just fine on my display (Samsung Q6FN). I don't notice anything looking particularly wrong when viewing SDR content or playing SDR games, and HDR just works and also looks fine. Just as good as on my PS4 Pro.
     
    Kaldaien

    Kaldaien

    Developer of Special K
    Verified
    Aug 8, 2020
    298
    Flandy said:
    Huh that's cool. I assume HDR still needs to be enabled on Windows and SpecialK doesn't automatically do it? Btw any suggestions on which Color Encoding setting I should use with my LG CX/3080 combo?

    Also does SpecialK generally work on most games similar to RTSS? Wondering if I should replace RTSS with this
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    It works in D3D9/11/12/GL games. Doesn't work in D3D10 or Vulkan at the moment, so it's not a complete replacement for RTSS.

    The D3D12 stuff is a work in progress, very heavy work at that ;)

    I'd point you to my own forums for now:

    D3D12 Missing Features - Development - Special K Discussion (differentk.fyi)
     

    Firefly

    Member
    Jul 10, 2018
    8,634
    As a side note, doesn't the list of resolution options under the "PC" segment give better results on a TV in NV Control Panel wrt image quality and input lag?
     
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