NegativeScreen is a Windows application allowing you to invert your screen colors.
Apart from accessibility matters, this software is especially useful when you are surfing on the internet in a dark room, and the screen is dazzling you.
NegativeScreen was designed to work without impacting the performances and fluidity of your computer.
Unlike the Windows Magnifier, which is also capable of such color inversion, it was specifically designed to be easy and convenient to use.
Different inversion modes are provided, including “smart” modes, allowing blacks and whites inversion, while keeping colors (about) the sames.
Normal
Simple Inversion
Smart Inversion
Usage
The color inversion takes effect immediately after starting the program.
NegativeScreen comes with a minimal graphic interface in the form of a system tray icon with a context menu.
You can toggle the inversion by clicking the tray icon, and access more features by right clicking it.
Along with these commands, you can also control NegativeScreen only by using hot keys. Read on…
Default hot keys
Win+Alt+H: Halt immediately the program
Win+Alt+N: switch between normal mode and colors inversion mode (Night vision 🙂)
F3: smart inversion 2 - high saturation, good pure colors
F4: smart inversion 3 - overall desaturated, yellows and blues plain bad, actually relaxing and very usable
F5: smart inversion 4 - high saturation, yellows and blues plain bad, actually quite readable
F6: smart inversion 5 - not so readable, good colors. (CMY colors a bit desaturated, still more saturated than normal)
F7: negative sepia
F8: negative gray scale
F9: negative red
F10: red
F11: grayscale
Keep in mind you can always change these defaults by editing the configuration file.
Configuration
The version 2.0 (and 1.13) introduces a configuration file allowing to tweak almost everything in NegativeScreen.
You can now choose your own hot keys if you don’t like the defaults, and you can even add you own color effects!
This requires some knowledge in color matrices though.
I may add an easy way to build some in a future version…
If the configuration file (negativescreen.conf) is missing, you can use the “Edit Configuration” menu to regenerate the default one.
Should something go wrong after edition (bad hot key…), you can simply delete the configuration file, the internal default configuration will be used.
Windows XP Version
Unfortunately, the Windows Magnification API this application uses, is not available on Windows XP.
Therefore, I’m sorry to tell, there will be no XP compatible version of NegativeScreen.
Downloads
NegativeScreen is freely available, along with its source code, under GPL license.
Version 2.5, 2017-05-28
------------------------
- [fixed] when an instance is already running, enable its color effect instead of showing an unhelpful message about it
- [fixed] no longer crash when trying to set a color effect while the Windows Magnifier color inversion is enabled
- [added] a basic web api is now part of NegativeScreen! See the readme for more information
- [added] new EnableApi configuration option, defaults to false
- [added] new ApiListeningUri configuration option, defaults to listening on port 8990, localhost only
- [added] new About window, available from the systray menu
- [added] add a retro-compatible user-specific fallback location for the configuration file:
- if the file "%AppData%/NegativeScreen/negativescreen.conf" exists, it will be used in priority.
- if the "negativescreen.conf" file beside the executable cannot be modified,
trying to edit the current configuration will result in a configuration in AppData being created.
Version 2.4, 2014-11-30
------------------------
- [fixed] force the working directory to be the one of the executable (so the .conf file is found when starting from the cli)
Version 2.3, 2014-03-28
------------------------
- [fixed] crash if more than one custom color effect is added without an associated hot key
- [added] (re)added the ShowAeroWarning configuration option from the version 1.*
- [added] check box next to the current color effect in the right click menu
Version 2.2, 2013-02-17
------------------------
- [fixed] avoid crash if a hot key cannot be registered
- [added] new ActiveOnStartup configuration option
Version 2.1, 2012-12-22
------------------------
- [fixed] crash on Windows 8 due to inter-threads calls
(this was not a problem on Windows 7)
- [added] new MainLoopRefreshTime configuration option
Version 2.0, 2012-12-14
------------------------
Major update:
- reworked entirely
- better performances
- smooth transitions
- graphic interface (minimal)
- configuration file:
- fine grained configuration
- custom hotkeys
- custom color effects
Version 1.14, 2014-11-30
------------------------
- [fixed] force the working directory to be the one of the executable (so the .conf file is found when starting from the cli)
Version 1.13, 2013-07-04
------------------------
- [added] implemented the configuration file for the version 1.*
- [added] configuration option to disable the message warning about aero being disabled
Version 1.12, 2012-12-14
------------------------
- [fixed] crash on Windows 8
Version 1.11, 2012-06-26
------------------------
- [added] new red and negative red filters bound on F9 and F10
Version 1.10, 2012-05-15
------------------------
- [fixed] infinite flickering on Vista (introduced in 1.8)
Version 1.9, 2012-04-16
------------------------
- [fixed] stupid bug if the Windows taskbar is vertical
Version 1.8, 2012-03-22
------------------------
- [fixed] execution is no longer prevented if aero is disabled (previous bug corrected)
however, the performances will still be horrible
Version 1.7, 2012-03-21
------------------------
- [fixed] works as expected when using custom DPI settings
Version 1.6, 2012-02-27
------------------------
- [fixed] crash on X86 on launch
- [fixed] prevent execution if aero is disabled
(prevent undesirable behaviours: black screens, 100% CPU usage...)
Version 1.5, 2012-02-16
------------------------
- [fixed] (internal) ColorMatrix implementation
- [added] new feature: choice between 9 inversion modes
(smart mode, etc... see readme for details)
Version 1.4, 2012-02-09
------------------------
- [fixed] does not crash anymore on Windows Vista
Version 1.3, 2012-02-01
------------------------
- [fixed] multi-screen should finally work!
after a lot of tests and coding, I re-thought completely the architecture
- [knownbug] in some screen configurations, if the primary screen if smaller than the other screen,
the second larger screen has a black border at its bottom.
It could be a bug in the Windows API...
Version 1.2, 2011-09-18
------------------------
- [fixed] multi-screen support (again) : bug with main screen on the right
Version 1.1, 2011-09-13
------------------------
- [fixed] multi-screen support
- [fixed] when halted while paused, the application never stopped
Version 1.0, 2011-09-06
------------------------
- Initial release
It’s unfortunately not possible with the current version of NegativeScreen. It was technically possible with the old version, and I released a modified (but a bit crude) version here if you want to give it a shot: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
This may be related to the user-specific fallback configuration when NegativeScreen starts from a read-only location.
NegativeScreen can be installed machine-wide, but allows different users to have their own configuration file.
For this to work, NegativeScreen first tries to load a user configuration from %AppData%/NegativeScreen/negativescreen.conf before trying to load a configuration file located next to the executable.
In your case, C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp is probably read-only, so if you used the "Edit configuration" menu in the application, the file has probably been created in %AppData%/NegativeScreen/negativescreen.conf.
As mentioned above, this means that if this user-specific file indeed exists, it will be loaded, and a negativescreen.conf file next to the executable will be ignored.
TL;DR: if you want to make sure the negativescreen.conf file next to the executable is actually used, delete %AppData%/NegativeScreen/negativescreen.conf.
Hi, thanks for the update...I was quite excited that you had sussed this out but then I found my %AppData% directory only to find that there is no NegativeScreen folder present.
I am doing a search on the entire drive to find instances of negativescreen.conf and will report back
Hi, here on Win7 x64 I'm having the same issue with the v2.5 update; the ActiveOnStartUp is set to false but on every startup it starts anyway the negative screen. The negativescreen.conf is located next to the executable. That was not happening with the previous version, so I'll back to that one. Cheers.
Hi, Bro! one more time thank you fro you great programm.
Im using it on my desktop, there I have a keyboard and its ok. But also Im using it on a ASUS T100TAM transformer book. In case I using it like a tablet, it has no keyboard. Then in become a bit difficult to switch display mode "win+alt+n". I would like to as you to help me to find a way, how can I make an Icon which I place on START line (bottom of windows screen). And when I press whis icon it toogle display mode. Is it possible?
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to add a button in the task bar to do what you want.
I guess you could try to configure the systray icons to always show (there is an option to do that).
Another option would be to find a physical button on your tablet and bind it to the toggle command (not sure how you would find the code of the button though...).
Finally, with some work, it would be possible to create another independent application with maybe a simple topmost window and a button that would send a command to NegativeScreen to toggle its effect. I'm not sure it's worth the effort...
I will try to make the tray Icon always visibly. I hope it helps. But to tell the true I don't remember for sure maybe about 1 year ago I already tryed to do this 🙂 Thank you, man!
Hi, thanks for the great program!
I was wondering if it's possible already, or if you have any plans in the future, to make the program run at Startup. I realize that it's only a quick click to get NegativeScreen started but it would be nice to have it running from the get-go.
Thanks again!
By accident, my screen gone to B&W mode and never return to normal color mode.
I re-installed NegativeScreen and did some modification on color matrix but, I can't get my screen back.
Another user screen on the same PC is not affected. So, I think that I can fix this with simple operation on one of user-dedicated files. But, I can't recognize what is it.
