Windows 10 HDR - once enabled desktop is displaying as HDR 100% of the time

[dontpokethebear 0]

Hi,

I'm on the latest 1903 update for Windows 10 and I have this problem with HDR. Instead of only triggering on when playing a full screen HDR app, my entire desktop is being displayed in HDR along with all Windowed applications. Does anyone know of any way to fix this? Thanks!

[Aemony 149]

That’s the intended way the HDR feature in Display settings functions. It have always forced the whole desktop experience of Windows to HDR mode, and since v1803 it automatically tonemaps the SDR content into an appropriate higher dynamic range (before this you had dim or washed out SDR content while in HDR).

Fullscreen HDR that enables itself separately from that option makes, if I remember it correctly, use of Nvidia or AMD specific HDR calls to enable HDR output of the exclusive fullscreen mode.

[dontpokethebear 0]

Thanks for the advice! I have an Nvidia 1080 ti. After experimenting I noticed that if I play a game using exclusive full screen + HDR, when I exit that game the desktop is presented in SDR as usual, and HDR triggers whenever an app launches that makes use of it. This is my preferred method, as this is how HDR works with proprietary devices like game consoles and blu ray players.

 

The reason I was concerned was that the desktop looked like absolute garbage tonemapped into HDR. There was next to no contrast, terrible saturation, and a loss to sharpness as well. Genuine HDR looks fine on my monitor (Samsung CHG70 27) and Freesync even works with Nvidia, I just wanted to figure out how to have my monitor look the best at all times without having to change settings for different use case scenarios.