Computer Screens and Colors

[Bob Cherry]

Wow, what an experience I had.  I went to a library today and saw what my web site looked like on a 640x480 monitor set to only 256 colors (8-bit)!  It basically looked worse than I've ever seen it before.  So, I went to a bunch of other sites I'm familar with and looked at them.  They too looked like junk (*being polite here :)

Jeff and I spoke at length about this earlier and we investigated the problem at length.  The biggest problem is that JPEG files (.jpg) are 16-Million colors (16 bit) and render near true color however, by forcing them down to 256 colors, the computer divides out the colors by 62,500!!!  Thus, it throws away 99% of the available image information.

Add to this the fact that different programs load their own color pallets, a table of colors to use, and discard the system default pallet, the colors rendered can be nothing at all what the author intended.  For example, my light to medium green background became black and white!

Another thing I noticed was that the monitor being used was capable of 1280 x 1024 resolution at 24-bit color yet was configured to run at 640 x 480 8-bit color.  This raised a question:  Why spend all those precious dollars on display controllers and high-resolution monitors if you're going to run them in a low-resolution low color mode?  It seems like a waste of resources to me.

I'd like to hear from libraries who have intentionally setup their systems for 640x480 256 colors to better understand why this is.

For libraries that are unaware that they are in this situation, it is easy to correct this situation by right-clicking anywhere on the base desktop which will bring up a window to adjust your screen settings.  Go to the Settings Tab and you will find all the options you can use.  Set the colors to the highest value and you will have better rendering of color on your web browsers.  Click OK and you will have just made your patrons happier folks.

Bob Cherry
Internet Networking Consultant