Macbook and low-quality screen?

[5683565]

Hi all,

I got my brand new Macbook a couple of days ago and it's been great, however...

Should the screen look so, um... cross between 16 and 32 bit?

That's exactly how it sounds. It's better than 16 bit, but no way near the quality of my iMac's screen, which has no strange colour problems at all.

Basically it looks like someone changed everything on the screen to mid-quality Jpegs or something.

Is this standard Intel GMA or is there something wrong...

(btw this happens both on Windows XP and Mac OS X)

Cheers!

 

[iW00t]

All laptop screens are 6 bits with dittering. That is why.

 

[operator]

I really dislike this issue. Many people will say all laptops have this problem, but I could not detect this problem on my G4 iBook matte screen, yet it is blatantly obvious on my MacBook screen.

 

[andiwm2003]

I really dislike this issue. Many people will say all laptops have this problem, but I could not detect this problem on my G4 iBook matte screen, yet it is blatantly obvious on my MacBook screen.

this is interesting. when i compared the macbook, the led mbp and the 20"imac at the apple store the screens looked all pretty much the same. the mbp led screen looked a bit crisper, the imac a bit more colorful the mb quite ok. i saw no differences that would make me dislike the MB. am i not looking hard enough or are there huge variations from MB to MB and yo have to be lucky to get a good one?

 

[iW00t]

I really dislike this issue. Many people will say all laptops have this problem, but I could not detect this problem on my G4 iBook matte screen, yet it is blatantly obvious on my MacBook screen.

Try calibrating your screen. It makes a difference.

 

[mkrishnan]

I really dislike this issue. Many people will say all laptops have this problem, but I could not detect this problem on my G4 iBook matte screen, yet it is blatantly obvious on my MacBook screen.

Yeah, something sounds off here...

1) Make sure (I know it sounds dumb) in System Prefs -> Display that you are set at display native resolution and millions of colors.

2) Calibrate the screen.

3) Can you take and post a picture (with a digital camera) for us?

 

[operator]

I cannot take a pic, but I can easily and accurately describe the problem.

Many gradients (especially noticeable on gradients that go up/down) are not very smooth. You can see lines instead of a gradual gradiated colour change.

This problem was never present on my iBook, and I'm sure of this because I've designed many websites on both machines. When I look at gradients on websites, I see a poor gradient that looks like it wasn't compressed properly. These gradient images were made on my iBook and saved properly, and appeared perfect using that machine.

However, I'm beginning to think it is due to the crappy gfx card, as I can also the gradients also seem worse on my LCD monitor (plugged into my Macbook). These same gradients seem perfect when viewed on the same monitor plugged into my iBook or my PC.

I'm going to try calibrating as some here have suggested, but I think now this is due to the vid card.

 

[iW00t]

You probably got a faulty graphics card.

The Intel GMA is like one of the most common GPUs around and if what you said is true people would be up in arms.

 

[5683565]

Hi Guys,

Yeah the best way to notice a huge difference between my imac and my macbook is when I open photoshop and bring up a colour gradient or the colour picker. There is no smoothness, it looks really bad.

It's like my brand new macbook can't handle gradients, which have been around since... well the beginning of time. It's making it difficult to design websites due to the crappiness of the gradients.

Is this just what I have to live with?

- J