Database Develop

Banding on images/backgrounds with gradients?

So, maybe its just me, but i notice that my nook, on any rom, does not seem to do well when displaying images that have subtle gradients. i have attached an image that i wanted to use for my background - it looks great on screen, but like crap on the nook. Anyone else notice this? I love the screen in general, but looking at that image makes it feel like i am using an 8-bit screen...

Divine_Madcat said:
So, maybe its just me, but i notice that my nook, on any rom, does not seem to do well when displaying images that have subtle gradients. i have attached an image that i wanted to use for my background - it looks great on screen, but like crap on the nook. Anyone else notice this? I love the screen in general, but looking at that image makes it feel like i am using an 8-bit screen...
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I've found it can display images fine, but that when setting it as the wallpaper it messes up the gradient and also tends to make the image blurry, as though its changing the resolution (despite the image being 1200x1024 or whatever its suppose to be(possibly 1024x1200)

Color Banding with live wallpapers enabled
Hijacking this thread.
Is anyone else noticing color banding on NC with live wallpapers enabled?
For example, take a look at your desktop with the two settings:
1. Livewallpaper + analog clock widget
2. Regular wallpaper + analog clock widget
The clock displays horrible banding in test case #1. I tested this on 7.0.3. stable and several nightlies since. I've see a few posts on this in the other device forums but most of them seem to be issues with the supported bit depth of the actual screen itself or wallpapers in general so I wasn't sure if they were applicable.
Is this an Android issue or an issue with the rom? Something else?

MattJ951 said:
I've found it can display images fine, but that when setting it as the wallpaper it messes up...
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I recommend Wallpaper Set and Save, free in the Market, to fix that problem.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.android.wallpapersetandsave
It's a funny old app, made for Cupcake I think and hasn't been changed since then. The UI is small and kind of odd looking. Changing the default settings won't stick on my Nook Color. It really wants your wallpaper to be in SDCard/wallpapers. So it barely works, but it does make wallpaper look better.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've tried that app before but it looked like it was only for regular wallpapers (where I'm not really seeing the banding)? That or I'm dense and overlooking something.
Also where are the stock wallpapers normally stored on cm7 install?
Sent from my HTC Vision using Tapatalk

You know, there were a lot of people who noticed banding on the HD2 roms, and it did seem to vary between various roms. I never really noticed it (perhaps I used the good roms), so didn't follow it much, and couldn't say if there was a fix. But, there should be many threads on it in the HD2 android section.

I've also noticed pretty severe banding in gradients for both jpeg and png images.

Divine_Madcat said:
So, maybe its just me, but i notice that my nook, on any rom, does not seem to do well when displaying images that have subtle gradients. i have attached an image that i wanted to use for my background - it looks great on screen, but like crap on the nook. Anyone else notice this? I love the screen in general, but looking at that image makes it feel like i am using an 8-bit screen...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As said, use something besides Gallery and it'll look fine. I use Wall Switcher and have some 20 jpg's in a directory and it switches 'em every 15 minutes, but there are lots of options.
It's not the NC, the ROM... it's the app you're using to set the background.

Just to clarify, the entire desktop starts exhibiting banding (icons, Widgets) and not just the desktop background. Almost as if the os is switching color depth. Can you guys reproduce this on your cm7 installs? Maybe I need to post screens or something.
This ONLY happens when I select a livewallpaper. Regular wallpapers dont affect the widgets and desktop icons like this. If its a matter or how im setting the live wallpaper, How do you set a live wallpaper using gallery or any other apps? What directory are they stored? Thanks.
Sent from my Nook Color

7 replies and not one person mentions that the nook's screen is only 16 bit... of course there will be gradients, its a small issue and when I noticed it with a space themed background went ''meh'', and used a different one.

Kokanee483 said:
7 replies and not one person mentions that the nook's screen is only 16 bit... of course there will be gradients, its a small issue and when I noticed it with a space themed background went ''meh'', and used a different one.
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Ah. Well that would make more sense. I always thought the display was 24-bit because people are always comparing it to the Ipad screen. The clock does look distractingly bad though haha...maybe I'm just anal.
Just added some screenshots using the Grass Live Wallpaper versus one of the stock CM7 ones. For posterity.

