Existing users, 
 Shades - 1.2b1adjust display brightness with high precision |
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Product Description:
Shades is a FREE utility for controlling the brightness of your screen. It runs in the background providing easy control over the brightness of your display via a slick Mac-like interface, with greater dynamic range and finer granularity than the built-in controls.
Unlike other solutions, Shades works by obscuring your screen with a darkened overlay. It doesn't change your display settings and won't screw up your colour profile. It also means you won't lose your cursor!
What's new in this version:
- Shades preferences are now administered using a System Preferences panel.
- Shades now provides independent controls for multiple displays, and will remember settings for external displays even when they are detached.
- Hold down Alt when dragging the slider to adjust the brightness of all connected displays
- Now works correctly with Expose, Spaces and Virtue Desktops.
- You can now specify a tint colour for Shades to use when adjusting brightness.
- Menu slider can now optionally display the brightness setting as a percentage.
- Shades no longer affects the brightness of screenshots or pixel colour samples taken whilst it is running.
- Shades now automatically detects when displays are attached or detached and does not need to be restarted.
- Shades can now be set to check for updates periodically whilst running.
- Now offers a choice of two menu bar icons (or none at all).
- Shades can now run without any on screen controls, relying purely on hot key control.
- Brightness hot keys can now be held down instead of being pressed repeatedly.
- Brightness setting fades in smoothly when Shades is launched or quit.
- Shades no longer appears in the Dock when running.
- No longer causes Quicktime or DVD playback performance issues on older systems.
- Preferences have been simplified by stripping out little-used features, and expanded to include new options.
- Shades now varies display brightness by controlling display gamma settings. This is more efficient than drawing an overlay, and more compatible with Spaces and Expose. Existing monitor colour balance is preserved, so Shades won't cause problems for graphic designers.
- The launch-at-login feature is now automatic. Simply start or stop Shades from the preferences pane, and if it is still running when you log out, it will launch automatically when you log in again.
- Shades controls are no longer drawn at full brightness. This has both benefits and disadvantages, but is an inevitable consequence of using gamma instead of an overlay.
- Shades has been optimised to use less processor time, and now consumes no measurable amount of CPU when running.
Operating System Requirements:
This product is designed to run on the following operating systems:
- Mac OS X 10.5 Intel
- Mac OS X 10.5 PPC
- Mac OS X 10.4 Intel
- Mac OS X 10.4 PPC
- Mac OS X 10.3.9
- Mac OS X 10.3
Additional Requirements:
- Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
Screenshots:
Download Links:
Download Shades Version 1.2b1 (File Size: 4.6M)
Download Links:
Download Shades Current Version (File Size: 6.0M)
Your Installed Versions:
Feedback Summary:
| Version 1.2b1: | |||||
| Overall Rating: |  (5.0) |
Features: | (5.0) |
Support: |  (4.0) |
| Ease of Use: | (5.0) |
Quality / Stability: | (5.0) |
Price: | (5.0) |
Key to Types of Feedback:
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Usage Tips 
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Featured Reviews
Snow Leopard support - Version: 1.2b2, 9/5/2009 06:21AM PST
provkitir
Most Recent Replies: View All 1 Replies
- Snow Leopard support
Thank you, thank you, thank you! - Version: 1.2b2, 8/10/2009 09:38PM PST
red_ridinghood
This program is exactly what I wanted. Until Apple provides a fix for this issue, I'll be using Shades. You've saved my retinas! Muah!
wonderful!!! - Version: 1.2b2, 4/4/2009 04:10PM PST
apple--guy
absolutely fantastic. nice polish and functionality. i would pay a shareware fee, but for now, will donate $10.00 to continued development.
my new 24" imac was burning my eyes out until i found this great app. 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.
btw, thanks to the reviewers about screen calibration. i will check into this, although, after turning on shades my calibration looks perfect to my naked eye.
my new 24" imac was burning my eyes out until i found this great app. 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.
btw, thanks to the reviewers about screen calibration. i will check into this, although, after turning on shades my calibration looks perfect to my naked eye.
Shades is one of the best applications I have downloaded for my iMac. It works perfectly until I upgraded to snow leopard. After the upgrade, the Shades Preferences became unresponsive and the shades program cannot be shut off and restarted, also, the brightness bar on the menu cannot be tuned and it is stuck at the level of brightness prior to the upgrade.
I'm not sure if others are having the same issues, thanks again for this great product!
Tom