HD2 color banding - HD2 Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting an

"Not another 16bit banding thread" you think? No! (Well maybe, but I haven't found anything ...)
So anyway, this is a very strange thing I noticed, I've got this wallpaper I made, with a lot of gradients. I think: "well, the gradients won't be so smooth on my HD2", so I email it to my phone and try to open it. This is the original image:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
To my surprise, when I open the image the gradients are all smooth! Wow this is great!
So I set it as my wallpaper and what I see, color banding ... When I go to the images hub I see the banding too.
So HD2 IS capable to display smooth gradients but WP7 restricts it?! (Believe me, the gradients are very smooth if I open the attachment). I'm using WP7 without any updates, so no nodo with it's 16bit banding bug.
How is this possible? I'm gonna try the registry fix right away. Maybe anybody else has noticed it?
EDIT1:
So I've applied those 3 registry tweaks found in the wp7 forum:
HKLM\Drivers\Display\Primary\PrimBPP dword 32
HKLM\Drivers\Display\Primary\bpp dword 32
HKLM\Drivers\Display\Primary\PanelBPP dword 32
And the picture in the attachment had color banding too. Once I deleted them, everything was smooth. So what's the deal here?
Greetz

when you say you deleted them and everything was fine do you mean that on the background pic and opened as attachment was ok, an via the hub?
or do you mean that the attachment got fixed again but the banding was visible on teh background.....

I download the picture to watch on my android, and the result seems more like your second render: very, very bad gradients.

So when I added those values, the gradients were bad in all places: attachment, screensaver and hub.
When I deleted them again, the gradients were bad only in the hub and on the screensaver, the attachment was ok, like in the first photo.
Very strange that android does this banding too, maybe the screen has enough colors, but the phone itself limits them? (I really don't know how these things work, I just speculate...)

As I know there where many speculations about 16 - 24bits colors.
But it seems that since we boot in nand gradients are in 16bits.
So if WP7 can show 24bits, why android can't ?
Edit: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=807307

I suspect that its just cleaver programing.
a device may be limited to a 16bit colour pallate but they have probably been able to change the pallate depending on the picture.
for example, your pic is somewhat limited in terms of multi colours.
what would be intresting is if you can get a full RGB colour spread to display correctly.
infact a yellow gradient is usually the hardest for any computer device to handle, so a red-yellow gradient would be intresting too.

So I've tried with a full color gradient, but the results are not that bad... There's still more banding on the lockscreen than in the attachment.
What I've noticed is when I save the image the banding goes away because of the bad .jpg compression, the banding 'blurs' away.
What that means it that wp7 first converts to the low-bit image, compresses it and saves it as a high-bit JPG. On the lockscreen, the image is always low-bit... This is really weird.
Here are the images:
Original:
Attachment:
The banding on the right, is because of a bad photo
And the lockscreen:
The banding is "better" than the first image, but is still noticeable
EDIT1: I've tried to sending the saved image back to me. The image I've received is the original one, with no jpg artifacts or banding. So maybe there are multiple versions of the image available, the original, the one you see in the hub (with a bad compression quality and color banding) and the one you see on the lockscreen (no jpg artifacts, but with color banding).

it could be using some sort of dithering, ive read the various threads on the matter an im sure the device is capable of displaying an 18bit colour depth, which would be about 250k, if that was the case it would explain a lot,
forinstance, if you tried to display a 24 bit image the software would need to use some sort of dithering to control the colour depth, but lets assume for a second that the software doesnt dither it, and just runs it as is, would that not introduce significant banding as it wouldnt be finding nearest colours and blending them
Also, using the gray scale as an example again, if the software can change the colour pallete then that would explain why the colour image showed some banding compared to the gray scale.
Pictures are funny things, especially after compresion, if you take a jpg and run a series of blank lines through it (pixle size) you can dramatically decrease its size after compression.
just a thought

Hello,
There is any solution after Mango updare? the registry change from above doesn't work for me after I updated to Mango