I really need some help to recover my screen.
If it happened without you changing anything with NegativeScreen, and it does it even after you deleted NegativeScreen, I’m afraid this is not NegativeScreen doing this to your computer.
If you are on Windows 10 you can open the task manager and see in the “startup” tab if there is anything that might cause your problem. Otherwise you are on your own to try and find the program responsible. Sorry.
Thanks for your comment.
Something dropped on my keyboard when I was typing it and my screen gone to B&W mode. Just after that, NegativeScreen works well, inversions, sepia, and so on. But only Alt+Win+N did not call back my color screen.
Strangely, mouse pointer and login/logoff/shutdown screen is displays in color! So, I think that this is not concerned with H/W but S/W.
Temporarily, I created other user on that PC. Temporary user has color-display as I expected.
I'm using windows 10.
Anyway, thank you for your answer.
Thanks for this program, it has saved me until I get cataracts surgery, much better than the simple inversion in Windows Magnifier!
I was going to ask about hotkeys for discrete enable/disable, which I did see one other post about, but I came up with a solution that someone else might find useful. Simply create a color matrix with no adjustment for "off", and use your preferred mode for "on". This makes the toggle not so useful, but I plan to emulate that in another program anyway, so I can trigger other events when inverting or not inverting (specifically different wallpapers).
Would it be possible to run NegativeScreen for a specific application via command line argument OR from a batch file - enabling/turning NegativeScreen on before application starts and subsequently disabling/turning off when quitting?
Do you have an example of how to set up NegativeScreen to start when a specific application is started and kill when application is either minimized or exited?
Any potential for using NegativeScreen only for particular colors? I'm trying to just invert the three colors used by Skype for Business so I can read it as it doesn't adopt high contrast.
NegativeScreen has been extremely valuable to me. I use it everyday. Thanks!
One thing I;d like to do, but haven't been able to figure it out, is transform everything to inverted black and white. Like Windows High Contrast mode but without dropping out of Aero mode.
Another thing I'd like is to have a transform to change one color to black. I have some apps that use gray 0xABABAB as the background. I can't see black or white text on the gray background. If I could change 0xABABAB to 0x000000 or 0xFFFFFF it would really help. Is that possible?
being legally blind kinda sucks, but NegativeScreen helps me stay productive!
You can try this matrix (add it to the configuration file) to transform to inverted black and white:
Inverted Binary=
{ -127, -127, -127, 0, 0 }
{ -127, -127, -127, 0, 0 }
{ -127, -127, -127, 0, 0 }
{ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 }
{ 181, 181, 181, 0, 1 }
But you might be disappointed with the result...
The high contrast mode has been specially engineered for this purpose, and it's likely impossible to do it well with a global transformation.
Regarding the single color transformation, it's not possible. NegativeScreen uses global transformation matrices, and you can't just pick a color and change it without affecting other colors.
That said, it should be possible to increase contrast with a transformation matrix. I will look into it.
I'm not sure if this was answered... would it be possible to have NegativeScreen watch for CTRL+WIN+LEFT/RIGHT keystrokes, and turn on/off NegativeScreen based on which desktop I'm viewing? [This is not multi-monitor, but rather multi-desktop].
[I could perhaps see this being confused by using WIN+TAB and selecting a different desktop, but maybe there must be a system value thats exposed somewhere]
If this would work, this would give me a way to use NegativeScreen with specific programs [Chrome doesn't need it, but Evernote does need it... just full-screen them on different desktops]
Don't worry about this, unless you want to pursue it. I'm finding that ClearType is preventing this from working for me, unless I go greyscale inversion [Even though I love the smart inversion generally]
I'm not sure a lot of people actually use the multi desktop capabilities of Windows 10, but it could make sense... Thanks for suggesting it, I'll keep it in the back of my head, even if it does not work for you like you said.
I too am having trouble using negative screen and Chrome. I'm using windows 10, never had this problem in 7.
Chrome will jump back and forth between inverted and not randomly, It makes chrome unusable for me. I tried disabling hardware acceleration and it made no difference. Has a fix been identified for this?
I would like to make a suggestion to this very useful application. It's about being able to set an automated toggle. If the app detects that the screen is darker than average, it should toggle off the Negative Screen because it is not needed anymore. On the contrary, if it detects that the screen is lighter than average, it toggles back the Negative Screen. This would be useful when often switching between dark and light screens.
Hi there 🙂 I realy tried to get into color matrices, but i cant seem to get my wanted result.
I have a Music-Program called "Bitwig" and i want to replace darkgrey (0,62, 0,62, 0,62) and light grey(0,85, 0,85, 0,85) with pitch black, but leave all other colors (blue,orange,purple,etc.) untoched. Is that possible?
and If so how can i calculate the correct matrix? 🙂 I also worked with "ColorMatrixViewer" but cant seem to get the right paramters.
First off, this has been one of my most important apps on Windows for probably 5 years now, thank you!! I have it on over 90% of the time I'm on my computer.
I just had to switch to Windows 10 at work, and now am having issues with NegativeScreen.
For example, Chrome keeps switching between inverted and not, depending whether my mouse is over a link (it inverts the Chrome window if my cursor is over a hyperlink on the page, then when I move it away from the link, the inversion get disabled (just in the Chrome window) after a few seconds)
Similar behavior with Atom IDE. If I switch focus to a different window, Atom window is no longer inverted.
Unfortunately this is a problem that has been reported a number of times already, but I can't do anything about it since I'm only calling a Windows api without much control over it.
A workaround that seems to work is to disable hardware acceleration in chrome. Hardly an ideal solution, I know...
Yeah, it seems like using Magnifier directly has the exact same problem.
How do you solve this problem for yourself? By not using Windows 10? 😄
This is so important to me, that I will probably start looking into coding on top of a graphics driver, or maybe hacking the monitor firmware, unless someone has already done something similar... Will definitely use your smart inversion matrix (alt 2) in that case, which has been working so well for me!
Have you tried to use NegativeScreen in fullscreen mode? I find a bug there. Every time that I change to fullcreen mode after a few seconds that application stops inverting the color.
sorry, u discovered the stupid magic that if you rightclick the app when its open in the lower right list of apps in the taskbar, you can, using magic, magically go straight to the configuration settings
now that im all done, i just want to say; thank you for making this. it was very accessible even to a young teen like me, and now i have a bunch of cool effects available on my computer! yaaayyyy.... i even added sepia and hueshifting!
i know that this wasnt originally a setting you implemented, but i think it should still be noted that when hueshifting the image on your screen, it the colorslose contrast from one another slightly.
you can delete these comments if you want.... but seriously. when using smart inversion (the high saturation version), along with hueshift, colors lose contrast from one another to a small degree and i feel like this can be fixed
I know the colors are not exactly the same. That's why there are more than one smart mode: because it's not perfect. Also, no this can't be fixed (but you are free to try).
Now please stop spamming 🙂
please just delete my comments or tell me how... i dont want to spam but i dont know what else to do... i am learning a lot about color matrices from this program and i thank you very much for making it though.... thanks for the reply! hopefully i wont have anything else to comment about
My mean is
The first execution, change colors (State one to State two;have change)
The second execution, change colors(State two to State one;no change)
The third execution, change colors (State one to State two;have change)
Hi, I'm having a hard time understanding what you are trying to say.
Basically, you see a message when starting the application again after it's already running, is that it?
This should be fixed with the latest update (from just before june). If you are still seeing a message with the current version, I'm going to need more information...
How does one edit the Win+Alt+N hotkey to disable/enable NegativeScreen? Just upgraded to Office365 and OneNote uses the same hotkey and overrides its application to NegativeScreen. If anyone knows how to edit the OneNote hotkey, I don't mind doing that instead.
Firstly, thank you. I've used this for years on Windows 7. Now I'm on 10 and I cannot locate the configuration file to save my life. Where is it? All I see is; changelog, license, negative screen, and readme.
This hotkey conflict withy Onenote is driving me insane and I can't find a work around. Please help!
It's supposed to be next to the executable, but if it does not exist, you can create it from the default configuration by using the "Edit Configuration" menu. (Right click on the NegativeScreen icon in the systray)
Hi, thank you for your work!
I have a question: is it possible to invert the colors of a specific monitor? In the version 1.3 there was a multi-screen feature.
Sorry, this is not possible with the current version. The only version where it was possible was a crude beta version. There is an open issue on github where this feature has been requested: https://github.com/mlaily/NegativeScreen/issues/2
Hey,
Is it possible to add an option of "do not apply any effects after running"?
I would like to add this program to start-up so I could use key combinations when needed. 🙂
Just a heads up: the Windows 10 Creators update added something called "Full Screen Optimizations" which disables the color transformation effect for borderless fullscreen windows. It can be disabled per-application in the properties of the .exe file. Just spent 15 minutes wondering why the effect was disabled in Overwatch after updating Windows. 😕
Hey! I just saw that it was you who had put together a chocolatey package for negativescreen. Unfortunately the package is broken and outdated. Would you be so kind to consider updating the package and maybe create one for your ColorMatrix Viewer as well? This would be awesome!
