Virtual Landscape‚Ñ¢ has some beautiful images for you to enjoy. Unfortunately, if they are not shown with the proper color or brightness balance, your enjoyment will be reduced. They were originally color balanced on a 19" Sony Color Monitor to our satisfaction, but we've noticed that some monitors, especially some of the less expensive ones, do not present the images as well. Generally, they are either too dark or faded. Some monitors are too green, others too red. Also, your viewing environment affects the viewing as well. If you have a very bright room, the colors will appear faded.
We are providing you the following guidelines and tools to quickly adjust the image color to match your viewing preferences.
(1) It is best to make sure that your monitor is adjusted correctly. Most monitors have at least a brightness control. Others have contrast and even color adjustments. First, try the brightness control knob (it usually has an icon on it looking like the sun). If this doesn't work, try the contrast control. If you are still dissatisfied, go to the next step.
(2) VLNavigate‚Ñ¢ has an Adjust Screen Colors menu item under Display (long menu) or Controls (short menu). Select this to adjust the colors and/or brightness for all images displayed by VLNavigate‚Ñ¢. Press the + or - keys to add brightness (+) or darkness (-) to the image. Do the same with the Red, Green, Blue controls if your images are improperly balanced with respect to color. These changes will be applied only during the execution of VLNavigate‚Ñ¢ and will be retained across program starts. They are stored in the VLOnePreferences files (in the System Folder).
A check box in the Adjust Screen Colors dialog box exists to permit you to correct the gamma. Used here, this term merely means that you can adjust the middle brightness values and leave the dark and bright areas alone. This leaves the snow white and the trees medium dark without changing the entire image. Try this option if the other doesn't give satisfactory results. A normal gamma adjustment would match the color characteristics of your monitor and probably not be a linear adjustment. We have provided only a linear adjustment capability. Use the Reset button to return to the normal values.
NOTE: Using the Adjust Screen Colors option adds a little processing time to the display of every picture. You should not notice this except perhaps on the slower computers. When you use the reset button, the adjustment is ignored and the program should speed up. Don't be afraid to use this option since the speed of the VLNavigate‚Ñ¢ program is primarily affected by the speed of the CD-ROM.
HACKERS NOTE: If you are a brave soul and want to modify the cutoff values for the gamma correction, you must use ResEdit on a disk copy of the program VLNavigate‚Ñ¢. Change the STR# 130 values 4 (dark cutoff), and 5 (bright cutoff). They are set to 50000 and 20000 out of a maximum of 65535 and a minimum of zero. Don't attempt this if you are not familiar with ResEdit. If you make a mess of it, you can always reload the program from the CD-ROM to your hard drive and start over.
(3) You can also use a gamma adjustment program or feature to change the gamma correction of your monitor to adjust the color of the images on the CD-ROM. Unfortunately, due to license restrictions, we were not able to provide one of these utilities on the CD-ROM. A program is distributed with Adobes' Photoshop‚Ñ¢, called Gamma, and several monitor manufacturers provide such programs or utilities.
NOTE: Apple Computer has stated that some of the Quadra and Centris computers with the Apple Basic Color Monitor, and some non-Apple VGA monitors, may have a problem with overly green screen color. There is a Basic Color Monitor system extension available from Apple that can correct the problem. Some non-Apple monitors, however, may go blank with this system extension, in which case the extension would have to be removed. This extension can be obtained from your local Apple dealer or possibly some bulletin board systems. You can probably adjust this bias using the Adjust Screen Colors option in VLNavigate‚Ñ¢. Just click on the minus sign associated with the Green button.
If you continue to have problems, please contact us at Rocky Mountain Digital Peeks.
