Greetings. I am using Windows 10 (64-Bit) and 2 SLI GTX 980 Ti NVidia graphics cards.
I am using the latest drivers from Nvidia […]
Show full quote
Greetings. I am using Windows 10 (64-Bit) and 2 SLI GTX 980 Ti NVidia graphics cards.
I am using the latest drivers from Nvidia which is version 372.70 as of writing this post.
I had a problem with my Nvidia graphics card driver.
Upon installing the driver, my blacks became gray and the whole screen looked grayish.
I went to the Nvidia control panel/change resolution and I noticed the color output range was set to limited. I set it to full and it restored the colors to the way they should be.
I guess Nvidia drivers set it to "limited" by default. You should definitely change that to "full" range.
Although that fixed the colors with Windows, it did not fix it with games because some games were "hijacking" the colors and reverting it to the default "limited". Not all games were doing this, but some games old or new, directx or opengl were doing this as long as they were in the full screen mode, the windowed mode did not have this problem.
I fixed this this problem on my computer. So, if you also have this problem, read this post. It might work for you too.
We are going to be changing some settings and you need to be a system administrator to be able to make some of these changes.
I don't believe these settings will harm your computer but still, you are using it at your own risk.
FIRST, go to the power options in the control panel, click on choose what the power buttons do, make sure "turn on fast startup" IS NOT CHECKED.
This is because if you have this checked, your color profiles might be skipped or not loaded during boot.
SECOND, open your Nvidia control panel and make sure the color range is set to "full" on the "change resolution" tab. Also, go through all the pages in the control panel and check all "use Nvidia settings". This doesn't actually change any colors on your system as long as you don't touch the sliders.
THIRD, open Windows control panel and go to "color management". You will see that you don't have any color profiles here. You want to add your default color profile to this list so click add,
find your default color profile. For me this is the sRGB IEC profile under "ICC Profiles" which is an RBG color profile. This is the Nvidia drivers default color profile although there are other profiles.
Make sure "use my settings for this device" is checkmarked. Then, go to the "advanced" tab and click on "change system defaults" click advanced again and checkmark "use windows display calibration"
Make sure that your default profile is listed in the devices tab and "use my settings for this device" is checked. Also, make sure that "Use Windows display calibration" is checked in the Advanced tab.
We did all these changes so the color profile will be preserved in games. Your color settings or color profiles are not changed here.
Turn off your computer (don't restat) and turn it on again by pressing the power button. once you are booted up, launch one of your problem games and see if the blacks still appear as grays.
If not, congrats to you.
----------
If you are still having this problem after following the previous steps, you might want to go to the nvidia control panel/change resolution and set your color profile to "YCbCr444" and click apply.
Now, launch one of your problem games and see if it still appears gray. If not, revert back to the RGB profile and click apply and launch the game again. See if it looks "right" like the previous color profile does. If it looks right, turn off computer, turn it on again and launch game again.
If it looks just like before, you are done here. Your color profile is no longer being "hijacked" by the game.
If the gamma is preserved only in the "YCbCr444" profile then you might have to use that profile instead. I couldn't see any differences in colors between YCbCr444 and RGB. But RGB is definitely the superior color profile and for that reason, you want to get that profile working right.
---
This fix does not use any external 3rd party programs that deal with color profiles. If you have any of these installed, you might want to uninstall them as they might interfere with the color profiles.
---
I hope this post has helped you. Let me know if this worked for you by replying on this topic.