Go to the app store and download "Large Image Viewer" it will solve all your problems. The nook color screen is an IPS display, the same as the ipad and much better than other andriod tablets. Large Image Viewer is a very fast hi res viewer and no, I am in no way affiated with them.
Tom

tommewborn said:
Go to the app store and download "Large Image Viewer" it will solve all your problems. The nook color screen is an IPS display, the same as the ipad and much better than other andriod tablets. Large Image Viewer is a very fast hi res viewer and no, I am in no way affiated with them.
Tom
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Errr...thanks but how is that related to this thread? haha

Dalingrin's OC kernels are 16-bit, stock is 24-bit. It's about that simple.
I campaigned for a way to switch live, and at one point he considered just such a kernel mod but I don't think it ever went anywhere.
Rodney

rhester72 said:
Dalingrin's OC kernels are 16-bit, stock is 24-bit. It's about that simple.
I campaigned for a way to switch live, and at one point he considered just such a kernel mod but I don't think it ever went anywhere.
Rodney
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Finally some info related to my question. Going back to the stock kernel fixed the banding issue with live wallpapers. Thank you! If anyone else is interested...details are in the OC Kernel thread (search banding, color bit depth, etc.). Wish this was explicitly stated in the OC kernel OP.

Live Wallpaper Banding
Divine_Madcat said:
So, maybe its just me, but i notice that my nook, on any rom, does not seem to do well when displaying images that have subtle gradients. i have attached an image that i wanted to use for my background - it looks great on screen, but like crap on the nook. Anyone else notice this? I love the screen in general, but looking at that image makes it feel like i am using an 8-bit screen...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm noticing the same thing. The screen seems to handle gradients in regular wallpapers fine, but gradients in Live Wallpapers look horrible. Like someone stated it's like it's changing bit-depth. I'm on a stock, totally virgin Nook Color. Does anyone know how to work around this? I'm building Live Wallpapers and what looks fine on other devices looks terrible on the Color.

[Q] Lock Screen Wallpaper

Hi to all.
I cant find a solution to my problem and maybe someone can help me.
I have found some wallpapers for our Note in the right resolution (800x1280) to use these in my lockscreen.
The problem is that when i choose a wallpaper with lot of black color and choose it as lockscreen wallpaper i can see some horizontal lines on it.
If i choose the same image as phone wallpaper everything is ok.
Where is the problem?
Thank you all.

I have the exact same issue. Horizontal lines on lock screen, but looks fine everywhere else. I don't have the solution, but maybe I can help you out a bit.
I did some searching, it turns out that there's some sort of software bug that doesn't allow black images to be truly black but rather very dark grey. The thread is somewhere in this forum.
Also the native lock screen resolution is actually smaller than the screen resolution because of the notification bar. Per this forum: http://androidforums.com/htc-hero/37268-lockscreen-resolution-compression-issues-false-info.html
Also when you set an image to be the lock screen, it seems the picture is re-scalled and saved again (in another directory), which means compressed again.
Android phones usually don't display images in 24 or 32 bit color but rather 16 bit color, which means color banding. More on that information somewhere in this thread also.
My suggestion is:
1. Find out the native lock screen resolution. I'm also searching for the figure.
2. Edit your photo, change it to that resolution, and make sure the black areas of that image are truly digitally black (000000), and save it as an uncompressed image.
Maybe the horizontal lines are because the image is being re-scalled, re compressed, and the image being displayed at 16 bit color with a "true black but" is resulting in horizontal lines.

The solution is this. I'm using it and black is perfect.

LordManhattan said:
The solution is this. I'm using it and black is perfect.
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Not bad idea at all...I have used widgetlocker in my previous phones but somehow i had some little problems like small lugs or battery draining.
I dont know if in the latest version is fixed.
But ill try cause i love black lockscreen in our huge super screen...
edit:Not working properly for me cause i have lower destiny...

Ah, what a shame! But WL does work, so if you ever go back to the stock density i highly recommend you using it.

Magick locker is free so you can test that, get a theme and customize wallpaper, set any black image and its fine. so its samsung lockscreen software bug

One simple solution, use wallpaper wizardrii!!
It solved all my wallpaper problems!
Wicked app & highly recommended. Link - https://market.android.com/details?id=com.twistedapps.wallpaperwizardrii&hl=en
Functions of wallpaper wizardrii:
Wallpaper Wizardrii, "Changing the way you set wallpaper" ™.
Twisted Apps just bought an Asus Transformer to make WW work for tablets. We have a beta so if you want to try it e-mail.
Set your own images, Portrait, Landscape, and Crop; all with No Scroll or Scroll. Check out set Exact or Crop Exact! Set images from WW, file browser, or Android's Gallery (Share as). Check Home App compatibility with No Scroll option (only).

