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You might be crushing your blacks on your PC

Joule

Joule

Member
Nov 19, 2017
4,232
I guess this would depend entirely on your monitor. I have a LG GL850 for reference. Tested using sRGB mode (it's factory calibrated with great results) on my monitor and tftcentral's recommended settings.

Full or 0-255 was always considered the "PC range" and I struggle to understand why. Maybe the contrast on this monitor is just terrible (could be that my monitor is shit, idk). In nvidia control panel you can switch from limited to full on the fly. I was switching between the 2 to test which one is more accurate and the "full" option consistently crushed blacks for me.

crushed black test at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.
duckduckgo.com duckduckgo.com

1. Keep Nvidia control panel open and switch between limited and full modes while using the link above and check the various images

Click the link above for various black level tests and check your monitor. You should be able to distinctly make out all squares or shapes used in the images. If a whole row is missing you're crushing detail. The image may looked washed out for a moment as you're switching but the image displayed is more accurate. But you might like the increased perceived contrast even if you risk losing detail.

I've circled the setting to change in Nvidia Control Panel. I'm not sure how to do it with AMD cards.

Screenshot-2020-12-05-165414.jpg
 
Dreamboum

Dreamboum

Member
Oct 28, 2017
22,848
I don't get it? If having full dynamic range with your monitor crushes your black then your monitor doesn't support full. Which is weird because they're supposed to
 
Kyrios

Kyrios

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,622
Nah I'm good my PC glows blue.

I've also seen that Limited dynamic range can be better in certain cases with some monitors. Kinda weird.

Edit: Guess they were just shitty monitors.
 
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Deimos

Deimos

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,766
If your monitor has trouble displaying full rgb range, something's wrong with it.
 
BoredLemon

BoredLemon

Member
Nov 11, 2017
1,002
When you change dynamic range in Nvidia Control Panel, you need to match monitor settings accordingly.
When you have PC Full - Monitor Limited, you get crushed blacks.
When you have PC Limited - Monitor Full, you get washed out blacks.
So that option has to be the same on both devices to work properly.
Full is preferable.
 
OP
OP
Joule

Joule

Member
Nov 19, 2017
4,232
StopMakingSense said:
This is incorrect. Some number of shade increments above 0 should be imperceptible from black.
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Really? I thought only reference black should be completely black while other squares/shapes should be at least somewhat perceptible. For example this image
nTx8JZhA_o.png


Shouldn't only "16" be truly black with the rectangles getting progressively greyer (less black) as you go up in number?
 
StopMakingSense

StopMakingSense

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,714
Joule said:
Really? I thought only reference black should be completely black while other squares/shapes should be at least somewhat perceptible. For example this image
nTx8JZhA_o.png


Shouldn't only "16" be truly black with the rectangles getting progressively greyer (less black) as you go up in number?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Im going by the duck duck go image search you hamhandedly pasted in, where the images there start at *1*

Also, unless you dived deep into your monitor's settings to change it, there is no way it shipped set to limited
 
shockdude

shockdude

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,310
Joule said:
Really? I thought only reference black should be completely black while other squares/shapes should be at least somewhat perceptible. For example this image
nTx8JZhA_o.png


Shouldn't only "16" be truly black with the rectangles getting progressively greyer (less black) as you go up in number?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is an misleading test image. All the blacks from 0-16 are actually "0" in a 0-255 full range monitor.
The best test images to use are the ones from Lagom.nl. A good full range monitor will show all colors from 0-256. A cheap monitor may have colors 0-3 be imperceptible from each other but that's still ok.
blacktest.png
whitetest.png
 
OP
OP
Joule

Joule

Member
Nov 19, 2017
4,232
shockdude said:
This is an misleading test image. All the blacks from 0-16 are actually "0" in a 0-255 full range monitor.
The best test images to use are the ones from Lagom.nl. A good full range monitor will show all colors from 0-256. A cheap monitor may have colors 0-3 be imperceptible from each other but that's still ok.
blacktest.png
whitetest.png
Click to expand...
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Oh shit. I see that makes sense now. Thanks!!
 

Firefly

Member
Jul 10, 2018
8,621
I don't even see the "Full" option in the menu on my LG TV. 4K, 4:4:4 and 12bpc. Is this normal?
 
Pizzamigo

Pizzamigo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,439
The LG Nano IPS monitors suffer from really poor contrast. IPS monitors in general are poor in contrast to begin with, around 1000:1 but the Nano IPS suffer even more and are in the 750-850:1 range, so yeah contrast is bad on those. Contrast is by far the biggest weakness of these monitors, but they excel in many other areas, including motion.

I have the same monitor, out of the box it doesn't resolve those darkest shades very well. You can use the black stabilizer setting to bring out the detail if you want but you'll be killing the overall picture quality even more.

Changing to Limited dynamic range with DP cable in Windows, you're also just butchering the contrast even more and it will be a washed out image.

Some monitors are just better at resolving those first 2 or 3 squares in the lagom site outta the box.
 

Deleted member 9330

User requested account closure
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Oct 26, 2017
6,990
Firefly said:
I don't even see the "Full" option in the menu on my LG TV. 4K, 4:4:4 and 12bpc. Is this normal?
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If you have it set to YCbCr 4:4:4, that will only over output limited. If you want full you'll have to change to RGB. There's no downside to this, RGB is still functionality equivalent to 4:4:4. Whatever you pick just make sure your LG setting matches. Low/Limited High/Full.
 

Deleted member 1476

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,449
shockdude said:
This is an misleading test image. All the blacks from 0-16 are actually "0" in a 0-255 full range monitor.
The best test images to use are the ones from Lagom.nl. A good full range monitor will show all colors from 0-256. A cheap monitor may have colors 0-3 be imperceptible from each other but that's still ok.
blacktest.png
whitetest.png
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Damn, I can see all of them on my PC clearly but on my phone they are almost the same. Now I'm sad.
 