Related

Gradient Backgrounds on QVGA

So, I have been working to replace my splash screens and also come up with a different wallpaper for Slide2Unlock that matches the Touch interface (see below), but am slightly stumped on how to create a gradient background that doesn't appear pixelated once applied to my QVGA screen on the mogul.
Is there anyway to output in photoshop that conforms to the way a QVGA screen wants colors to appear? What's the secret? They look fine off the device and then look crappy on it. I've tried combination after combination of output and nothing works.
hi, i've been tinkering for some time on the gradient effect in my qvga screen and what i've come to notice was that though the gradient appears smooth on the pc, it appears to have wave gradient levels as the colors goes lighter. what i do is after applying the gradient in photoshop, put a little bit of noise filter (just level/amount "1" would do). it wouldn't look that great on the pc but looks better on the ppc than the previous one. i hope this helps.
myownregister said:
hi, i've been tinkering for some time on the gradient effect in my qvga screen and what i've come to notice was that though the gradient appears smooth on the pc, it appears to have wave gradient levels as the colors goes lighter. what i do is after applying the gradient in photoshop, put a little bit of noise filter (just level/amount "1" would do). it wouldn't look that great on the pc but looks better on the ppc than the previous one. i hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you add noise. Interesting thought. I will indeed give it a shot and see how it works. Any other ideas out there? There must be and official way as I have seen some really good looking gradients out there.
Sweet. It still took a little bit of playing to make it look right but the finished product is pretty darn nice
Here is my Levelbest HTC TSK File that goes nicely with the HTC Touch 6 Button Home Plug.
The portrait image in the TSK is...
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
The landscape image in the TSK is...
And here is the Wallpaper for Slide2Unlock to match!
Thanks for helping me thru this. A little noise goes a long way! Now on to modifying the home plug!
im glad to be of help!
the htc logo is covered by the notification area icons (in my prophet).
could you move it upper?
fasgiu said:
the htc logo is covered by the notification area icons (in my prophet).
could you move it upper?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, I did fix that late yesterday in the wallpapers included in the TSK (at least on my mogul). Download it again and see if it works now. If not please let me know and how much you need to logo raised and I'll make it so!
I also created a blue version to match the blue used in the media player etc. I'll upload that later today.
Ok, here are the images included in the TSK blue version:
Slide 2 Unlock Wallpaper:
The Levelbest HTC Blue TSK is here.
levelbest said:
Actually, I did fix that late yesterday in the wallpapers included in the TSK (at least on my mogul). Download it again and see if it works now. If not please let me know and how much you need to logo raised and I'll make it so!
I also created a blue version to match the blue used in the media player etc. I'll upload that later today.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
still covered by icons.. you have to move 5mm

In Pursuit of the Perfect Wallpaper

I have been doing a lot of testing looking for the perfect aspect ratio, resolution, format, and size for wallpaper in portrait mode on WM6. The main problem was that every image I would set as my wallpaper would significantly lose resolution and quality. Not to mention the bottom would always get cut off. So after a long time of trial and error I believe I have found a solution.
In order to make the perfect wallpaper from whatever image you crave you will need PhotoShop as this procedure requires some cutting and pasting (don't worry, no paste or glue involved ).
Open a new PhotoShop document and change the resolution to 240x320. Leave the rest of the setting as default. That's the easy part. This is your background.
Now open any image that you want. The size doesn't matter. This is what's great about this method. You can choose any old picture you want and we will resize it and shape it to fit our tiny screens.
Make sure that the Rectangular Marquee Tool is selected then make sure that the Style is set to draw a Fixed Ratio rectangle of which the size is 240x275. The reason I choose a height of 275 pixels is because the bottom bar of WM6 will hide anything under the 275 pixel mark.
Now select an area you want on your photo and drag it until you selection is complete or until the rectangle can't grow anymore. Notice that the correct aspect ratio is maintained. This is important for the next step.
Copy your selection (CTRL+C) and paste it onto your original blank document you first opened. It should create a new layer in the bottom right.
You will likely have to resize your image to fix the tiny 240 pixel width. You can do so by going to Edit - Transform - Scale. Then clicking the Maintain Aspect Ratio button on the tool bar (it looks like a little chain). Now resize at will. When you done resizing hit enter to save the resize.
Finally click File - Save As and select PNG. The reason I choose PNG is two fold: Firstly, PNG retain color and quality better than JPGs but they are bigger. Second, I found that WM6 doesn't distort the quality of the image as much in PNG as it does to JPGs.
Your done! Copy the file over to your device and enjoy!
I have also attached some examples of mine.
Nice choice of images in your examples
Your example images gets cut off by the top bar (clock,signal,start...)
and there is a white area at the bottom...
other than that... nice tutorial
well done!
NisseDILLIGAF said:
Nice choice of images in your examples
Your example images gets cut off by the top bar (clock,signal,start...)
and there is a white area at the bottom...
other than that... nice tutorial
well done!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, that is the whole point. It doesn't get cut off at the top (at least not on my device) and the bottom white area is actually under the bottom bar so you don't see it. If your image was there it would get cut off so this tut shows how to generate your image without losing anything. The "true" image space on the today screen is 240x275 pixels. But you background needs to be 240x320 to fit without distortion.
Thanks for the compliment on image choice. I agree.
for Diamond
I use this to make wallpapers for diamond.
Unpack and open the Attached file with photoshop and move a picture behind the layers.
In that way you can set your wallpaper exactly where you want...
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
And remember to move the picture to the front again before saving it.
Brunkage said:
I use this to make wallpapers for diamond.
Unpack and open the Attached file with photoshop and move a picture behind the layers.
In that way you can set your wallpaper exactly where you want...
And remember to move the picture to the front again before saving it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's really usefull, thanks! =]

16bit or 24bit?

