After Enabling HDR in Windows the Colors Are Washed Out
This solution has been verified by our customers to fix the issue with these environment variables
Enabling High Dynamic Range (HDR) & Wide Color Gamut (WCG) in Windows* 10 results in a washed out image on the TV screen. The TV correctly reports a HDR flag, but all the colors look washed out.
Environment:
- Windows® 10 Fall Creators Update (build 16299) and newer
- 7th Generation processor and newer
- HDR capable TV or monitor
How to fix it:
This is expected behavior. As soon HDR mode is activated in Windows, everything on screen will immediately appear darker, and by comparison desaturated or washed out.
Cause & More Information:
This is because the vast majority of applications and content are Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) while your system is now in HDR mode. In order for SDR and HDR content to appear at the same time, the SDR content must be shown darker than the HDR. You will also find that if the color gamut of the display is wider than Standard Red Green Blue (sRGB), transition to HDR mode will make the desktop appear washed out, compared to SDR mode where the sRGB colors looked oversaturated due to color mapping (stretching sRGB to panel’s wide color gamut). This approach allows HDR content to be properly viewed, with highlights far brighter than the SDR content and also with greater detail in darker scenes.
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