This application is really amazing. The "smart inversion" setting, together with it's alternative options, exceeds my expectations. I would readily pay for this.
Hi. I very much like the Neg.Screen program. But it is not running smoothly with Chrome under Win10. It does make negative all other programs unde Win10 but Chrome remains the same. What could be the fault?
P.S. When moving cursor on a hyperlink, it goes to negative but when just on plain surface, it wont go to negative (although the program is up and running).
Thanks developer this was my solution, from having to quit my job due to headache and eyestrain , unable to look at letters for more than 5-10 minutes without problems.
i don't even have to use Glasses anymore..
So thank you so much, i hope you realize that you have helped a lot of people by presenting this solution to eye strain problems due to brigth pixels on LCD monitors and having jobs that requires to look at the monitor 8 hours a day...
Alsothe problem will not go away, as we get more digitalized the issue will be more spreading in years to come, so people will continue to cherish this application i'm sure.
As a person with a retina vision impairment, I love this program. Apologies if this has already been asked but is it possible to invert all the text and backgrounds but not invert the images?
Is it possible to switch the Windows app mode from dark to light when the app is on? Is it possible to change the desktop background when the app is on too? Running Win10 without this awesome app, I use the Win10's dark app mode, a black desktop background, and a black taskbar. It'd be really slick for the app to keep those things black when the app is on too.
This works fine under win10x64, I am so happy to finally find a solution to change the view to greyscale and back at any time. This helps me so much with photo-edeting, only Picasa used to have this feature as well, thank you for all you work <3
Thank you so so much, you are my hero, you are nothing short of genius! I have been wishing for app like this to exist for almost a decade and now finally, I can try what it would be like to have my screen in monochrome 😄 It's so gorgeous, can't take my eyes off of it!
Great program. I've been using magnifier until I found this and the quick toggle is neat. I run a multi-monitor setup and was wondering how difficult it would be to have the option to select which monitors have inversion and which don't. Thanks.
You are not the first one to ask this. This is theoretically possible, but would probably not run as well as the current full-screen version. See this issue: https://github.com/mlaily/NegativeScreen/issues/2
Hey there, been using this for years--haven't found anything like this on Mac. I'm pretty handy in Xcode, Xamarin, and some C#..., and I see this is open source.. Is this possible to do on mac (Smart Inversion) perhaps something with the ICC profiles? Would love to see a Mac release and I'm looking for a new project 😉 Feel free to email.
Thanks for your interest.
I don't use a Mac and since NegativeScreen uses Windows API, the useful part of the code is not directly portable.
That said, if you find a way to apply a color matrix transformation to the entire display on Mac, you could relatively easily port most if not all NegativeScreen's features to this platform, including smart inversion.
Regarding ICC profiles, I briefly looked into it at the very beginning of the project, but did not find an obvious way to use color matrices, or any other mean to dramatically change the colors.
Awesome program. Just thought I'd share my negative-green preset, designed to imitate the appearance of an old green-phosphor monochrome CRT or the display in The Matrix. I find it fairly pleasant to use in a dark room.
Grayscaling is by the formula used for Y in YUV. Green reaches full intensity at about 80% black. Darker than that and some red and blue are added to make a lighter green that "blooms". This gives about as authentic an appearance as you can get without a pixel shader to bleed bright pixels into neighbors. The "blooming" green effect also improves the appearance of ClearType text over a plain negative-green based on the negative-red effect included with the program.
Saturation is part of a color's properties in a HSB model, and I don't think it makes sense to "invert" a hue, saturation, or brightness, so I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
The simple negative matrix is just applying the formula y=-1*x+1 to each color channel (RBG) where x is the original channel value, and y is the resulting value.
Thanks a lot for creating this useful application, really helpful for reading PDF at night. For this purpose, I add custom matrix (F12 seems unassigned 🙂) based on grayscale just to dim white or any contrast colors.
thanks for the great software Melvyn
if is there any way to make all the colors go black except for the pure white (255)
please help me out it's like a life saving tool dude 🙂
You want to make everything go black except pure white?
The result are not very useful in my opinion, but you could try with this matrix:
{ 600, 600, 600, 0, 0 }
{ 1200, 1200, 1200, 0, 0 }
{ 200, 200, 200, 0, 0 }
{ 1000, 1000, 1000, 1, 0 }
{ -2999, -2999, -2999, 0, 1 }
Thanks, man, I know it's not very useful for you, but it's going to help me find the error we get from the e-commerce website.
sometimes we mistakenly leave not pure white (254 to 250) background, and it's hard to see the difference, opening every image in Photoshop is not possible so now you now you save us from a headache thanks. 🙂
Hello,
thank you a lot for NegativeScreen and for your good work. I use it on my PC and on my tablet. The PC runs with Win10 Pro, the tablet with Win10 Home. Both are on the same release and build. From one day to another NegativeScreen quits with an error message. It tells I should install .NET 4.0.30319. I was not sure if I have .NET installed so I downloaded the current version from Microsoft and tried to install it. But the installer of .NET says, it is already installed.
On the PC NegativeScreen runs fine as usual.
Please can you help me to fix this error? I'm so happy with the program. Because of my visual disabilities I need a dark background an white forground.
Needless to say, your program is really amazing. I just want to point out a technical issue. The only weakness of this program is ClearType™, a sub-pixel font rendering technology, supported by Microsoft. Why? Well.. the following is just my guess for this situation. ClearType™ depends on the assumption that subpixel arrangement of LCD display usually follows R,G,B order, from left to right. However, unfortuantely, this reasonable assumption does not make sense for us, who are using the “brightness” inversion only, and leaving “hue” intact.
Actually, I prefer to use the option, [F4: smart inversion 3], however, this inversion cannot convert black letters into purely white letters, but into bright pink letters, which is, of course, not a desirable result. (But if you try to invert the black letters in MS Word 2016 with NegativeScreen, you will get purely white letters. That’s because MS Word 2016 has abandoned these ClearType™ things from font rendering.)
One way to avoid such pink letters is "to enlarge the font size of Windows to 150%", (you can find that option at "Display Settings") because it reduces such bad, unintended effect of subpixel rendering.
Thank you.
Yes you are right, ClearType is a huge annoyance when using the smart inversion modes...
Unfortunately, disabling it, while it does remove the pink fringe, does not really improve the readability, so as you noted in another comment, it's not a proper solution. (Besides, not all applications use the native ClearType, so it's not even always an option)
I guess enlarging the font size works because characters become much bigger than sub-pixels, so it's less noticeable. But not everyone will be happy with such a solution 🙂
As high-dpi screens become more widespread, this will hopefully become less of an issue.
Would it be possible to configure the tool to NOT adjust the colors of specific applications? I have some applications that are already dark and would like to leave those untouched.
Disabling inversion only for specific applications is not possible and it will most probably stay this way because it's technically impossible with the current implementation. Sorry.
Im using the software on windows 7 Panasonic FZ-M1 Personal computer tablet. The top part of the screen does not show when i turn on to any mode. The mode does activate but only the bottom part of the screen can be seen. I would attach a screen shot of my screen if the was an option to attach a photo
You are probably experiencing a known bug, occurring on portrait mode displays... (I guess you are using your tablet vertically?)
I unfortunately can't do much about it, since the bug is present inside the Microsoft API NegativeScreen is using.
To convince yourself, you can try to use the Windows Magnifier, and set it to invert the screen's colors. You will probably notice the same behaviour as with NegativeScreen.
Nyiko:
Hello,
Im using the software on windows 7 Panasonic FZ-M1 Personal computer tablet. The top part of the screen does not show when i turn on to any mode. The mode does activate but only the bottom part of the screen can be seen. I would attach a screen shot of my screen if the was an option to attach a photo
Hello, I just wanted to point out that if you download the legacy version (1.4) it will work in portrait mode as well, as long as you can survive without the improvements of the latest versions.
Is it possible to run the application on windows startup without inverting the colors? so that it is only running in the background and when needed can be used with the hotkeys?
You can use ActiveOnStartup=false in the configuration file so that no effect will be active when the application starts.
You can then put a shortcut to NegativeScreen in your startup folder: http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/s/starfold.htm
Any Chance to get the Multi-Screen Feature again?
So that it is possible to use the tool only on a dedicated screen in a Multi-Screen System? Or even on a single Program-Window?
This is unfortunately not possible with the better and more efficient full screen mode the current version uses.
As I said in the past, I might one day implement the previous method so that it's possible to switch between full screen mode and window/screen mode, but this is a lot of work, and it is not on my agenda for now...
This is the most useful application for people who suffers RP (Retinitis Pigmentosa). You are a genius!. Many thanks! It should be implemented in every OS!
I was wondering, would it be possible to implement color correction to specific parts of the screen and then apply it as overlay (or some similar) blending mode.
