Clarity of type in Labels affected by backcolor on some monitors

**EntityX** · Mar 9th, 2009, 08:08 AM

I have an emachines monitor that is around 5 years old and is definitely not a flat screen. It's about 19 inches deep. I was noticing that the lettering wasn't as clear on one of the labels in an application I'm working on. The label had the backcolor set to magenta. I was trying to figure out why the difference in the clarity of the type between the different labels. It turns out magenta displays less clearly and with a bit of offset shadowing whereas other colors don't. I'm guessing it's a deficiency in my monitor. When I changed the backcolor to something else things became more clear.
Attachment 69576
Notice difference of A Phase Settings above and below.
Attachment 69577

**EntityX** · Mar 9th, 2009, 08:14 AM

Just after I posted above I was thinking about how a screenshot takes place and I wouldn't think that it would even show the difference but it seems like it does. But then I realized I'm looking at the screenshot with my emachines monitor so anyone that has a good monitor won't see any difference in the shots above unless their monitor has a similar problem or limitation. Anyone can correct me if I'm wrong about this hypothesis and they can report how the two shots appear to them. To me on my monitor A Phase Settings is much more blurry on the top shot in comparison to the bottom.

**si_the_geek** · Mar 9th, 2009, 09:13 AM

It looks blurry to me too, on a reasonable quality LCD screen... but if you didn't save the Jpeg's at 100% quality, that may just be due to the quality loss.

**Lord Orwell** · Mar 11th, 2009, 11:28 PM

it appears with the same issue to me as well. I don't suppose you have color depth set less than 32-bit?

**EntityX** · Mar 12th, 2009, 01:44 PM

No I checked. It is set to 32 bit. Maybe the problem is unrelated to the monitor. You could test it out. Create a simple program that displays a form. Put a label on it and set the font size large and bold and set the back color to magenta and put another label next to it with everything the same except another back color like yellow green or just the default back color. If the label with the magenta back color displays more blurry for you then the problem may not be associated with monitors unless all monitors or many monitors have some problem displaying magenta.

The images in the first post were both saved without any reduction and in the exact same format.

**Lord Orwell** · Mar 12th, 2009, 05:21 PM

try turning on cleartype and see if that's it.
Then also it might be the specific font you are using.

**EntityX** · Mar 12th, 2009, 08:15 PM

I'm not going to worry about it. I changed the color to somethiing other than magenta and that fixed the problem for me. I didn't see any property for labels cleartype though.

**Lord Orwell** · Mar 12th, 2009, 08:34 PM

cleartype is a system-level property in your screen appearances.

**EntityX** · Mar 12th, 2009, 09:58 PM

It was already set to cleartype on my computer.

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