I see some conflicting information when searching google about this.
So which one is it? i see some serious colour banding in video's (obvious when compared to monitor), yet in some colour tests that i view on the phone there is little or no banding.
Its crazy when i convert a video, run it at the same time on pc and phone and the shadows on the galaxy s have serious green banding issues!
i take a guess you want to figure out what is the proper video colour depth to use for video encoding?
you get a choice? i thought it encodes to the same bit depth as the original
it depends which software you are using, also which codec you are using.
using Xvid4PSP and have tried many others, none have colour depth options and all have horrible colour banding in shadows and dark scenes.
Even the original file before encoding (albeit the sound does not work) has this banding problem which is not visible on a pc screen
its an MKV file, tried converting it do xvid, mp4, avi, h.264, all of them having this issue
Tbh I've never ever experienced the problem of yours.
try this
Try this out, it may just be that my pc screen has really bad colour representation (it looks much better without the green...).
Save this image and view it on your phone, compare it to your pc screen
I see a crazy amount of green pixels at the bottom when viewing on the phone
Image taken from FMA:Brotherhood using drocap
http://j.imagehost.org/0252/CAP201008180007.jpg
the picture looks perfect fine to me
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
i've the full serie
my guess is that from your screen, some of that blue dark area looks greenish?
Look on his cloak around the text that says 'Alchemy'
On my phone there is allot of green, on my pc screen it is all dark grey like its supposed to be
*Edit*
You must have the brightness up on the phone or you wont see it
i see what you mean now
it's 2 part
the colour as seen on my PC LCD it's a dark olive green/grey
on SAMOLED screen with all its sub pixels might have had trouble calculating the correct shade of green that should light up
that's just my theory, however i can say on my phone when dark is dark, it doesn't light up.
it could be enconding related info not processed well.
have you tried another player software?
or try watching some MTV with dark themes, and see if it does the same
if it's only on that Anime that it's doing that, i'll chalk it to be an encoding/decoding issue.
because if it's a screen issue, it should happen to all the videos/pictures displayed on screen.
If the picture is fine on the pc but not on the phone then its a screen issue....
It disappearing with low brightness makes me think its likely a contrast issue as the whole scene looks allot darker on my pc screen and hides the blemishes
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
android53 said:
If the picture is fine on the pc but not on the phone then its a screen issue....
It disappearing with low brightness makes me think its likely a contrast issue as the whole scene looks allot darker on my pc screen and hides the blemishes
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Pretty sure it's a screen problem as the pentile submatrix isn't really suited for movies(or anything else for that matter). Some movies are just plain unwatchable due to the sheer amount of color banding. Hope froyo addresses this.
android53 said:
Look on his cloak around the text that says 'Alchemy'
On my phone there is allot of green, on my pc screen it is all dark grey like its supposed to be
*Edit*
You must have the brightness up on the phone or you wont see it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The thing is, it's not just dark grey. By zooming in on the picture on my pc I can make out purple, green, redish and yellowish/brownish colors among the greys. By comparing the zoomed in picture on my pc with the zoomed in picture on my phone, I would say the "greening" happens around these "impurities".
I'm not especially technical, but I don't think it's the screen(pentile matrix) messing up the color representation.
Regards

[Q] Is Arc display really has 16M Colours?

I'm starting to wonder whether Arc is really having it's display set to show 16M colour!! The reason for this is the, I notice gradient/unpolished in few places; example in the "Tweetcast" application.
It;s the application not the screen
Of course it does:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
What you see is related to that app
I can't be sure, i was counting them but the phone rang and distracted me at 14,283,102. So now i'm having to start again.
1.... 2.... 3.... 4....
Thanks everyone for the reply and everyone pointing to the application!
Is there any application that can be used to test this? (Just to make sure that I don't have a faulty screen)
What you have to bear in mind is that an image is only as good as its weakest link. Artifacts and errors can be introduced by the camera, the compression scheme (if you see banding in any jpeg image, it could easily be caused by compression algorithms), the screen driver software (IIRC, android v1.5 only supported 64k colours, regardless of screen quality) and, finally, the screen itself.
A good test for computer LCD monitors is here: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/. Even though it's designed for PC monitors some of the tests are valid for mobile phone screens (but note that in lot of the tests a mobile phone web browser will perform page scaling and will shrink/expand the images, messing up the results).
However, the Gradient (banding) test should give valid results at any zoom level. If your display is 16M colours, you should get a totally smooth gradient (it does on mine, it's actually better than my computer monitor). Make sure the screen is clean, mine was covered in smeary fingerprints which didnt help at all
daveybaby said:
What you have to bear in mind is that an image is only as good as its weakest link. Artifacts and errors can be introduced by the camera, the compression scheme (if you see banding in any jpeg image, it could easily be caused by compression algorithms), the screen driver software (IIRC, android v1.5 only supported 64k colours, regardless of screen quality) and, finally, the screen itself.
A good test for computer LCD monitors is here: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/. Even though it's designed for PC monitors some of the tests are valid for mobile phone screens (but note that in lot of the tests a mobile phone web browser will perform page scaling and will shrink/expand the images, messing up the results).
However, the Gradient (banding) test should give valid results at any zoom level. If your display is 16M colours, you should get a totally smooth gradient (it does on mine, it's actually better than my computer monitor). Make sure the screen is clean, mine was covered in smeary fingerprints which didnt help at all
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Arc beat my Streak easily which beat my Dell laptop easily..lol
Well, since everyone says it could be related to application and not the screen or driver itself, I'm convinced. Let me start using and see whether how many applications are like this and might update this topic lately.
Thanks everyone for your replies.

