Brightness controls - a non-standard Pick of the Week

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[This is the Pick of the Week for the week of October 8th.]

This is a non-standard pick of the week, in that it's nothing more than a pointer to an article that Dan Frakes wrote over on Macworld, and it covers programs I don't use myself. However, given how often people ask me about this (more often than I would have though possible!), I felt it worth a pointer. Dan wrote up a couple of applications -- Shades (free) and DarkAdapted Pro ($10) that give you more control over your monitor's brightness settings (he also notes Brightness Control, which he covered in a previous Mac Gem).

The three apps all have different features to offer, and Dan does a nice job of summarizing their various features. DarkAdapted Pro seems to be the powerhouse of the bunch, though the other two offer good functionality at the right price -- Shades even lets you assign keyboard shortcuts to increase or decrease brightness.

I haven't personally used these programs (I've found the stock slider acceptable for my needs), but if you need more brightness control, check out these apps and give Dan's Gem entry a read if you want more info on what they have to offer.

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Brightness controls - a non-standard Pick of the Week
Authored by: efs on Tue, Oct 16 2007 at 10:16AM PDT

I read that discussion on brightness control progrmas over at Macworld (thanks), and it reminded me of my eMac problem, so it seems (somewhat) appropriate to ask here.... I don't think any of these programs will fix it, but my eMac always returns to full brightness after waking from sleep. Annoyingly consistent about it. A single touch of the brightness control instantly returns it to the previous setting, even if it was all the way dimmed. Is this an eMac problem, or just my problem? Thanks.

Brightness controls - a non-standard Pick of the Week
Authored by: DanFrakes on Tue, Oct 16 2007 at 3:52PM PDT

I've seen this happen, as well. My favorite feature of DarkAdapted is the auto-refresh setting, which automatically refreshes the brightness to your preferred level at intervals you specify -- effectively counteracting any app (or sleep) that resets brightness to full.

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Dan Frakes / Senior Editor, Macworld / Senior Reviews Editor, Playlist

Brightness controls - a non-standard Pick of the Week
Authored by: ManxStef on Tue, Oct 16 2007 at 11:03AM PDT

Also well worth a mention is Nocturne, a free utility from the creators of Quicksilver:
http://docs.blacktree.com/nocturne/nocturne

Brightness controls - a non-standard Pick of the Week
Authored by: DanFrakes on Tue, Oct 16 2007 at 3:54PM PDT

We also covered Nocturne, but not in the context of brightness controls, as Nocturne instead inverts the screen.

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Dan Frakes / Senior Editor, Macworld / Senior Reviews Editor, Playlist

[ Reply to This | # ]

Brightness controls - a non-standard Pick of the Week
Authored by: ManxStef on Thu, Oct 18 2007 at 6:17PM PDT

It does indeed have the option of inverting the screen, but you certainly don't have to. It can function as a simple, more accurate, brightness control; as a screen tinter (so you can, say, replace white with green); an inverter; or any combination of these, and more besides.

From the screenshot in the review it looks like you only used the original version, though it does say v1.04 in the URL? I'd recommend taking another look at it if this is the case.

Brightness controls - a non-standard Pick of the Week
Authored by: soumya.ray on Tue, Oct 16 2007 at 4:39PM PDT

How do these programs work? I notice that the default OS X brightness slider controls brightness independently of these programs, and (in Shades' case) the mouse cursor and program menu icon retain their brightness. So these programs must not be changing brightness at the hardware level, unlike the default OS X slider (I *think*). If this is the case, is there any power savings? Is there any performance overhead? questions questions!

No way of having a little more precision?
Authored by: berland on Wed, Oct 17 2007 at 6:57AM PDT

This got my hopes up for a few seconds. But no, not what I was hoping for.

How do others work with monitor calibration tools like the Spyder?

I have the SpyderPRO for my Macbook Pro and when I'm asked to adjust the brightness, I hardly can and it's a real pain. Other than on the Cinema displays the built-in brightess controls of the Macbook Pro are exremely rough (1 point as seen in the bezel at a time opposed to 1/4 on the Cinema displays).

You can be more precise using the slider in the System Preferences. If you have a steady hand you can move your mouse pixel by pixel and make your adjustments.

Why the hell isn't there a simple text box to put in some numbers or something? I mean, the slider is just changing values, right? Just let me do that myself, *please*!?

No way of having a little more precision?
Authored by: 44sunsets on Fri, Oct 19 2007 at 7:52PM PDT

ColorEyes Display Pro by Integrated Color Corp lets you make fine colour adjustments to monitors such as the Apple Cinema Display, including adjusting the brightness down to very low levels.

For example, I made colour profiles that I can switch between to get 60 cd/m2, 80 cd/m2, 120 cd/m2 and so on.

I have very sensitive eyes, so I stick to 60 cd/m2 most of the time, except when I'm doing colour-critical work which is when I select the corresponding profile for the lowest brightness setting of my Cinema Display (which is actually still really bright).

I use ColorEyes Display Pro with my Spyder2, and it is leaps and bounds better than the bundled Spyder2 calibration software.

Brightness controls - a non-standard Pick of the Week
Authored by: mazatty on Wed, Oct 17 2007 at 12:59PM PDT

my past research of the above mentioned utilities revealed that they don't actually change the brightness of the backlight like the F1 and F2 keys on specific keyboards or the brightness slider in the Displays Preference Pane. they all seem to change the color settings or draw a semi-transparent black window over the screen.

the only solution i've found so far is the source for a command line program, display-brightness.c. found at the bottom of the following page, http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter10/light/. only laptop displays are mentioned on the page, don't know if it'll work for desktop LCD displays, no idea about CRTs.

you can check if your utility is changing the backlight by looking at the apple on the back of your display.

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