Help with theming?

Not sure if this is the right section, maybe General instead?
Anyway, I'm trying to theme ICS a different colour, some images will let me paint my chosen colour on top, but some use andom colours instead even though i have picked a colour, why is this happening? can anyone suggest anything that will stop that?
I've tried different photo editors, makes no difference

Try changing color palette from indexed to RGB, it should solve your problem.

System wide Style Sheets

This is an idea I have from my experience using themes on my Samsung Captivate. My experiences i describe apply particularly to the AOKP builds for that device and a few others. However the concepts are something which would be implemented at a system level and I think it would be applicable for any Android device, so I wanted to share it here in the general forum as well.
I like the color picker in Rom Control for ICS AOKP, but I was surprised that you pick and choose each color separately for clock, signal, etc. There is the hard-coded button to recall the ICS holo blue. I would love to see another button that stores a user selected color instead of copying and pasting the hex codes, although that works. And then the wireless signal is a graphic image that you cant change without flashing a .zip to modify system png and the like. I wondered if it could be coded to use a triangle with a fill color based on something from the color picker, and then lay over top of that grey or black bars for the part that should be 'off'. maybe layers arent possible? tho it appears that they are being used, and i have seen overlap of the data signal on top of the wireless bars. right? I know there is a LOT of stuff these amazing developers are working on which keeps them very busy already. These are just some ideas
I noticed looking through some of the code in AOKP gerrit for the theme chooser updates, that they started using variables instead of a hard coded ICS holo blue color. but it seems as if there is no user interaction for that color, its still a hard coded value set in a single location instead of being hard coded in multiple locations. So it is a huge improvement Im sure for themers who have to try to search out and modify every instance of those values. I would just like to see it progress to something where the end user can modify that variable from Rom Control.
It would be even more awesome if Android used a system wide style sheet setup. background, checkbox style, text color, font, font size, perhaps it could even include specs for headers, paragraphs, tables, titles, etc. but that would be WAY more than I am thinking. It certainly works nicely for web design tho.
This would then be something that other apps could also read and implement into their design as well. Then we wouldn't have to create hacked SMS and google play, and tapatalk, etc, etc, etc. to make them inverted or red, green, orange, blue, yellow, etc.
Of course having an option to over-ride those settings is cool too, maybe you want an all orange theme, but you want white on your keyboard keys. a keyboard app could have a selector built into its settings which allows you to follow the system setting or pick your own base color, or go with the developers default choice. There are a lot of great developers out there who make gorgeous apps that deserve to keep their defaults, ie. 1weather. So I am sure apps would ship with their own defaults turned on, so the user is guaranteed the experience they intended.
I do think these ideas seem inline with what google is trying to accomplish with their unified design standards.
I am imagining a day where I can change my wallpaper and then open settings, use a color picker (maybe even one that can pick a color from the wallpaper ... Then maybe choose black or white, or gradient or transparent background. Two steps, and just that simply and quickly my whole system is color themed to compliment. Then using Tasker this could even be automated for work, home, weekends, etc. LOL.
Ok iphone, take that!

OK so I guess 187 people looked and decided that was way toooo much to read.
LOL
Sent from my SGH-I897 using Tapatalk 2

Display colors not as vibrant after beta 14

Hello
I noticed that after installing beta 14, colors are awful, they are not as vibrant as they were before, what can I do to adjust them?

Move back to Stable build or an older beta build because as of OB14 the default color profile will be less vibrant and it's really good and accurate now red are red instead of that old neon colour.

Read the changelog before flashing. The colors are not awful. They are better.

They could have left one of the choices in the screen calibration settings as the original saturation. Something like default, sRGB, vibrant, and custom. I personally liked the vibrant colors, with the deep blacks it really made the AMOLED display pop.

SyCreed said:
Use that tool
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.jroot3d.joneplustools&hl=en
Choose the dafult screen color scheme, it will give u the previous color scheme
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you so much!! this tool is great!!!!