Image colors washed out

[Jair]

I've noticed lately that the colors in many of the images are washed out while in Big Box now even though they used to display just fine and I haven't done anything with those images or LB/BB aside from updating it in a very long time. In Launchbox, the image colors are bright like they should be, but Big Box washes them out for some reason. Any idea why or how to fix the issue?

[C-Beats]

Can you provide a screenshot? I've not heard of anyone reporting any issue. If you're referring to background images though there is a "Background Fade" setting that can be tweaked if using either of the Default themes. They both use it to control how bright the background is to help make text in the foreground more readable.

[Jair]

Here you go. The first screen shows the color as it should be. On the wheel pages, it's fine. But on the detail page, as you can see, the colors of certain graphics like the cover and logo (I'm using a banner here for it) get washed out. And this happens no matter what theme I'm using, I tested it yesterday with a bunch of other themes.

[Mr. RetroLust]

3 minutes ago, Jair said:

Here you go. The first screen shows the color as it should be. On the wheel pages, it's fine. But on the detail page, as you can see, the colors of certain graphics like the cover and logo (I'm using a banner here for it) get washed out. And this happens no matter what theme I'm using, I tested it yesterday with a bunch of other themes.

Just to be sure, have you checked that doom cover doesnt have a duplicate/second image file which has less black level? Reason asking is the blue background doesn't seem to be less saturated in both screen shots.

[skizzosjt]

@Mr. RetroLust I agree I'm only seeing a noticeable difference with the game case image. Even the black bar above the game case looks equally deep in both pics, but the actual artwork of the case looks washed out/faded.

 

@Jair I was going to ask if you recently changed displays since going into fullscreen mode on some displays will activate a game mode and that might cause some havoc with tone mapping (I think this is the right term?). I was thinking that would explain why LB looks ok (it runs as a window, wouldn't activate game mode) while BB looks funny (runs in fullscreen and could activate game mode) But....this would mean colors everywhere would look washed out, and I agree with Mr Retrolust, it's not the entire display, it looks more like just the box art image. So I don't think this is really the cause

and +1 for reminding me of Desent lmao I always forget about this game.....I have too many memories of our typing class instructor letting us kids play this if we got done with our lessons early. It was always a big treat for us!

[Jair]

31 minutes ago, skizzosjt said:

@Mr. RetroLust I agree I'm only seeing a noticeable difference with the game case image. Even the black bar above the game case looks equally deep in both pics, but the actual artwork of the case looks washed out/faded.

 

@Jair I was going to ask if you recently changed displays since going into fullscreen mode on some displays will activate a game mode and that might cause some havoc with tone mapping (I think this is the right term?). I was thinking that would explain why LB looks ok (it runs as a window, wouldn't activate game mode) while BB looks funny (runs in fullscreen and could activate game mode) But....this would mean colors everywhere would look washed out, and I agree with Mr Retrolust, it's not the entire display, it looks more like just the box art image. So I don't think this is really the cause

and +1 for reminding me of Desent lmao I always forget about this game.....I have too many memories of our typing class instructor letting us kids play this if we got done with our lessons early. It was always a big treat for us!

No, I've had the same display (my 50" HDTV) for years now. Could it be something to do with hardware acceleration? When I turn it off in some other programs, colors tend to look better. And yw about Descent, I always enjoyed those games, too. Never did pick up the third, but I did finish the first two. Too bad they never made a movie out of it, I think it could've done well if it had been made right. The setting was really good and atmospheric, drew you in. With today's CG and effects, a Descent movie could show off some impressive dogfights, I think.

[C-Beats]

@Jair I'd recommend clearing your image cache via Big Box Options menu just to confirm you aren't actually looking at two different images (well technically you are anyway, but I mean that the cache isn't from an outdated image). Depending on how that theme is set up the wheel and the details image could be loading different source files entirely.

[skizzosjt]

1 hour ago, Jair said:

Could it be something to do with hardware acceleration?

I'm def not knowledgeable enough on this subject to discuss with confidence. But I do have some small experiences with using a system with it turned off or hardware that would have it disabled due to incompatibility reasons. It didn't impact colors per say, more like terrible performance as far as being able to update and redraw the screen properly as you move the mouse and existing windows etc around. Graphical artifacts also like black boxes instead of seeing the refresh button image in your internet browser. Imagine one of those surveillance camera videos where someone doing a normal walk looks like they're teleporting 8FT distances each time the frame changes....now imagine using a computer that operates like that lol. That was my experiences using a system with hardware acceleration disabled on the dGPU. Not fun, basically unusable.

[Jair]

Figured it out! It was the images themselves. As a test, I replaced the DOOM cover with a more recent one I've been using elsewhere, and the colors turned out fine both in wheel view and on the details page. Something about how some of the images were saved is causing the issue. So I just need to resave them properly.

[C-Beats]

Ah that makes sense. The image color profile may not be what WPF expects it to be and so when it reads the value they aren't coming out as intended by the original image. Using a tool like GIMP you can convert the color profile pretty easily.