That could really help with monitors that have color uniformity problem on their monitors.
For example I have dell monitor that's more green on the left and more red on the right side.
So I was wondering if it would be possible to use this app for correcting something like that?
I think what you describe would theoretically be possible to do, but rather hard to implement (for example, how would you get the right irregular shape to properly blend the overlay to match your screen?)
In any case, this is too far away from the intended purpose of NegativeScreen. This is not the right app for your use case, sorry.
Shape does not have to be 100% accurate but with decent dslr you can take an image of the screen to just get the general idea about the deviations.
For example, that hue shift that some monitor have, are generally linear and most basic gradient fill with inverse color values fixes the problem.
Of course it does introduce some small banding in some specific cases, but it's choosing lesser of two evils in that case.
First of all, I'd like to say thanks for this awesome app. Unfortunately, I'm also reporting that I'm having a peculiar issue when I run it. I have dual 1080 monitors in Eyefinity (portrait mode 2160 x 1920); when I run NegativeScreen, the left hand of the left monitor becomes corrupted (around 240px from the edge). When I turn off Eyefinity the issue disappears. I hope you have possible workarounds (except NOT using Eyefinity 🙂)
Well, I'm sorry to hear about your issue, but if you are using the latest version (> 2.*) I'm afraid I can't do anything for you 😕
Starting with 2.0, NegativeScreen uses the full-screen Windows Magnifier API, meaning I don't have any control other than applying a color effect.
You have probably found a bug in the API (Microsoft code). Just to make sure, did you try to use the Windows Magnifier color inversion? Did you notice the same problem?
Hello, congrats on this nice utility. A couple of questions:
where can I download the executable of version 2.5? I would be interested in trying the web api version
would it be possible to run the application by specifying the name of the color effect as argument on the command line?
Thank you.
Kind regards.
Federico.
Using command line arguments would certainly be possible, but the feature is not currently implemented, and I have no plan to do it for now.
The web api is supposed to be the way to go for automation. I suppose another way to do it would be to edit the configuration file to change the default color effect, then restart NegativeScreen...
Anyway, let me know what you think about the web api if you use it.
I was wondering if it was possible to implement a setting in the config file or something to allow me to choose which part of the screen will have its color inverted, because sometimes i don't want the whole screen to have inverted colors.
Thank you for creating this program. I've been looking for something like this for a long time. Simple, but necessary- Might give my retinas a few more years of quality life.
Would it be possible for NegativeScreen to detect when the screen is locked and switch to normal colours? I'm using it on Windows 10 and it insists on pretty pictures which look weird when the colours are inverted.
No problem, I've added something to my AutoHotKey script to kill NegativeScreen on lock and restart on unlock. It's a bit messy in that it leaves an orphaned tray icon but that is a minor problem to me ( I can't send keystrokes to NegativeScreen because it has no window and the lock screen swallows any fake keypresses I send). Code below:
; Stop NegativeScreen when locked, run again when unlocked.
WM_WTSSESSION_CHANGE(wParam, lParam, Msg, hWnd) {
static init:=(DllCall("Wtsapi32.dll\WTSRegisterSessionNotification", UInt, A_ScriptHwnd, UInt, 1) && OnMessage(0x02B1, "WM_WTSSESSION_CHANGE"))
if (wParam=0x7) { ; lock
Process Close, NegativeScreen.exe
} else if (wParam=0x8) { ; unlock
if (A_Is64bitOS) {
Run %HOMEPATH%\PortableApps\PortableApps\NegativeScreenPortable\NegativeScreen.exe, %HOMEPATH%\PortableApps\PortableApps\NegativeScreenPortable
} else {
Run %HOMEPATH%\PortableApps\PortableApps\NegativeScreenPortable\NegativeScreenX86.exe, %HOMEPATH%\PortableApps\PortableApps\NegativeScreenPortable
}
}
}
Is it possible to create a matrix that inverses black and white whilst keeping the rest the same but also reduces the contrast / shifts the tone so that the result looks more 'flat' or 'material design'? Been playing around with the color matrix but I can't even get close to the result I want. Cheers.
Great! Windows Magnifier used to annoy me because when I did Alt+Tab, it would also include the magnifier.
Negative Screen is easy, smart, free and open-source. Thanks developer.
First of all I must say: this is amazing. You just realized what I dreamed for. I was totally surprised when I found this program.
Now lets get back to the message.
Not too long ago I started to work with 2 monitors. (MCU software, PCB design, schematics etc). And now I must ask you: is it possible to realize the version of this program which can invert colors of just 1 monitor?
In my case I want to invent IDE to be able to write code on the black background.
In any case thanks a lot. This is the best freeware program I've ever seen.
Hi, people keep asking me this, so here is a copy pasted answer:
Short answer: no.
Long answer: it’s unfortunately not possible with the current version of NegativeScreen. It was technically possible with the old version, and I released a modified (but a bit crude) version here if you want to give it a shot: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
I'm sure it's not possible, but it could be cool if you had a smart dark mode, leaving program that are already dark alone but inverting programs that are light. Or allowed specific programs to be inverted with a toggle. I just started using Dark Reader for Chrome which is pretty sweet, not perfect. Other super bright programs I use for work I would love to darken.
Can you apply the program only in one part of the screen, leaving aside the bottom of the screen without reversing? (Eg Windows 10 taskbar, which has a black bar and become white when reverse)?
Short answer: no.
Long answer: this has already been asked several times, and it's unfortunately not possible with the current version of NegativeScreen. It was technically possible with the old version, and I released a modified (and a bit crude) version here if you want to give it a shot: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
I am using 'inverted green' colur. But there is lots of bright green places and dark green places. Can I have all of them become only one specific level of green say RGB(9,134,24) and replace dark portions winth completely black
It's been a while since I last tested this, but if I recall correctly, NegativeScreen < 2.0 ("legacy" version), works without Aero, but the framerate is not excellent and it uses lots of CPU.
The current version of NegativeScreen doesn't work at all without Aero.
Matrices in the list are automatically multiplied in their order of appearance, so just put the same matrix two times in a row or more, and see what you get. The result might not be intuitive but the result with two instances of NegativeScreen would be the same...
Hi - LOVE your program, its been extremely useful for me. While I may not use it for eye strain purposes, I do use it to see any odd color palletes on images that I can use. I was wondering if there was a way to invert the hue (rotate hue by 180 degrees I believe) BUT.. not to invert luminance. I would attempt to do this myself but the ColorMatrix editor doesnt seem to work on windows 10. Many thanks and you are amazing for making this useful program that helps so many people with this seemingly overlooked issue of eyestrain. 🙂
Hey, thank you! I ColorMatrix Viewer works fine on my Windows 10, so I don't know what's wrong for you. Here is a matrix to rotate the hue by 180°:
{ -0.3333333, 0.6666667, 0.6666667, 0.0000000, 0.0000000 }
{ 0.6666667, -0.3333333, 0.6666667, 0.0000000, 0.0000000 }
{ 0.6666667, 0.6666667, -0.3333333, 0.0000000, 0.0000000 }
{ 0.0000000, 0.0000000, 0.0000000, 1.0000000, 0.0000000 }
{ 0.0000000, 0.0000000, 0.0000000, 0.0000000, 1.0000000 }
Actually that matrix makes everything in the scale of grays. I was looking for a matrix that inverts only black to white, light gray to dark gray leaving all other colors intact.
I love your tool!
And thank you for sharing the source code!
If I have any feature suggestions, I will let you know.
Smart Inversion 2 ﴾Win+Alt+F3﴿ is the most beautiful one.
I wish that an Android App could also do this.
I have TouchWiz Nature UX 2.5, which has still the legacy natural Samsung colours.
But if somebody upgrades to Android Lollipop, he will need your tool to compensate the ugly user interface.
Everytime I want to apply changes in Configuration, I must to restart the aplication.
Could you for example add the "Apply changes" to the program menu?
This is not in my plans right now. I agree the whole process of editing the configuration could be improved (and I might get to it one day), but modifying the configuration is supposed to be a one time thing, so it should not be too much of an annoyance.
If you already have a color matrix and want the negative version, you can use ColorMatrix Viewer to multiply the first matrix with the negative matrix, and the result will be a negative version of your color effect.
It would also be great if you could add two keycommands to specifically enable and disable the inversion. Currently, I will need my script to launch NS (with ActiveOnStartup=true) and then use win+alt+H to switch it off by ending the NS process. It seems better to me that it should stay running in the background and on/off should be toggled.
To prevent an incorrect state, we could use direct keycommands to enable and disable inversion.
I've made a version with command line switches that can enable and disable the effects of an already running instance. I can share if you're interested.
I'm working on an AutoHotKey (AHK) script that will enable inversion only when a certain program is on-screen and only at night (18:00-06:00).
It should be possible, but it would be even nicer if this feature was built into your program.
Great work.
