Windows 10: Contrast.

What is the deal with windows and contrast? For many years windows has been lowering the contrast to the point that now with windows ten it is often impossible to see. The box I'm typing this in is basically invisible. The scroll bars are gone and I have to find them by waving my mouse around until I cross it. The selected link in my side bar is reduced to a then slightly grey line that simply cannot be located. This is just silly.

Is there any setting that can get some contrast back? And I don't mean the text contrast. I can read text fine. It is the controls, gadgets and highlighting that needs to be fixed.

:)

 

I am red green colorblind and windows 10 is about 20% invisible. Any suggestions

Have you tried Themes and tried High Contrast Black or High Contrast White or one of the other High Contrast Themes?

 

Restore default Windows 10 display "background" and "color"

You are currently in a High Contrast theme. Go to Settings :: Ease of Access :: High Contrast and turn off the High Contrast theme.

 

Come on over to the dark side, by way of High Contrast Themes. Of course, some 3rd party software don't do Microsoft High Contrast. Life's ups and downs.

 

If this is a problem because of eye sight, and you don't mean aesthetics, I created a white high contrast theme for someone in the forums(it's butt ugly but I chose strong contrasting colors. It's created to be practical and not pretty.

One note though, Internet Explore and Edge follows any current High Contrast theme, so there could be problems on sites with white fonts, so I recommend a 3rd party browser such as Chrome which does not follow the Windows system theme.

And if 3rd party software follows system theme and you have problems seeing something(and it doesn't have the ability to detect high contrast theme's such as LibreOffice does) you may have to temporarily switch back to a windows theme.

Windows 10 Themes created by Ten Forums members

 

I don't have a problem reading text even at a distance with a small font. It is the contrast of the control and gadget elements that is the problem. This box I'm typing in is a perfect example. The scroll gadget is so dim that it cannot be found unless you know exactly where it is. Even the boarders of a window make it very difficult to tell where one window ends and another starts when they overlap. What is the point of a dim grey underline of the selected link in my favorites if I can't actually see it unless I know where it is?

The high contrast themes I have tried seem to concentrate on making the text visible and do so by injecting a massive amount of ugly. The problems I'm having are either ignored or made worse. And very very ugly.

I simply cannot follow the logic of turning down the contrast like this.

 

I'm going to ask the obvious here. Have you been into your monitors menu and tried adjusting it there?

 

Are these what you are talking about. Can you show us a pic?

 

Yes I have played with monitor settings. I can get barely acceptable contrast levels but at the cost of making some of my games look like crap. A better monitor would probably help greatly. But there simply is no reason that the contrast levels in windows should be so narrow that it is ever a problem. And why can't they be easily adjusted anyway?

 

Yes those things and more. most of the problem would probably be solved if I got a monitor with a greater contrast ratio. But this kind of thing should be easily adjustable.

 

so this is an old post but I can see there was found no solution so I will restart it.

Personally my rage for the lack of competence on the win10 designers side have few limits.
I think they should be fired and hire some competent talent.

The forcing to use a low contrast on your screen settings to see basic UI elements is just ridicules and completely without merit.
There is nothing in the system, nor the UI setup that merits this change from win8 to win10, and I am baffled of how someone can lack the most basic design skills and still have one of the highest positions within the industry.

Why this issue haven't been corrected yet is even more baffling considering when searching for solutions I see an outrageous amount of post complaining about this issue.
The only solution I have seen someone post that "MIGHT" work is to manually import your own CSS scheme, which for people that know how is a hassle and for people that don't know isn't a possibility.

btw: this is not an issue with my monitor, i am sitting with a Prolite GB2773HS which should have absolutely no such issues, and doesn't on earlier windows system (win7 and win8 tested).

 

Um.... I'm not aware of any contrast issues in Windows 10. Definitely not to the degree described in your post. Care to post a picture of what you are talking about?

 

Try turning your screen contrast up, you will reach a point where you can't see the scrollbars and other gray scaled coloured UI. (for me i need to halve my normal contrast to get a clear view of the grayish UI elements, which is quite a big issue for gaming, drawing, editing etc.)
I can imagine that many users won't notice it, but for anyone that is a heavy user of graphical applications. Such as games, video makers, Photoshop, etc. it is a huge issue because we tend to have our screens turned up on the contrast lvl. Because it makes a HUGE difference on several important aspects of what we use our systems too.

I am not sure how you expect us to post an image since the contrast you are running your screen in would change the image you see.
So unless you mean an ugly one from a phone it is not quite possible *Wink
but here i made two where you can see the difference (from the phone, so they ain't to pretty)

notice how the scrollbars have completely disappeared from the "normal contrast" ? That is what happens to ALL grayish UI elements.

As said this haven't been an issue in earlier versions of win and there is absolutely no justification for having it now.

edit:
btw: most people are bringing the problem thinking it is a colours scheme issue, which I personally also assumed it was. It actually took me quite a while to figure out that someone could be "silly" enough to tamper with the useful range of the contrast and have absolutely no reasonable way to work around it with example: colour scheme changes.
However, this is NOT a new issue and there is as said a ton of massages complaining about issues with being unable to see the scroll bars and other grayish ui elements.
Mostly it is written as a colours scheme problem because few would be aware by default that it would be a contrast issue on win10... for obvious reasons (and it could be fixed with the correct colours scheme, which ofcouse isn't available to change specific ui element in win10... and using overhauls will remove the UI graphical elements on the vast amounts of applications and websites).

 

The graphic side is not managed by the OS, you should set both the monitor and the graphic card software to their default settings and then adjust it moving cursors slightly; also brightness and gamma can modify the perceived contrast.
Consumer graphic cards software and monitors are optimized to look at pictures and video on the web, and not for the OS.

 

You should read the issue before posting "silly stuff".
it is clearly stated that the issue is NOT that any changes has been made to either monitor or graphic card software. But a change to the OS's colours scheme setup or contrast range limits (I am guessing the latter).

Now I say it again just for people who refuse to read the thread.
THIS HAS NEVER BEEN AN ISSUE WITH ANY OTHER WINDOWS SYSTEMS!
wasn't an issue with win7, wasn't with win8, (never notice it on earlier version either, but lets be fair and only look at the “newer” win OS’s) so that it is a major issue with win10 should tell you someone behind the design f'ed up.
The FACT this issue isn't fixed yet, and apparently not even acknowledged as an issue, is just mindboggling!
If I put the same lack of effort and the “I don’t give a f” attitude that this shows into my work I would have been fired and replaced with someone more competent and willing to actually do their job.

Now if there was just a reasonable work around I could say, “ok fine, at least there is a way to fix it” but the ONLY suggestion I have seen that might work (and the only I haven’t tried because of the major hassle of doing so, and that it would still have issue’s with UI elements), is to overlay the UI with a custom CSS.
Which as mentioned for people that knows how is a hassle, and for people that don’t isn’t possible, and either way it will remove image UI from most pages
The only “alternative”, and it isn’t actually an alternative since it doesn’t fix the problem at all, is to simply accept that you will have to use suboptimal contrast and brightness which in return handicaps you in everything you are doing that requires your previous settings for optimal use.
Of Couse you could keep turning the setting up and down continuously as you work, but seriously that would be the most idiotic suggestion yet and in line of “you could just push your car, you don’t need the convenience of an engine”.

edit: also keep in mind that other UI elements are clearly visible without this issue with the contrast turned up, you can even see it in the picture that the gray element of the exit bottom (cross upper right corner) is still visible with the high contrast vs the low.
so again there is really no excuse for the issue with the other UI elements which they screwed up, and even less for not having a workaround for it.