Brightness Control - 1.0.4

my new 24" imac was burning my eyes out until i found this great app about a week ago. it may seem a bit odd to give an app an excellent rating, but not recommend it. here is my explanation.

i rarely leave comments on apps i learn about from versiontracker, but after using this one for a week, i was coming back to vt to sing the praises of this great little utility. my new 24" imac is so ridiculously bright, and the normal brightness control in display system prefs only dims the display to what i would call a normal brightness. it was unbearable working at night with the room lights dimmed.

i am grateful to cdiggy for alerting me to shades, which is indeed the only way to go, now that i know about it, but cdiggy's review is unnecessarily harsh. the only way i would give a freeware app a poor rating is if it was malicious or destructive. it is truly shameful to take and use an app for years (especially freeware) and give it a poor rating, just because you found a better app.

this is a typical example of why i love versiontracker's reviews to find good apps. if you find something that is rated 4 or 5 stars, you can bet it is awesome, because so many people expect commercial quality from a freeware app.

btw, that's what you get from shades. shareware or commercial quality with a freeware license. if Shades - 1.2b2 (current version as of this review) was shareware or commercial, i would have recommended brightness control, by virtue of price.

This program has saved me many headaches from the 24-in lcd in the low-light lab that I work at. It's also nice for watching movies in the dark. Highly recommended. My only suggestion is to cause (or have a preference to cause) the red button to simply hide the App, not quit the program. It'd be nice to not have to have the slider window up all the time (or to have the slider window taking up space in the dock when minimized) when one uses it constantly.

I do a lot of late night, low light creative work and when I initially purchased this Dell 2407WFP display I was stressed about the backlight being far too bright.

Even at the lowest native brightness (front panel adjustment) and going through Apple's step-by-step calibration controls it was multiple times brighter than the Apple Cinema Display it replaced. It was not usable.

Now, rather than selling the Dell display, with this application I can use it. I can stare at my monitor and get some work done without a painfully glaring backlight which would only lead to severe headaches and eventually blindness.

thank you Splasm Software!

I set my monitor to D50 (slightly yellower than the non-calibrated blue tint. When I click on the "Brightness Control" slider it immediately shifts my gamma and calibration setting. Unfortunately, it does MORE than scale the brightness.

Would love to see a fix since this Apple 30" display will NOT dim much at all. Apple Tech had NO idea on how to dim the monitor below the lowest setting.

If this "color shift" is corrected I would give it 5 stars.

Unfortunately, when I use this app to alter the Brightness, it switches from my colorsync profile, ruining the display quality. If somehow the Brightness Control can be made to preserve the display profile settings and only control brightness (and contrast), it would be a killer app, IMO.

Note: In most cases one cannot adjust brightness without adjusting contrast. The two adjustments are too intertwined to be adjusted independently.

So, I'd give this app A+ for a creative idea, A for effort, and D for the final product. But it's got the gift, and with some development, it could be amazing.