Wallpapers withouth cropping in 4.2

Short version:
How to get cropping like this:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
(height box as high as the whole box), instead of what we get now.
Hi,
In 4.2, as I understand, I cant set a wallpaper without having it being cropped first - the tool selects different part of the image for landscape and portrait. I understand this, and now that it requires quite a big picture - (2560 for vertical part (in portrait mode) and even more for landscape, because the selected region will be used on, lets say ~3500 pixels (2560+scrolling). so the minimum picture to have and use to get 1to1 pixel is ~3500x2560). And thats fine, there are plenty of pictures like this.
However, when I select a picture to download, o select it as a whole, and not only the middle. So I'd like to put it the whole, as I see it.
It was allowed in older androids.
There is no problem of getting an image of 5020x2560 and higher, so I could use this, but the problem is that 4.2 doesnt allow it at the moment.
If I wanted to do this now, I would have to take the picture, add a big border around it, so the picture itself would be in the middle, and then after cropping, I would get the picture I wanted in the first place.
Hopefully you understood me, and can give advice on how to do this in 4.2.
Thank you
P.S. Just to clarify even more - If, lets say I have image 4000x3000, and I want to display all of it, not just middle, then just let me put it as a wallpaper, and when the tablet is in protrait, there will be more than 2560 pixels to take anyway, so no need of cropping.
Why is it doing cropping anyway?
No scrolling, but this may help:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ridgelineapps.simpleimagewallpaper&hl=en
I search for 1600x2560 wallpapers, and then set the image to the app linked above. The upside of no scrolling is that moving between homescreens is really smooth (it was already smooth, but no stutters at all).
As far as your question goes, I remember using some ROMs that allowed me to re-size the inner boxes (the one that has vertical and horizontal rectangles on top of one another) inside the picture cropping box, is that feature present in 4.2? If so, enlarge the size of the box, and then you'll be able to see the whole picture, not just the middle, when scrolling around.
phemark said:
Short version:
If I wanted to do this now, I would have to take the picture, add a big border around it, so the picture itself would be in the middle, and then after cropping, I would get the picture I wanted in the first place.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's how I do it...I add the border around the image I want to be visible.
Wallpaper Wizardi
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...S50d2lzdGVkYXBwcy53YWxscGFwZXJ3aXphcmRyaWkiXQ..
/Thread
xda6969 said:
That's how I do it...I add the border around the image I want to be visible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is the easiest way of doing this?
EniGmA1987 said:
Wallpaper Wizardi
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...S50d2lzdGVkYXBwcy53YWxscGFwZXJ3aXphcmRyaWkiXQ..
/Thread
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just tried this app, but I got much better results by downloading a 2400x1600 wallpaper and stretching the crop box to fill it (it fits exactly).
I'm in the middle of writing a wallpaper app for the N10, depending on what access is available to the wallpaper setting APIs I'll have it automatically set pixel perfect if possible.
alias_neo said:
I just tried this app, but I got much better results by downloading a 2400x1600 wallpaper and stretching the crop box to fill it (it fits exactly).
I'm in the middle of writing a wallpaper app for the N10, depending on what access is available to the wallpaper setting APIs I'll have it automatically set pixel perfect if possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
deleted
Komodo Rogue said:
No scrolling, but this may help:
(Simple image wallpaper)
I search for 1600x2560 wallpapers, and then set the image to the app linked above. The upside of no scrolling is that moving between homescreens is really smooth (it was already smooth, but no stutters at all).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh god, thank you for this app rec. I despise the scrolling wallpaper stuff spread out over multiple screens. It seems to do exactly what I want. Have you noticed that it affects battery life differently since it is implemented as live wallpaper?
Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk HD

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