Would it be possible to write a simple plugin API, to be able to feed NegativeScreen information when and what to ignore? Then for example we could write plugins to make exceptions for pictures and video, for example a Firefox plugin, VLC plugin etc.
At first, I thought your suggestion was a great idea. Then I paused for a moment and tried to think about the use cases for such a plugin API, and couldn't quite find any:
There is no way to exclude a specific window, so at best you could programmatically toggle the active color effect. You would then need to detect whether your application is visible on screen (which is harder than it seems to do reliably and efficiently), and unless I'm missing your point, all plugins would basically do just that.
If this is what you had in mind, wouldn't it be better to simply allow users to instruct NegativeScreen to disable itself when an application, identified by its name, is on screen?
On a side note, I experimented a while back on a similar idea, but more generic: NegativeScreen would auto-toggle based on the current screen brightness, refreshed every few milliseconds. It basically worked, but was very CPU intensive, and sometimes borderline seizure inducing, so I never released it... This idea might be worth testing again...
Why don't you post the changelog on this page (along with the latest version number) so that people can see at a glance if there are any updates to the program?
"The color inversion takes effect immediately after starting the program." ... How do I have it NOT do this? I'd like the program to initialize upon startup but not invert. Right now I have the exe in my startup folder and it initializes fine, but it also inverts automatically (which I don't want).
The "ActiveOnStartup" property in the configuration file is there for that exact purpose 🙂
Just edit the file, and replace ActiveOnStartup=true with ActiveOnStartup=false and you are done.
And thanks for your donation by the way. It's always much appreciated!
It doesn't work with f.lux, so I made some matrices for simple inversion and uninverted that reduce blue light. Not sure if that's already mentioned here. I don't know what I'm doing with the matrices, but they seem to work! I am not using the smart modes because they smudge anti-aliased text a bit.
Hey! Thanks for the matrices definitions.
The smart modes indeed do smudge text when ClearType is enabled, because the red and blue subpixels used with this kind of anti-aliasing and supposed to be aligned with the actual physical pixels, are inverted with the rest of the screen. If you disable ClearType, you will notice the effect disappear. (But it might not be more readable without any anti-aliasing though...)
Is there a way to exclude applications from Negative Screen? I appreciate that it doesn't mess with 3D applications but I would still like the ability to disable certain applications from being affected.
By the way, I love Negative Screen. It's a real helper, thank you!
Thank you so much for this! There are some years since i try to find an user-eye's friendly version of changing ALL that is displayed. Just saved me!
One tiny request: I would like to go a little further and turn the display into sepia (NOT negative sepia, as you provided already). Because I'm quite code-dummy, I'd kindly ask you for provinding the code for "classic" sepia so that I just copy it into the txt file and than use it.
Mmmh, what you are describing is very strange...
I have no idea what could be the cause of this but I'd say that's unlikely to be NegativeScreen, especially if it's not running when it happens.
Did you check for any unwanted extension in your browser, maybe?
I love NegativeScreen, and actually used it before it was patched to work on windows 7, and even made my own custom transformations at the time -- inverted green and amber are a must for the nerdy desktop 😉
I'm now using it because SolidWorks, though it allows a bit of color customization, does not allow changing the colors of the interface (toolbars, buttons, etc). For some reason the 3d view flickers to be normally rendered when I click on something in it (the rest stays inverted). Any idea why this might happen?
On review, it appears that it is in fact applying the effect a second time, rather than removing it. if I keep clicking, it will apply the effect over and over again until the view is fully saturated (or dimmed). It remains such on the screen until something else changes about the view (I.E. rotating the scene)
Which version of NegativeScreen are you using? Flickering and refresh problems were common on versions 1.*
Have you tried inverting the screen colors with the Windows magnifier? Does is work as expected, or do you experience similar problems?
If this is the case, then it's a bug in the magnifier API, and beside transferring it to Microsoft, I won't be able to do anything...
If it works properly with the magnifier, then it might be fixable. Honestly, this is very strange, and I have never seen this with any application, even games or other GPU accelerated programs.
Good luck, and thanks for using NegativeScreen 🙂
Sadly, it seems to do the same thing for the regular magnifier, and keeps applying a zoom whenever I click (even when it's in lens mode). Oh well. Should I try asking microsoft or the makers of SolidWorks?
I doubt SolidWorks has anything to do with the bug, because it's definitely one, but Microsoft might be interested to know, and actually do something about it...
Are you on Windows 7? If you have the opportunity, you could try to test this on Windows 8 or even 10, it might have been fixed!
While I think about it, have you tried updating your graphic drivers to the latest version? I'm not sure, but it might be related.
Maybe you could open a thread somewhere around here http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows explaining your problem with the Windows Magnifier on all Windows versions, and hope the right persons from Microsoft see it...
Amber was a bit harder, I had to use the color matrix viewer, and I'm still not sure I like it. (it's really just orange, half green full red from grayscale)
Any idea how the Smart Inversion F2 option gets white text? I would like to have the negative green or amber only for all text versus having the entire background awash in green or amber.
There isn't currently a way to modify only small parts on the screen, though I have played around with ways of doing that. If you just want to get rid of grays, you can try this version that has a higher gamma:
Yes it is free, and you can use it however you please, as long as you respect the license.
The program is distributed under the GNU General Public License, if you want to look for more information about it...
Thank you so so so SO much. You are a brilliant person and I appreciate it so much! I'm legally blind, going into university, and really needed something simple like this to work with. You are amazing!
All good! I'm having only one little problem, it seems like there is no way to remember last mode used, so that it will be activated automatically next time you open it.
In other words, once you close the app, the last used mode will be lost and you will have to set it each time you open the app by pressing the shortcut for that mode. That to me is totally unnecessary and can be avoided very easily, but for some reason it just hasn't been coded...
...however, IS THERE ANY WAY TO DO THIS? like through the configuration file or something?? thanks!
Is there a way to have all text inverted to a bright green color instead of white? I think green text on black background when inverted is easier to read.
Could you do a "inversion" where the screen simply gets better readable, not a complete conversion but better and easier to read and no so tiring the eyes?
Hi,
could you add the feature that only specific programs / the region of the screen where the program is if it is in foreground get color inverted? e.g. the new Skype 7 white/blue design is really annoying and you cant customize it anymore so it really hurts the eyes reading in the dark. Would also be the first program to be able to do smth like dis and I think it wouldnt be a waste since there are ALOOOT of ppl complaining about it .. just read this:
Do you have any plans to release a OS X version? OS X has the built in Invert Color option but it's simply Simple Inversion, nothing like Negative Red which I need to use a lot.
I'm running Windows 8.1 and using the Invert option in Magnifier, it does invert the color of the cursor. Could you please add this to the app to make it invert color of the mouse pointer too?
I'm not sure about the technical side of this, but is it possible to use color matrix to change color temperature, like Flux does?
No plan for any version other than the Windows one, sorry. The main reason being that I don't own a Mac and don't intend to.
You are right, the Magnifier does invert the cursor. I don't recall the details but I believe it's doing additional work to handle this case (this is not just a switch). I remember trying to achieve the same thing, but I ruled it out for reasons I have forgotten. I might work on it again though...
I don't know very much about the theory of color matrices, but in my understanding it should be possible to achieve something similar to F.lux, moreover if precise color temperature is not required (as when the goal is not photography, but reducing the eyes strain).
This would mean adding a timer to automatically adjust the color transformation, and a lot of other settings though. I don't think I will ever add this feature to NegativeScreen.
Besides, if I'm not mistaken, F.lux does what it does by adjusting the system settings according to the time of the day. This is very efficient as the low level work is handled directly by the system, but it also severely constrains the range of allowed transformations.
I have put together an AutoIT script which allows you to whitelist certain programs so that when they are in the foreground NegativeScreen is turned off.
It is a hack and will work best when those apps are fullscreen because all it does it turn NegativeScreen on and of when the app comes into the foreground and then goes to the background.
I will post the script this weekend I hope you will find it useful...
NegativeSwitcher.au3 - If you already have AutoIt installed.
NegativeSwitcher.exe - Standalone exe
Program runs in the system tray. To Add the title of the currently active window into the Whitelist (So that it is excluded from the NegativeScreen effect) press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-N
Download Links from Google Drive can be found by clicking the hyperlink in my name above. The window whitelist is stored in the AppData folder, called "NegativeScreen.cfg".
On flipping between Whitelist and non-whitelist window there will be a slight delay to flip NegativeScreen but this is partly because of the way it works. i.e. By monitoring the Window Title of the currently running window and flipping NegativeScreen as soon as it is found, however there will always be that Interim moment.
I use Ubuntu for development and find xcalib a passable alternative. It doesn't have smart inversion so I always get tripped up when I see "All Tests Passed" in blazing red text (smart inversion keeps green text green). 😦 But at least my eyes aren't assaulted by bright colors all day.
$ echo "xcalib -i -a" > invert
$ chmod a+x invert
Now assign a keystroke to execute the file in your window manager. Money!
