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Retention/ghosting iMac 5K
- Thread starter Guggiman
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I too have this issue on an 18 month old 5k iMac. Ghosting occurs when a window is open for as little as 5 minutes. Brightness is around 40-50%. Energy saver has always been set to turn the display off after 10 minutes.
In fact, I had this particular iMac powered off for 6 months, unused. Issue persists immediately after turning it back on.
I can accept some level of ghosting but this is silly.
In fact, I had this particular iMac powered off for 6 months, unused. Issue persists immediately after turning it back on.
I can accept some level of ghosting but this is silly.
1) Using a screen at full brightness is within the normal operating parameters of the machine. It's not "using it wrong". 2) We're talking about normal things like the menu bar being burned into the screen during the course of actively using the computer. The screensaver is not relevant to this discussion.
I have a 2017 5K, not seeing any retention even if I switch from a bright wallpaper to a dark one.
(I tend to keep the brightness at about 75%, because anything higher is just too bright for my eyes)
(I tend to keep the brightness at about 75%, because anything higher is just too bright for my eyes)
Do the retention test here:
https://marco.org/rmbp-irtest.html
Do it for 5 minutes and don't look at the screen during the test or it will be hard to review the results.
My 2017 is currently passing the test but I do notice a little image retention underneath the top menu bar - but that stays on the screen all day so it might be fine (I've since set it, as well as the dock, to auto hide, and set my wallpaper to change every 30 seconds). I recommend doing the same.
Thanks for the link.
Popped it on and took a shower, came back 15 minutes later. No retention.
This has been fixed by a reddit user. The fix is documented here, I can confirm it worked perfectly on my 2014 27" 5K iMac with the original LG panel and severe ghosting effect, now gone:
“Hello,
Firstly, I know this is an old issue that most probably does not affect the majority of current Macbook users. However, I thought I would post here just in case this helps someone, as a current MBPR 2012 owner this issue has been driving me crazy but I've finally figured out a way to stop it from happening. And it's really simple:
Go to System Preferences -> Displays -> (Built-in Retina Display) Colour tab -> Calibrate...
In Calibration, drag the white point slider to the far right (most blue light). This causes the screen to become extremely blue, so to cancel this out:
Select Night shift, adjust warmth to preferred level (far right for best results), and set up the night shift schedule to always be on.
Essentially what this does is makes the display dimmer by applying two filters that counter act each other. As a result, the pixels themselves emit less 'light' or colour, and are not driven to the point at which colour retention occurs.
I hope this helps my fellow LG screen MBPR 2012 users out there. This machine is still a beast in many ways and deserves to be treated as such. Shame that Apple won't fix what is essentially their production fault on a laptop that RRPd for £2000.
Thank you for reading!”
“Hello,
Firstly, I know this is an old issue that most probably does not affect the majority of current Macbook users. However, I thought I would post here just in case this helps someone, as a current MBPR 2012 owner this issue has been driving me crazy but I've finally figured out a way to stop it from happening. And it's really simple:
Go to System Preferences -> Displays -> (Built-in Retina Display) Colour tab -> Calibrate...
In Calibration, drag the white point slider to the far right (most blue light). This causes the screen to become extremely blue, so to cancel this out:
Select Night shift, adjust warmth to preferred level (far right for best results), and set up the night shift schedule to always be on.
Essentially what this does is makes the display dimmer by applying two filters that counter act each other. As a result, the pixels themselves emit less 'light' or colour, and are not driven to the point at which colour retention occurs.
I hope this helps my fellow LG screen MBPR 2012 users out there. This machine is still a beast in many ways and deserves to be treated as such. Shame that Apple won't fix what is essentially their production fault on a laptop that RRPd for £2000.
Thank you for reading!”
I had by 2017 5k iMac (bought new at release) for all most 3 years and never had an issue with retention or ghosting. Great machine.
I know this is an old discussion but I have a late 2015 (bought new in 2017 before the 2017 models came out) that only started having the ghosting issues a couple of months ago (June 2020-ish), so it seems after the 2014s its the luck of the draw when/if you end up having these issues.