Deleted member 16908

Oct 27, 2017
9,377
Limited looks washed out and terrible on my monitor.
 
Jaded Alyx

Jaded Alyx

Member
Oct 25, 2017
35,351
shockdude said:
This is an misleading test image. All the blacks from 0-16 are actually "0" in a 0-255 full range monitor.
The best test images to use are the ones from Lagom.nl. A good full range monitor will show all colors from 0-256. A cheap monitor may have colors 0-3 be imperceptible from each other but that's still ok.
blacktest.png
whitetest.png
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
On the lower image with default colour settings in nvidia control panel, I can see nearly all of the patterns. Limited under "use Nvidia colour settings" is exactly the same. If I change it to Full there, I can only see 200. I don't see any option in my monitor OSD to choose between limited or full either. Is my monitor limited only/shit?
 
NovumVeritas

NovumVeritas

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,131
Berlin
Where do you put it on OSD on the
LG 27 GN 950? What is the menu point for black level ? Only possible with HDMI it seems.
 
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super-famicom

super-famicom

Avenger
Oct 26, 2017
25,152
My monitor (Lenovo Legion Y27q-20) is fine on Full Range. It's even calibrated with an X-Rite i1Display Studio.
 
Mad Max

Mad Max

Member
Oct 27, 2017
151
This is a long standing issue with Nvidia's drivers when using HDMI instead of displayport, since the driver assumes that anything plugged in through HDMI is a TV.
 
Jonnax

Jonnax

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,920
Joule said:
Full or 0-255 was always considered the "PC range" and I struggle to understand why.
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It's in the name. Full means that there's 256 different values for each the Red, Green and Blue.

With YCbCr the range is 16 to 235.
That's less data because anything below 16 is full black and anything about 235 is full white
In practice it doesn't make too much of a difference.

If your monitor doesn't have a full/limited setting, then what your GPU is doing is remapping 0 to 255 to 16 to 235.
But your monitor is expecting 0 to 255 values.
So the blacks will be grey and the whites will be duller.

This is 8 bit colour
 
Dezzy

Dezzy

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,432
USA
I have an LG 27GL850 and everything looks as it should with the default settings. RGB and Full over DisplayPort. The contrast and gamma tests on lagom look as they should.
 
Jonnax

Jonnax

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,920
DSN2K said:
whats better ? YCbCr422 10bit Colour or RGB 8bit Colour ?
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Depends really.
TV and Film are encoded in 4:2:0 so higher quality display connectivity isn't noticeable there.
10Bit colour is part of getting good HDR.

However for normal desktop use RGB is desirable because it's the uncompressed data rendered on your GPU.
Especially noticeable when you have red text


Here's an explanation:
www.rtings.com

Chroma Subsampling: 4:4:4 vs 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0

What is Chroma Subsampling and where is this visible? Chroma subsampling is a type of compression that reduces the color information in a signal in favor of luminance data.
www.rtings.com www.rtings.com

There's a test pattern that you can look at in the section:
How to test for Chroma Subsampling
 
DSN2K

DSN2K

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,255
United Kingdom
I plug my PC into 4K TV for games, so HDR is important. Ive left it on RGB 8bit and HDR works still but im unsure if it looks worse.
 
shockdude

shockdude

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,310
Jaded Alyx said:
On the lower image with default colour settings in nvidia control panel, I can see nearly all of the patterns. Limited under "use Nvidia colour settings" is exactly the same. If I change it to Full there, I can only see 200. I don't see any option in my monitor OSD to choose between limited or full either. Is my monitor limited only/shit?
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Connected over HDMI? If you're sure there's no full range setting, maybe the HDMI input is limited only? I sure hope it supports full range on a different input like displayport or DVI.
 
Dreams-Visions

Dreams-Visions

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
41,368
Miami, FL
No. Monitor should be on full.

Instead, check your brightness, contrast and color calibration if you're having issues with blacks (or whites) being crushed. Assuming you don't have a low-quality TFT monitor or something with a limited color range to start with.
 
shockdude

shockdude

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,310
Jaded Alyx said:
I don't suppose a DVI-HDMI cable makes sense in this scenario?
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From my experience, PC HDMI to Monitor DVI usually works sensibly, i.e. both assume Full Range at all times. I can't guarantee sensibility of course, but it should be good.
Not sure what will happen with PC DVI to Monitor HDMI, if your monitor always assumes Limited Range over HDMI...
 
Firebrand

Firebrand

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,709
My Samsung monitor is a bit confusing in that it doesn't have "Full" / "Limited" as settings, but "Normal" / "Low"... which actually means automatic detection or adjusted (?). After changing color range on the device I have to cycle through the inputs and back for it to auto-detect the range again.

Also the Nvidia driver likes to think my monitor is actually a TV and set the range to Limited after a driver update. I used to get around this by deleting some EDID information using CRU and it'd be detected as a monitor again, but lately I have a feeling it still doesn't get the color range right from just that.
 
Jedi2016

Jedi2016

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,621
Pretty sure I've calibrated it correctly. And I think I'd notice if blacks in my games were actually crushed.
 
Alexx

Alexx

Member
Oct 27, 2017
237
I calibrate with this:
rgb-test.jpg


https://www.cheats.co/blog/ps4-display-optimization-enable-rgb-full-range/ said:
If you can see at least 26 of the 28 squares (do not worry too much if you can't see the first two squares), you can leave Full Range enabled. If you can't, we suggest you first try to increase the brightness of your TV. If you still can't see at least 26 of the squares, your TV does not support Full Range.
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