Contrast color issues with external monitors

Ask Fedora
1

I have moved over to a Dell Latitude 5431 with Fedora 41. A few hiccups along the way, but everything is looking good for my every day work activities, except for one small problem with the external monitors.

In the browsers and ThunderBird in particular, I can see the monitor are not displaying the outlining properly, if I’m explaining this correctly.

I tried to take a screenshot of these monitors and my laptop monitor to show the difference, but there is no difference. ha! it looks good in the screenshots.

So I tried plain old taking a picture. I apologize as these pics are horrible, but should illetrate my problem.

Here is a pic of the laptop screen that is perfect.

IMG_20241203_160053351
IMG_20241203_1600533511920×1445 150 KB

This is a pic of one of the laptops that does not look good.

IMG_20241203_155825709
IMG_20241203_1558257091920×1445 133 KB

So maybe its not really outlining like I said, it is more like the monitors are not picking up some of the colors. In Thunderbird, it is the same thing, not picking up the background making impossible to see the white boxes from the darker background differential.

Sorry again for the pics. But has anyone come across this kind of problem with external monitors?

I also followed these instructions hoping to solve the problem

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/set-nvidia-as-primary-gpu-on-optimus-based-laptops/

These are samsung monitors - Here are my specs

             .',;::::;,'.                 
         .';:cccccccccccc:;,.             ---------------
      .;cccccccccccccccccccccc;.          OS: Fedora Linux 41 (Workstation Edition) x86_64
    .:cccccccccccccccccccccccccc:.        Host: Latitude 5431
  .;ccccccccccccc;.:dddl:.;ccccccc;.      Kernel: Linux 6.11.10-300.fc41.x86_64
 .:ccccccccccccc;OWMKOOXMWd;ccccccc:.     Uptime: 3 hours, 7 mins
.:ccccccccccccc;KMMc;cc;xMMc;ccccccc:.    Packages: 2578 (rpm), 16 (flatpak), 6 (snap)
,cccccccccccccc;MMM.;cc;;WW:;cccccccc,    Shell: bash 5.2.32
:cccccccccccccc;MMM.;cccccccccccccccc:    Display (U28E590): 2560x1440 @ 60 Hz in 28" [External] *
:ccccccc;oxOOOo;MMM000k.;cccccccccccc:    Display (LF24T35): 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz in 24" [External]
cccccc;0MMKxdd:;MMMkddc.;cccccccccccc;    Display (LF24T35): 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz in 24" [External]
ccccc;XMO';cccc;MMM.;cccccccccccccccc'    DE: Cinnamon 6.2.9
ccccc;MMo;ccccc;MMW.;ccccccccccccccc;     WM: Muffin (X11)
ccccc;0MNc.ccc.xMMd;ccccccccccccccc;      WM Theme: Mint-Y-Dark-Aqua (Adwaita)
cccccc;dNMWXXXWM0:;cccccccccccccc:,       Theme: Mint-Y-Aqua [GTK2/3/4]
cccccccc;.:odl:.;cccccccccccccc:,.        Icons: Mint-Y-Aqua [GTK2/3/4]
ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc:'.          Font: Noto Sans (9pt) [GTK2/3/4]
:ccccccccccccccccccccccc:;,..             Cursor: Paper (24px)
 ':cccccccccccccccc::;,.                  Terminal: mate-terminal 1.28.1
                                          Terminal Font: Noto Sans Mono (10pt)
                                          CPU: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1250P (16) @ 4.40 GHz
                                          GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce MX550
                                          GPU 2: Intel Iris Xe Graphics @ 1.40 GHz [Integrated]
                                          Memory: 7.98 GiB / 14.86 GiB (54%)
                                          Swap: 0 B / 9.99 GiB (0%)
                                          Disk (/): 85.20 GiB / 232.02 GiB (37%) - ext4
                                          Local IP (wlp0s20f3): 192.168.10.168/24
                                          Battery (DELL R05P02C): 100% [AC Connected]
                                          Locale: en_CA.UTF-8
2

I see that washed-out colour on monitors that do not have colour calibration. Colour calibration is often only on more expensive monitors.

You should try adjusting the external monitors settings to see if you can improve the colour calibration.

Maybe someone else can suggest an app to help with colour calibration.
I have not looked for such software recently.

3

@barryascott
Thanks for your comment. I am in an office today and had an opportunity to connect a VewSonic monitor via hdmi and its beautiful and looks perfectly like my laptop monitor. So maybe those samsungs I have are cheap or some sort of driver issue.

One of those samsung is plugged in via hdmi as well, the other via usb dock. So I do not think it has anything to do with connectors.

I will see about calibrating the monitors if they have settings, too bad I have to work that way because I feel they will not calibrate perfectly, but I’ll give it a try

4

There are no drivers for monitors. But the quality of monitors varies a lot.
It would be worth seeing if there is a “factory reset” in the monitors OSD that you can use.

There are color profiles for monitors that you can try loading.

Look for “Colour Management” in your desktops settings app.

I did look for colour calibration software and only managed to find
software that worked with external colour sensors, that are all expensive.

5

@barryascott
wow, for some reason I cannot explain, all my monitors had contrast set to 75. I dropped them all to 50 and everything is perfect! I would not have done this, so I do not know why. this was on a macbook previously

Whatever, everything looks fixed up and looking nice. beauty!

Thanks again for the lead. All the best!

1 Like