PRS-650 Contrast / birghtness settings

[Papi]

I was playing around with the contrast / brighness settings while reading an epub the other day, I don't usually change these settings since I guess the contrast is what it is (and it's good indeed) and changing the contrast is in fact just a processing of the image displayed, and has no effect on the way the screen itself behaves.

Anyway, it has some weird effect, like when putting the contrast at max. and reducing the brightness, the "background" is still the same white until you reach -127, below that the background become darker.
So if you do that (contrast at max and brightness at -127), depending of the font used, you obtain something like a bold font, but a bit messy (see pictures, although I was not at max contrast and brightness when taking the picture -127). It's kind of repelling because it's too bold, but at the same time the text is darker and the small irregularities makes it look like a bad printed book (ok that didn't sounded positive, but the idea is the irregularities adds a bit of "organic" to it).

I don't know which one I prefer at the long term, maybe I should try to replace the font used in the book (my 650 is "russified", but this book is borrowed from a library, and I guess it uses it's own (embedded ?) font).

Anyone think replacing the font by a bolder one can achieve the same result ? Like the font used in the Kindle, it always seems to me (on photos, never saw a Kindle 3 in real life) that it has better contrast, but then maybe the readability is not that great.

[Cpl Punishment]

That is my major complaint with the 650...How to darken the front...!!! I tried replacing it with some advice on the 650 forum and ended up bricking the SONY and having to return it...So I relented and bought a Kindle..(which I would dump and go back to a SONY that had better contrast !!)

[jlbfoot]

I tweak my ePubs and use Segoe UI semibold as my normal/normal font. I use the same as the default on my computer. I'm quite happy with the font on both. If you don't particularly like Segoe, you can do a search for semibold fonts. I think there are plenty out there...free. With that font, I find that the default contrast settings on my Sony are hard to improve on.

Sorry that happened to you Cpl. Because of that possibility, I put off flashing my firmware to the Russified version. I got brave and did it yesterday without a hitch. For those who are still chicken, there is another method to change fonts without flashing; it just involves tweaking ePubs individually to change the font. That sounds a bit difficult, but once it is properly set up in Calibre, it is pretty quick. In my case, tweaking the individual ePubs also got me into Sigil to clean up the formatting also. There is some very good info on this forum about both methods of changing fonts.

[jakeluck]

Kicking Contrast to max creates edge aliasing.

For most PDFs, I find ~(20, -15) produces better legibility than Original.

What custom contrast/brightness do you use?

[mcrmama]

I've just set up an extra css with the font I want to use and convert epub to epub in calibre. I do that also to add a cover to my books at the same time. I have it set up so that it does it automatically by default if I click convert in calibre so it isn't too much work.

[SirNose]

Nice one jakeluck, just tried the 20 / -15 mix on a couple of epubs and it does actually makes a subtle but noticable difference to the darkness with no real loss of quality (that I could see) and no background darkening.

mmmm, makes the custom font I slaved to get into the epubs even nicerer!

(have to use the tweak method for the custom fonts as there is no russification for us mac owners...)

[SirNose]

.....

[SmartyPants]

i have found the settings of +95/-95 gives me the best result.
Not sure why those particular numbers, but they just seem to work! (seen it recommended somewhere)
I get much crisper, darker font with those settings.

[astra]

I played with the settings of 650 and left it as original. When I were upping the contrast, the fonts outline would be damaged. Letters' lines looked ragged.
I use default fonts only.

P.S. I don't read PDF though.

[krish]

For pdf files, I tried many settings and finally settled with +50 (contrast) / -50 (darkness). After you move to 1 or 2 pages, you see the clear improvement. As soon as I open a pdf, I change the settings to these custom settings.

[Papi]

Thanks to the replies, I tried different settings and came upon some satisfying settings, which makes the font look bolder without looking dirty (and then I wondered why I hadn't tried these before ?!). I guess the optimal values depends on the font used and it's size. BTW, how do you change the font on an ebook with embedded font ? If it's DRM free I guess you just unzip it and edit the css, but can you do that on a DRM protected epub for example ?

[Angst]

Originally Posted by Papi

Thanks to the replies, I tried different settings and came upon some satisfying settings, which makes the font look bolder without looking dirty (and then I wondered why I hadn't tried these before ?!). I guess the optimal values depends on the font used and it's size. BTW, how do you change the font on an ebook with embedded font ? If it's DRM free I guess you just unzip it and edit the css, but can you do that on a DRM protected epub for example ?

The only way I know of is to remove the DRM: google "i love cabbages".

[Papi]

I found some interresting read, thanks for the tip