16-bit color turns gray into pink!

Lord Estraven · 07-22-2005, 07:07 PM

Okay, here's a bizarre problem for you: 16-bit color causes certain shades of gray to become pink, and certain shades of blue to go purple.

Yeah, I know... 16-bit mode has fewer colors than 24-bit, so it's normal for some to be off, right?

Wrong. All colors display fine in 15-bit mode, and even with 8-bit color, gray is gray and blue is blue. But with 16-bit color, dark blue parts of phpBB forums become purple, and gray ones go lavender. Certain shades of gray in my GTK theme (Clearlooks-Bright) are also tinted red, and buttons on websites (normally off-white) become pale pink.

I've already confirmed that this is not a monitor problem.

Here's my xorg.conf:

Code:

# Auto-generated by Archie mkxcfg
# Auto-generated by Archie mkxcfg

Section "ServerLayout"

# Serial Mouse not detected
# USB Mouse not detected
	Identifier     "XFree86 Configured"
	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
	InputDevice    "PS/2 Mouse" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# Additional fonts: Locale, Gimp, TTF...
#	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/75dpi"
#	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/100dpi"
# True type and type1 fonts are also handled via xftlib, see /etc/X11/XftConfig!
	RgbPath      "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
	ModulePath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"
	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/PEX"
	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ttf/western"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ttf/decoratives"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/openoffice"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-bitstream-vera"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latex-ttf-fonts"
	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/defoma/CID"
	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/defoma/TrueType"
	FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/artwiz-fonts"
EndSection

Section "Module"
        Load  "ddc"  # ddc probing of monitor
        Load  "GLcore"
        Load  "dbe"
        Load  "dri"
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "glx"
        Load  "bitmap" # bitmap-fonts
        Load  "type1"
        Load  "freetype"
        Load  "record"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
	Option	    "AllowMouseOpenFail" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	Driver      "keyboard"
	Option	    "CoreKeyboard"
	Option	    "XkbRules" "xfree86"
	Option	    "XkbModel" "pc101"
	Option	    "XkbLayout" "us"
	Option	    "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "PS/2 Mouse"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "auto"
	Option	    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/psaux"
	Option	    "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
	Option	    "Emulate3Timeout" "70"
	Option	    "SendCoreEvents" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"

 # Warning: This may fry old Monitors
 # Very conservative. May flicker.
#	VertRefresh  50.0 - 62.0 # Extreme conservative. Will flicker. TFT default.
	#  Default modes distilled from
	#      "VESA and Industry Standards and Guide for Computer Display Monitor
	#       Timing", version 1.0, revision 0.8, adopted September 17, 1998.
	#  $XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/etc/vesamodes,v 1.4 1999/11/18 16:52:17 tsi Exp $
	# 640x350 @ 85Hz (VESA) hsync: 37.9kHz
 ### Uncomment if you don't want to default to DDC:
	Identifier   "Monitor0"
 ### Uncomment if you don't want to default to DDC:
	HorizSync    31.5 - 90.0
	VertRefresh  50.0 - 100.0
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
        Modeline "1280x1024"  138.54  1280 1368 1504 1728  1024 1025 1028 1069 -HSync +Vsync
#	HorizSync    28.0 - 78.0 # Warning: This may fry very old Monitors
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Card0"
	Driver      "savage"
	BoardName   "ProSavage"
        Option      "HWCursor" "True"
	Option	    "UseBIOS" "0"
        Option      "BCIforXv" "True"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
                Option "IgnoreEDID" "false"
		Depth     24
		Modes    "1280x1024"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
	Mode         0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
	Option	    "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

As you can see, I have a ProSavage video chip - specifically, P4M266 - and DRI installed and enabled with no problems. When I change DefaultDepth and Depth to 16 (since that gives me better performace with OpenGL stuff), colors are affected as I described.

Is there any way to solve this, or will I just have to live with it?

Electro · 07-23-2005, 04:45 PM

It is normal that grey becomes pink or some grey pixels becomes pink while dark blue becomes purple. It is trying to match the color code that is close to resolution color code.

If you use the 40 web colors, you will be fine from 8-bit (256 color) to 24-bit (16.7 million color).

It happens on my 12 year old computer and my latest computer.

Lord Estraven · 07-25-2005, 02:42 PM

40 web colors? What?

Electro · 07-25-2005, 05:06 PM

Go to http://www.allfreebackgrounds.com/color_3.html

You can also use kcolorchooser to pick from 40 web colors.

clemare · 08-04-2005, 11:07 AM

Hi!

I have the same problem than you, but using YDL 3.x on my old PowerMac 4400. The video card is an ATI (Don't know the model) with 2MB RAM. I am using X in 1024*768 with 256 colors, but I would like to use 16 bit colors. In my case 15 bits don't work either.

Do you found the way to fix the problem with the colors? How?

Thanks.

clemare