The xcalib program uses ICC (International Color Consortium) profiles instead of the simpler color matrices in Windows that NegativeScreen uses. Since its sole purpose is to calibrate monitors/cameras/printers/scanners/etc., I'd bet with some work you could make one. I can code, but I don't know the first thing about ICC profiles. 😦
... time passes ...
So I spent the last hour doing a little research, and it is indeed not trivial. For one thing, I couldn't find a pre-built graphical ICC profile editor for Linux. LPROF looks like the ticket, but I can't devote a day getting it to build (lots of dependencies). I'll have to come back to this later. I'll see if I can convince someone that already builds profiles to make one for me. 😉
Just tried this neat software and, although it doesn't seem to fit me (I don't use Aero at all), I'd like to share a few findings:
Crashes if Desktop Window Manager Session Manager ("UxSms" service) is not running
1.1. different from not having Aero enabled - I've disabled it as it's not necessary when Aero is not used;
1.2. exception reads "An error occurred while applying a color effect." [...]
"System.Exception.SetMagnificationColorEffect()"
Application: NegativeScreenX86.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.Exception
Stack:
at NegativeScreen.BuiltinMatrices.ChangeColorEffect(Single[,])
at NegativeScreen.BuiltinMatrices.InterpolateColorEffect(Single[,], Single[,], Int32)
at NegativeScreen.OverlayManager.ToggleColorEffect(Boolean)
at NegativeScreen.OverlayManager.ControlLoop()
at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(System.Object)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object, Boolean)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object, Boolean)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object)
at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()
(I've used "NegativeScreenX86.exe" version 2.4.5447.24427)
2. After temporarily enabling Aero, I've noticed that the "Smart" variations make text look pretty fuzzy
2.1. that likely has to do with ClearType enabled, and changing colors messes with the RGB trickery which causes LCD screen to look nicer
2.2 not sure what could be done to improve this, but a warning in this page or in the application (detecting ClearType status and displaying a warning similar to Aero...?) might be a good idea in the meantime.
3. Few nits:
"Appart" --> "Apart" (typo, within this page)
"Last" --> "Latest" (meaning - I hope!, within this page)
"transfomation" --> "transformation" (typo, "README.txt")
Hey, thanks a lot for your comment!
Thanks for reporting the crash when UxSms is not running. I don't think it will bother many people, but it's a bug anyway...
I already knew about ClearType, and I already tried different things to disable it automatically, but I think the improvement is not that important, and certainly not worth messing around with the user preferences like that, even temporarily. Beside that, more and more programs nowadays don't even respect the ClearType settings and thus their text stay fuzzy... 😕
And thanks for the typos. Nobody ever reported them to me, so thanks again!
Is there a way to get this to ignore a certain window? Example "Gw2.exe" I see the API supports it in a fashion, but unsure if it would work they way your wonderful program is setup or how to implement it.
In theory, there is indeed a way to exclude some windows from NegativeScreen.
Unfortunately, I never managed to get it to work...
Anyone is welcome to try and improve NegativeScreen!
I'd love to give it a shot, I could pull your source, but I wouldn't know what file to enter it into. According to the API info, the fullscreenmode does not take filterlists into account, only the boxed magnifier, and after peeking at your coding it appears you are using the fullscreen version.. This is why I was concerned it wouldn't work, and probably why you were never able to get it to work. But thank you for your swift response and if you are not using fullscreen mode let me know and I can try to see if i can do something.
Oh sorry, I forgot the feature was not available for the full screen mode.
The last version of NegativeScreen uses the full screen mode as it is way more efficient and easy to use, but the previous version (pre 2.0) used the "normal" API.
Ya I tried clicking the link provided, but I haven't the foggiest clue what i'd be doing other than poking around. I'm not really sure what I need to do to go from 'Our Conversation Here' > Inserting code somewhere > compiling a new package > runable.exe ---- too sophistcated for me LOL. But I appreciate your responses and follow up. I will research and play with it a bit, ultimately I love your program as-is, and if you find fullscreenmode is more efficient, then I will trust you on that, I'd hate for things to become clunky. - Your program is so great I leave it running 99% of the time, and only turn it off when I game or watch videos. - Hence my inquiry about ignoring windows. - Would have been awesome, but I'd feel like I am "fingerpainting on the mona-lisa" if i get into your coding and start messing things about. - I may research it more once i figure out what I am suppose to do at that source site you gave. Not sure how it works.
By the way I did see some of the stuff for multiple monitors, that could also work, if i could disable a monitor on the fly. Its just too bad that there doesn't appear to be a solution within that API that would allow us to do something as simple as coding a right-click on on the bar across the top of the window and choose Exclude from Negative Screen.
Unfortunately, the multiple monitors support is also impossible to implement with the latest API 😕
A possible solution would be to switch between the full screen mode and the legacy mode when required, but it's a lot of work and it probably wouldn't be perfect. I might work on it some day...
Looks great. I have no need for a fancy interface. What matters is that it does the basics well.
The simple utility in Linux that inverts the colors for the active window or the whole GUI is good enough for me. Using that, then you can customize the program and system colors to your liking (especially in Windows). There is no need to make it fancy. Performance is more important.
If I were worried about looks, I wouldn't be using color inversion. I use it for the reason you wrote it in the first place, to make viewing easier.
I had been using dark themes/schemes systemwide (for a decade). Using NegativeScreen and Chrome, there is an extension that will re-invert the colors of pictures and videos. So now I'm using Chrome instead of Firefox, mostly. Videos don't want perfect, but it's better than leaving pictures and videos inverted or frequently switching back-and-forth.
After a month or so of serious use, this NegativeScreen is better then trying to use dark themes/schemes. The only time I must turn it off is when viewing pictures and videos outside of Chrome. The Windows Taskbar and its icons look funky, but maybe that's because Windows 8.1 is using transparency for the Taskbar.
Does Reluminate still work for anyone in eBay? It's a necessary add-on when using this screen inversion. Seems that recently Reluminate stopped working in eBay. Serious problem here. This screen inversion is by far the very best dark "color scheme" I have ever used. But it does require re-inverting pictures and videos.
I can't complain, but I will anyway... That should be the author's next task. Since you really cannot use Windows inverted without re-inverting pictures and videos.
Seems that disabling JavaScript in Chrome on eBay is a work around, but it worked properly before even with JavaScript enabled. I suppose it could be my JavaScript controller add-on causing the problem.
Unfortunately, it makes my 32x Vista laptop run very slowly. I wanted it to conserve battery power while reading pdfs (so the majority of the screen was black, and I could turn the brightness down).
I have yet to test it, but I think the power saved by the screen would be lost by the program clogging the CPU
SmoothTransitions enables or disables interpolation ("smoothness") when you switch color effects.
SmoothToggles enables or disables interpolation when you enable or disable the current color effect.
MainLoopRefreshTime controls the time between each iteration of the main loop, that is, the loop processing all the user inputs (hot keys...) to pause, toggle, or switch color effects accordingly. This parameter is now pretty much useless and I should probably remove it, but it used to be very important in the first version because it was directly tied to the performance of the program, as it was also controlling the refresh rate of the color effect.
Hello, I wanted to use this program and it worked really well, except, even when I turn off the program, it makes some of the youtube videos that I watch into black and white. Also even after I turn off my computer and I still havent opened it and go directly to youtube, it will keep turning some videos to black and white. This gets extremely frustrating to me because I get really bored of these videos because they are just stuck in black and white. PLEASE help me
Well it was worth asking, and its also affecting my videos in my computer and the media players. I think it got imbedded somewhere in the sortof thing cause I closed out of it a wierd way. Is there anyway you could tell me what the process is called so I could stop it on start up?
Well, it's NegativeScreen.exe I guess... Did you edit the configuration file? If so, there is an option to make the program start with Windows. But you didn't activate it yourself, it's not automatic...
Hi, loving negativescreen!, is there a way to leave the blacks black while inverting the whites to black?, y like keeping the colours, just hate bright whites
You can tweak the pixels' brightness globally, but not just for a specific color, so I don't think you can achieve what you want easily.
Well, technically, there is a way: it's called a black screen 😄
More seriously, you could try to fiddle with this: http://arcanesanctum.net/colormatrix-viewer/
For example, try this matrix:
{ 1.0, -1.0, -1.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ -1.0, 1.0, -1.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ -1.0, -1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.0, 1.0 }
I haven't used Windows for like 6 years, now because of a manfacturer no longer supporting a linux toolchain I had to switch to Windows. How used I was to Negative from compiz that I took it for granted.
I'm using the exact same API the Windows Magnifier uses.
The old API has a flag to invert colors automatically, otherwise you have to apply a color matrix manually. NegativeScreen comes with a bunch of predefined matrices if you are interested, and the C# method definitions to use the native Windows functions.
If you just want to apply a color matrix to an image, see the ApplyColorMatrix method here.
BTW, the msdn documentation is also very nice...
