Adjust brightness in increments that are smaller than "standard"?

OldGrantonian · 23 Sep 2016

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I have Win 7 Home Premium, Dell Inspiron 6400.

Some laptops that I buy have a brightness setting that suits me exactly. But my current laptop setting is either too bright or too dark. It would be fine if it were half-way between the settings

Is there any sneaky crafty way to reduce the intervals.

Some drawing packages such as Inkscape can move objects by tiny increments, using various key combinations with L and R arrows, such as Shift, Alt, Ctrl, Shift+Alt, Shift+Ctrl, Alt+Ctrl, and Shift+Alt+Ctrl. (For the last of these, you need to use your tongue or your nose for the Alt key.) But each combination produces the same slider increment.

I would be grateful for any advice.
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Beowulf1 · 23 Sep 2016

You can use your mouse pointer to control brightness in windows mobility center. Click win and x to acess it.

OldGrantonian · 23 Sep 2016

Beowulf1 said:

You can use your mouse pointer to control brightness in windows mobility center.

Thanks for the response, but your method has the same issue as the other methods: the slider does not move "smoothly". It jumps in standard increments or steps.

In fact, in your method, it's easy to see that the movement is plus or minus 6 units per step. (It doesn't say what the units are.) (Edited: The highest value is 100, so that implies that the steps are in percentages.)

If someone knows how to move the slider plus or minus 2 units, that would be great. Maybe it's a registry thing?
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Beowulf1 · 25 Sep 2016

Check if there is any entry in 'regedit' here-
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\monitor\Parameters
by the name 'MinimumStepPercentage'
If Yes then change value to 1
If not then try merging the attached registry.
You may check the .reg file by right clicking it and going to edit.
After merging /editing please reboot.

OldGrantonian · 25 Sep 2016

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Beowulf1 said:

Check if there is any entry in 'regedit' here-
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\monitor\Parameters
by the name 'MinimumStepPercentage'
If Yes then change value to 1
If not then try merging the attached registry.
You may check the .reg file by right clicking it and going to edit.
After merging /editing please reboot.

A search for 'MinimumStepPercentage' shows that your method works for Lenovo machines.

It did not work on my Dell.

The Ubuntu forums say that it does not matter what value you put in the registry - it will always be rounded up to the minimum hardware step. If that value is "1" - fine. Otherwise it could be rounded up to 6% - as in my case. Some people get 10% steps (ouch).

Anyway, thanks for trying to help

Callender · 25 Sep 2016

Try getting brightness to the best setting (even if it's not quite right) then try adjusting gamma.

Here's a tiny portable program to adjust gamma.

Gammit! Download

It's a single executable and runs without installation. It's not digitally signed so some security software will not like it.

Adjust brightness in increments that are smaller than "standard"?-gammit.jpg

OldGrantonian · 25 Sep 2016

Callender said:

Try getting brightness to the best setting (even if it's not quite right) then try adjusting gamma.

Here's a tiny portable program to adjust gamma.

Thanks for the tip.

The initial results are good. I'll experiment in various ambient conditions.
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Callender · 25 Sep 2016

Well it should make colors more pleasing anyway especially white. I have another Gamma correction application on my machine at work but it requires installation and currently I cannot remember the name of it. Will post details maybe later this week.