How to lighten up dark movies on your iMac or projector.

gamma

I noticed when watching movies on my 27 inch iMac that they are too dark especially in dark scenes. What I mean is that there are a lot of details in the blacks missing compared to watching on a normal DVD player. I’ve also noticed the same thing when watching a movie on a projector hooked up to my macbook air. Turning the contrast or brightness up doesn’t work as it just washes out the blacks. Here’s the cause of this frustrating problem and how to fix it!

Firstly, here’s how to fix it…

1. Open System Preferences Menu and go to ‘Displays’

2. In the Displays Panel for your Projector select the ‘Color’ tab.

3. Unselect the ‘Show profiles for this display on this display only’ then select one of the new profiles that appear. Try sRGB IEC1966-2.1 or Adobe RGB(1996). See if that brightens up the movie on the projector.

4. If that doesn’t work or if you want more improvement, press the ‘Calibrate’ Button.

5. Now check the box that says ‘Expert Mode’.

(Note: new versions of OS X have hidden this checkbox. Click here to find how to access it.)

6. Now press ‘Continue’ 6 times till you get to this screen that adjusts the Gamma setting:

Move the Gamma setting to the left. Go towards 1 to get your video lighter.

Now, what’s the cause?

I’m not completely sure how Gamma works, it’s related to the way we perceive light levels and the way that increments in light intensity are is spread out at different light levels. You can read about it here on wikipedia and Apple have an article here.

The short story is that changing the Gamma setting to the left seems to help with brightening up a movie on a projector. But it looks very washed out to use this Gamma setting for everything.

So I’d suggest saving two settings, then switching the display when you want to watch a movie or use a projector.

Posted

January 4, 2015

brightness, DVD, gamma, macbook, movies, popular, projectors, screen

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19 responses to “How to lighten up dark movies on your iMac or projector.”

Jacki Powell
May 27, 2014
Hello,
First, thank you for posting so much useful info. about the Mac. I just found your site tonite searching through forums for an answer to this big problem I have.
I have searched this site, but have not figured out how to post a question. So I am just doing a reply and I hope you read it. In your post above, you wrote, ” our macbook air thatâ€™s hooked up to a projector plays movies”. How did you get it to work becasue my problem is, my MacBook Air – I have it attached to my Epson projector. When I try to play a movie (using the DVD player), the movie will not project. The screen projects and where the movie should be is a white box. I have MacBook Air and projecter connected with the USB cable instead of the VGA cable. Any help you would give would be appreciated. I plan to show a movie tomorrow night at church to my youth class using this set-up and really need to get it to working.
Thank you, God Bless,
Jacki
Reply
1. Wayne
  May 29, 2014
  Try VLC.
  Try turning on mirroring.
  I’d try a VGA or DVI cable instead of USB.
  Reply
  1. jacob perreault
    October 26, 2016
    ty vlc works
fintop
August 12, 2014
Hi Guys,
This worked perfectly on my roommates mac, is there a comparable setting for PC?
Reply
1. fintop
  August 12, 2014
  * a similar setting to the rgb1996?
  Reply
Taromuse
November 8, 2014
Thanks so much. I’m going t try it and see if it works. Really appreciate the concise well-presented info.
Reply
SRJ
December 30, 2014
Cannot believe it’s taken me this long to track down this advice – this has made a huge difference to my TV display and I can now watch things from my Mac where I can actually see people’s faces! Thank you so very much, you’ve made my Christmas :-)
Reply
1. Wayne
  December 31, 2014
  I agree – this makes a huge difference, it’s something Apple should include as standard – a setting within iTunes perhaps…
  Reply
Liz
February 19, 2015
Wow – after so long of being frustrated and googling different ways to lighten the movies on my MacBook screen, I am so glad I found this!! I found my perfect “target gamma” is about 1.4. This needs to be on the apple forums or even just an actual special setting on the OS X Displays menu that comes as a standard option. THANK YOU!!
Reply
Anthony
June 2, 2015
doesn’t work… makes it lighter, but still can’t see anything
Reply
Anthony
June 10, 2015
figured it out… try:
accessibilities
Reply
cififit
October 17, 2015
done everything that u all said but still getting to dark / grey screen s even tried on my tv still noting helps
Reply
Adam Orth
May 25, 2016
Super useful post. Thank you.
Reply
TeacherInChina
June 1, 2016
Thank you! I’ve been trying to play videos for my high school esl classes in China and sometimes they are frustratingly dark. Helpful and concise info, thanks!
Reply
Maria
July 12, 2016
Thanks for this post. At first I couldn’t get this to work. Then I read another post and realised I was calibrating my laptop screen not the projector (you can check this in the display and then the drop down menu ‘optimise for’). I turned everything off and on again and then actually found a colour profile specifically for my projector brand. Once I selected this, the colours on the projection lightened up.
Reply
JFairweather
November 26, 2016
This does not fix the problem with iTunes – that is something that only Apple can fix. Users should be aware that adjusting monitor brightness in the way suggested affects everything, so if people are doing any color corrections, this will affect their perception of color and brightness so that the photos will be overly bright when viewed on other systems.
The best thing to do is to run two calibrations – the first will be an accurate one (as accurate as the perception-based calibrator can be, which is not perfect.). Save this, giving it a meaningful name. Now run a second calibration, adjusting the settings to make things overly bright. Save it with a name that reflects this – “iMovie Bright” or some such thing. When you want to watch a movie, switch the cailbration setting to “iMovie Brifght” (or whatever you named it). When you’re finished with the movie, switch back to the proper calibration.
Reply
1. Wayne
  November 27, 2016
  This is good advice – to run two calibrations. This is in fact what I do. Thanks.
  Reply
Gary Lintz
February 23, 2017
We expect that the new LG V30 will be a super success when it launches at the upcoming global event. With the other Smartphone manufacturers going all in to find the proverbial Pandoraâ€™s Box when it comes to customer satisfaction, we have developed a wishlist of the features which the LG will supposedly carry.
Reply
Nigel Cox
April 18, 2019
This is great, thank you! It’s been driving me crazy, and now it’s fixed! Also thanks for the link to the tip about the “expert” box. Now… do you have any ideas for calibrating a Samsung 32″ curved monitor…? haha
Reply