I am using this on Windows 7, laptop connected to normal LCD monitors. In all the smart inversion modes, the text becomes slightly blurry, like some sort of chromatic aberration; the white characters are slightly pink on the left side and blue on the right side. In the simple inversion mode, text is clear.
Unfortunately, this is what happens when ClearType, the Microsoft's font smoothing technology, is enabled, and a smart inversion mode is used...
There is no way I know of to fix this problem. I tried several things to disable ClearType entirely when NegativeScreen is active, but firstly, some applications don't respect the system wide setting, and secondly, the text is still more readable with ClearType enabled and a redish blur around the letter than without it.
I noticed that if you run the ClearType tuner, there are modes* that look quite good under the Smart Inversion matrix, and it still looks OK in normal mode. It may be possible to save/restore the ClearType tunings when the various modes are changed.
I also noticed that the angle of the monitor really helps with the red outlines if you don't want to run the ClearType tuner.
I assume this is some kind of gray scale ClearType mode
For starters, awesome app!
Now I am just wondering if there is a way for it to only apply to a specific monitor (of two). Or to apply only to a specific program ( the new eye bleeding outlook 2013).
Hey, diggin' the software, but it doesn't work if the monitor is in portrait mode! Give it a shot, if you can fix this, I would really appreciate it. Right now I have to choose between decent colors or decent screen layout.
Thanks for the report.
Yeah, I'm aware of the problem, but as it's a bug in the api I use I can't do much 😕 (Not convinced? try to open the Windows Magnifier and invert the colors while in portrait mode.)
A workaround has been found to work for some people though: dragging a window to the bottom of the screen below the dead zone makes it work again. Not ideal, I know. It might not even work for you. Sorry.
I cannot get this to work after I downloaded the binary.zip file. I am running windows 7 and I extracted all files after the download. then I clicked on the .exe file not the x86.exe and the program worked fine and I was able to switch between colors and then I closed it with win+alt+H now i cannot get the colors to invert anymore help please. Thank you.
When pressing win+alt+H you are effectively closing the program, so it is normal it doesn't work anymore. You have to re-start it, by double clicking on the .exe file again...
Is there a way to modify it to work on only a section of the screen? I have an old monitor that has a permanent inverted vertical strip about 1" wide. If this program could be made to work on only that malfunctioning region it would be just what I need.
That would technically be possible with NegativeScreen v1.* and the API it uses, but I consider this feature too far from the original goal of NegativeScreen to implement it.
This is an open source project though, so you or anyone knowing how to code could fork it and do pretty much whatever they please with it... I'm aware that's probably not the answer you were expecting. Sorry...
One window is behaving weirdly with NegativeScreen. There is a screenshot at the web address above. It's an in-house program and It uses transparency and that may be the problem. There is the ghost of a window that was on top of it and was minimized. The ghosting doesn't show with normal colours. Is there any way of turning off transparency for windows and still keeping NegativeScreen operating?
Mmmh that's strange.
Maybe it's related to the (unconventional?) way the transparent window is implemented...
Maybe it's some kind of bug in the Desktop Window Manager both the transparent window and NegativeScreen use, I don't know.
What do you mean turning off transparency for windows? If you are talking about Aero, NegativeScreen works way better with GPU acceleration, but you could try the legacy version that can run without it.
I believe it's also possible to disable transparency while keeping Aero enabled, but I'm not sure it would be useful in your case where the transparent window seems to be independent of Aero...
I finally uploaded my Chrome extension to the Chrome web store. It is a fork of Deluminate designed to be used together with NegativeScreen. The purpose is to fix inverted images while leaving everything else inverted, or to de-invert certain web pages that already have a black background before using NegativeScreen. There are several options that will make sense if you are already using NegativeScreen. It includes all of the changes I in the long explanation I made a few comments down.
Yo. I want to optimize Windows for performance. I know that NegativeScreen won't function without Aero enabled. Please tell me what should I enable in (path) "system-properties-performance" in order for the soft to work? Big thanks.
Thank you so much for developing this program. I am visually impaired. I use NegativeScreen in combination with Windows 7 Aero full screen zoom EVERY day. It makes reading so much easier...
One question: I have customized my mouse pointer (Control Panel > Mouse > Pointer tab) so the pointer is "large" and "inverted". "inverted" meaning the cursor appears white on a black background, and black on a white background. I noticed that when I have NegativeScreen Inverting colors AND have Win 7 Aero full screen zoom on, the mouse pointer stays white, instead of inverting. Is this something you have control over, or is this a Win 7 zoom issue?? I am using v2.2...
Sorry, I don't have control over the mouse color effect...
In fact, even the Windows Magnifier tool, when the checkbox to invert the colors is checked, does not correctly handle an inverted pointer... (NegativeScreen uses a very similar method to do its job, so most of the same limitations apply)
I tried to find a way to make it work, but to no avail for now.
Thank you.
Regarding the color matrices you are asking for, the first one already ships with NegativeScreen.
For the second one, there is no perfect way to do this. Try http://arcanesanctum.net/colormatrix-viewer/ - maybe you can get to something that suits your needs...
All inversion modes changes the other colors too. I need only black --> white and white --> black conversion. The other colors should be as it is. Should I want to change the matrix? 🙂
There is no way to just invert black and white without altering the colors!
How would you even do that for an image? How would you determine where the white or the black stop? Should a very light grey be turned black, or should a very dark grey be turned white? It's the same problem with the colors.
The smart inversion mode is probably the closest you will get to what you want...
This is a great program that I use almost constantly. The only problem is that it is indiscriminate--all images and videos are also inverted. I have come up with a way to resolve this problem in the Chrome web browser using some basic CSS and HTML alterations of an already existent Chrome extension called Deluminate. This even fixes Youtube videos.
Deluminate basically works by doing what NegativeScreen does in smart inversion mode, except only to websites. The problem is the options are optimized for a not already inverted screen, so when combined with NegativeScreen some of the options do nonsensical things. My mod alters the settings to allow us to totally uninvert the entire page back to normal, to uninvert all images, or to smart uninvert images, which tries to uninvert things like artwork and photographs while leaving logos and other things that are supposed to blend in inverted. Of course, you can also tell it to leave the entire website inverted. It remembers rules for domains, so if you set something for google, google will always look like that until you change it. It is a great interface that allows you to alter settings easily on the fly. By default, subdomains are treated as totally independent, but I came up with a javascript mod that allows you to customize this setting.
All you have to do is install Deluminate from the Chrome extension store, then modify it by replacing the files listed below with my own files. I would highly recommend renaming the old files (eg. deluminate.css.old) before replacing them so that you can always return Deluminate to its default functionality. The new files must have the same names that the old ones once had. Just copy and paste the text from the links below into notepad, then save them as the name I list in the following folder (Windows 7).
These files are all located here: %UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions\iebboopaeangfpceklajfohhbpkkfiaa.3.2_0\
If you can't find that folder, the version is probably different, so go to this folder: %UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions\iebboopaeangfpceklajfohhbpkkfiaa\ and then double click on the version number. If the version number is different, use at your own risk. It should probably work, but I can't guarantee it.
deluminate.css is the CSS file that alters the functionality of Deluminate to suit our needs with an already inverted screen: http://pastebin.com/4MF3Q41d
popup.html is the HTML file that alters the text in the interface so you can understand what each radio button will do: http://pastebin.com/D9kHauhL
I also made a javascript mod for the common.js file that forces domain rules to apply to subdomains when subdomains don't already have their own rules sets, which is especially useful for websites like imgur.com and deviantart.com because you would otherwise be forced to make an independent rules set for every user gallery. Once you set a subdomain rule, that excludes it from the domain rule. Check it out here: http://pastebin.com/4shV8wxp
If you have any questions, I assume I will get notified for responses, but if I don't answer your reply, feel free to e-mail me at soldier9599@gmail.com
Alright, well this is very inconvenient. As it turns out, Deluminate was just updated today for the first time in months, which might pose some problems for this solution I came up with a few days ago. You can try my solution, it might still work with version 4.0 of Deluminate, but it will render null any new features.
Since Deluminate is open source, I'm going to work on a fork and release my own full extension that can work for us NegativeScreen users who use Chrome. With all the mods I've made so far I could put something on the Chrome Web Store almost immediately. However, if I actually release a full extension I don't just want it to be a quick and dirty mod of something else. I would like to incorporate the full functionality of Deluminate plus all my modifications and do so with a new interface to handle all the options plus maybe some new rule handling features. I have some ideas, but it will take me some time to put it all together. I'll come back and post here as soon as I come up with something.
I work technical support for a software development company. This means I'm staring at a screen for 9+ hours per day. I had tried out Flux before and, while it works pretty well, everything was still fairly bright, even on its lowest setting.
This program has changed the way I view technical support, both figuratively and literally. I no longer have a headache after work and I don't have to wear those stupid (and expensive) computer glasses. As an added bonus, my computer looks 100% awesome-er!
