4k monitor mac images are grainy full#
4k monitor mac images are grainy software#
4k monitor mac images are grainy mac#

Given my DellвЂ™s EDID, macOS will always choose YCrCb.ДЇortunately, macOS has a built-in mechanism to override the EDID data provided by a display. I havenвЂ™t found a way to alter this decision. (IвЂ™m not sure whether itвЂ™s using 4:4:4 or the chroma subsampled 4:2:2)

4k monitor mac images are grainy mac#

Excited to have met a language partner, my new Mac insists on conversing in YCrCb, instead of the the displayвЂ™s native tongue of RGB. My Dell emits 11, meaning that it claims to support all three color modes. There are a couple of bits in the middle of byte 24 that specify the accepted color formats:ДЎ1 = RGB 4:4:4 + YCrCb 4:4:4 + YCrCb 4:2:2

4k monitor mac images are grainy full#

The Wikipedia page helpfully provides the full spec. When a display is first connected, it identifies itself and describes its capabilities by providing a blob of bits called the Extended Display Identification Data ( EDID).

4k monitor mac images are grainy software#

ItвЂ™s also not possible to choose the color space in software on Mac OS. The menu option only seems to affect how the monitor interprets the signal itвЂ™s already receiving, rather than how the signal is negotiated in the first place. Unfortunately, I canвЂ™t just change the setting in the monitor. The only place IвЂ™ve encountered this one before is in component video, which is (confusingly) a trio of red, green, and blue RCA-style connectors that was used for high-end home theater before HDMI was a thing. YCbCr/ YPbPr is another color space, which represents colors with a black channel (вЂњluminanceвЂќ) and two different color channels (вЂњchrominanceвЂќ).

If youвЂ™ve refilled ink on a printer, you may have encountered another decomposition: cyan/magenta/yellow/black (вЂњCMYKвЂќ). If youвЂ™ve worked with colors on computers before, youвЂ™re probably familiar with representing colors as red, green, and blue components (вЂњRGBвЂќ). I wasnвЂ™t sure whether this mattered until I started googling and found several other instancesвЂ“going back several yearsвЂ“of users reporting poor image quality associated with this color format across various Macs and external displays. Eventually, I noticed something in the monitorвЂ™s settings: My new Mac was connecting with an Input Color Format of YPbPr, while my old Mac used RGB. To make sure I wasnвЂ™t crazy, I plugged in my old computer, and sure enough, it looked great! Comparing further, I couldnвЂ™t find any meaningful differences reported in software. Disabling it via LCD Font Smoothing helped somewhat, but the overall image was still noticeably worse than I had experienced before. My first hunch was that something was going wrong with this. IвЂ™m aware of modern operating systemsвЂ™ use of subpixel rendering, individually manipulating the red, green, and blue components of a pixel to improve text rasterization. The effect varied with typeface and application, but it was universally distracting and difficult to read. Some narrow strokes appeared as blue or red blurs. There were strange color fringes on the edges of characters. ItвЂ™s difficult to photograph, but it looked something like this:

When I plugged it into my new Mac, the text looked terrible. ItвЂ™s a pretty nice display with a bright IPS panel, good colors, and wide viewing angles. IвЂ™ve been using a 27вЂі Dell at work for a couple years, connected to my Mac via DisplayPort.

In this post, IвЂ™ll describe what I learned and how I managed to fix it.Дў021 Update: a small change is necessary to apply this postвЂ™s workaround to MacOS Big Sur. A low point of my first week came when I plugged into my external display, and the image looked really bad. IвЂ™m enjoying the additional cores and memory (рџЂ) and coming to terms with the touchbar (рџ¤Ё). I don't know why these don't show up by default - I have a third-party graphics card (Geforce GT 640 from MacVidCards instead of the original, non-4K supporting Radeon 5770) and a third party monitor (Acer B286HK).I recently upgraded to a 2018 MacBook Pro. The trick is to hold down Option (Or 'Alt' on non-Mac keyboards) and click scaled - this will unlock additional resolutions, including a 2560x1440 without the (low resolution) suffix that looks as it should be - crisp. However, when I looked at the options (System Preferences > Displays > Scaled), I noticed that all the non-native options were marked as (low resolution) and when selected, text looked blurry. However, since 4K on 28' is a bit too small for my taste, I prefer to make use of OS X's scaling options and run a 2560x1440 resolution.ДЄs OS X is vector based internally, it is capable of pretending to run in that resolution but still output a native 4K image to my monitor - in other words, the output should be razor sharp and crisp. I have a 4K Monitor connected to my Mac Pro. Blurry Fonts in OS X when scaling external 4K Monitor