This is a fantastic program! Is there a hotkey for choosing which monitor has the negative colors in the custom multimonitor version? If not, how could I add this? Thanks for all your hard work!
No, there is no hot key for that. Adding this would require some modifications of the source code.
Since a lot of people want to be able to set different effects on different monitors, I might do some work again soon on the prototype to improve it...
Would be amazing if you did. I cannot express how much I appreciate your work. Without it, I do not think I could function in both my job and everyday tasks. This absolutely makes a world of difference to individuals with visual impairments my like myself - a thousand times thank you! One other question. Is it possible to use a color matrix to change a single color on the screen? For example, to change all light blue fonts on a white background to just black text on a white background?
"Is it possible to use a color matrix to change a single color on the screen?"
It's not possible to change a specific color. The nearest thing would be to change a specific channel (Red, Green, Blue)...
Maybe something like this?
{ 1.0, 0.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 1.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
Are you using the last version? If so, it's certainly not supposed to happen!
The last version directly uses a Microsoft api, so if the problem is indeed a bug, I won't be able to do anything beside reporting it 😕
I have two detached retina. My retina are not in contact with the back of my eye where the nutrients flow through capillaries. When a bright light is viewed the nutrients are quickly depleted in the neurons and it can take as long as 7 hours for them to replenish. The result is darkness and frustration. This program is very promising as a help for any one with this condition.
I am so frustrated with applications that will not conform to the color settings of Windows 7. I have spent hours trying to find a good way to get Avast! free antivirus and other "rogue programs" to conform to my customized high contrast theme. When I solve one problem I seem to cause another elsewhere. I can get the entire desktop to invert only to have a blinding white menu. At least with NegativeScreen I should be able to use configuration modification to tone down elements that were so blinding with other methods I have tried.
When I am over my current piercing head ache I will try to write a script to swap my non Arrow theme to an arrow theme, start NegativeScreen, set the configuration (Command-Line Options would be a help) and what ever else to make this a toggle I can hotkey quikley when ever I have to cope with a rogue program that refuses to conform to my theme requirements.
I have to use magnifier to be able to read most text. But I can enjoy videos in normal colors. Every thing is wrinkly but most things are discernible. VolumeMouse is a nice application that lets me use my mouse to decrease screen brightness on the fly. I mention it here as some may find it of use if they have vision issues.
Blessings and thanks again
chuck
fantastic program, so much more relaxing to read in the night! I used the inverted GREEN you suggested above, but it is still too bright. I remember the old computer with monochromatic screen back in the eighties, the green was less sparkling, more saturated, would it be possible to derive the matrix for a darker green?
thanks a lot!
Great tool! It would be awesome if there were a GUI tool to help pick our own matrices--e.g. to add color desaturation, reduce brightness for certain ranges of whites/colors, etc...
Don't forget to adjust your Cleartype settings after inverting the screen. If you do lots of programming with colourful editors you might be better off turning cleartype off completely.
I just tried turning off ClearType, but it made all fonts very difficult to read: dialogs, web, and code. This may be due to my using very large fonts due to poor eyesight, though.
I replied to another thread somewhere, then I found a post referencing
ShowAeroWarning
So I tried setting it to false in my conf file. When I start NS I get an exception. Is that option no longer supported? It would be nice to squelch that warning when I start running in High Contrast Mode.
This option is only available for the legacy version, which can run without aero enabled, unlike versions >=2.
But you are right, you can start it without aero even if it doesn't work, and this message is annoying. I will add the option to a new release so that you don't have it in your situation.
To answer your other comment: I had a hard time myself finding documentation about color matrices, and beside the link on MSDN, I didn't find anything really good...
I have been thinking about making a small utility to test new matrices for a long time now, and I might have time to implement it soon, so stay tuned! 🙂
I've been using NS for about a week now and it has become ingrained in my muscle memory. Much better than the simple invert colors provided by Magnifier. Plus Magnifier doesn't support a hotkey to turn invert colors on/off. Now I have independent control over color shifts and magnification. Much better!
This is a great utility. Love the smart inverse.
Like a previous commenter, I would also love to be able to have something similar to the red inverse, only with a different shade.
Another suggestion, it would be great if this tool also has magnification built in, so we can completely avoid the use of the magnifier, which has an annoying habit of getting in the way.
You can create other color transformations by editing the config file.
here is an inverted blue:
{ 0.0, 0.0, -0.3, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, -0.6, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, -0.1, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
and here is an inverted green:
{ 0.0, -0.3, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, -0.6, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, -0.1, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
As for the magnification, I don't think I will implement it. It's too far from the original goal of NegativeScreen and would not make much sense.
Thanks for the suggestion though!
So can I use the conf file to stop the dialog warning about Areo support from coming up? I swap between High Contrast mode and normal mode, and between NS and normal. If I first switch to NS when in High Contrast mode I get the dialog. (All seems to work ok after closing it...)
Also, is there a tutorial (other than the supplied link) that describes using the matrix to modify transforms?
Do you mean the Windows Classic theme? The last version of NegativeScreen requires Aero to work correctly, but maybe you could try the "legacy" version?
It should work, but it will probably be laggy and hard on your CPU...
Thanks. I had the same problem, but the legacy version works with Win7+Classic theme, like it did with Vista. Again I have added a shortcut to the Startup and have changed the ActiveOnStartup and the ShowAeroWarning to false.
Actually NegativeScreen is most useful with the Classic theme, since there you cannot set the Magnifier in full screen mode, as you can with the Aero theme.
Unfortunately, both of your requests are not possible with the api used in the versions >= 2.*
I released a "beta" patch a while ago allowing to select only some monitors, if you want to try: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
I never managed to make the filtering by window work though, even for the api used in the version 1.*, and even though the doc says it should work...
Hi,
Great little program, really saves the eyes when they are tired.
I would like to add the program to autostart, so I directly can go to negativescreen whenever I want to, without starting the program first. Putting in to autostart is easy, but how do I put in that "off" is the default when the program starts?
In the configuration file ("Edit configuration" option when right clicking the icon in the systray), there is an option ready for that.
Just change the line ActiveOnStartup=true to ActiveOnStartup=false and that's it!
Hm... the line ActiveOnStartup don't exist in my conf-file. When I added it, the program didn't start but instead gave the error "System.exception: The value assigned to "activeonstartup" is unexpected. The hotkey must be separated from the matrix by a new line"...
Inverting colors was one of the main reasons I moved from windows to linux system couple of years ago. Now I have to use windows on tablet pc and my eyes would moan from pain if it hadn't been for your application. Many thanks! I like also the smart inverse.
As for me it is worth donation.
Hey man! thanks for a great app!
I found a bug.
unfortunately it doesn't work when my display is rotated 90 degrees.
The top portion of the screen (with square 1200x1200) is inverted but the bottom portion is garbled (everything below 1200px down to 1920)
I guess it doesnt like the fact that my resolution is 1200x1920,
not the regular 1920x1200
Sadly, I'm afraid I can't do anything about it.
I'm using a Microsoft api ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms692402%28v=vs.85%29.aspx ) that automatically handles the full screen mode (since the version 2 of NegativeScreen).
The bug has to be in the internals of this api, and I can't think of any workaround...
Incidentally, the same bug is present in the Windows Magnifier, if you try to invert the display.
Thanks you save me, my laptop lcd goes negative (i dont know why but isnt a software problem) and your app fixed my problem on windows...on bios the problem exists but i dont care 😉
I'm a student of bio-statistics and your application fix many things for me:
1- I can see a black & white preview of my charts before printing.
2- I can read PDF eBooks without eye pressure instead of printing them.
3- I can work with internet and use my work soft-wares like SPSS in many hours.
I would love the option to apply this on only my second monitor as I have a giant white list that sits on it and it is painful... the main display I want to keep as normal. is there any way to do this?
It's not technically possible with the current version, but it was with the older one.
I released an experimental version (means there are probably some bugs left, and it's not really polished) that has the ability to toggle the inversion for only some of the screens.
You can try it out here: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
It basically works as the old version (that is, you have to use the hotkeys) and adds a very simple icon in the systray, with a right click list of you monitors you can toggle independently.
Thanks for providing this! I've been trying to find a way to invert the colors for Evernote which I keep on a second display and this works great. I made a small donation for your work and will hopefully donate more when I have more funds.
Hello, thank you for the amazing app!. I just wanted to ask, if you any plans on implementing this feature (selecting monitors to apply inversion), as part of the main app (not the experimental or side versions)?
Also, is there a way to add exceptions to the inversion effect, images and videos for example? I'm not sure if this is even possible due to windows or other limitations, but it would be nice to leave this type of elements with normal colors, and invert the rest.
Thank you 🙂
All you are asking for (selecting specific monitor, filtering some windows, etc) is, sadly, impossible to do with the api used in the last version of NegativeScreen (2.)
It would be theoretically possible to do all these things with the original api used for NegativeScreen 1. but I'm not planning to implement them in a stable version, as this api has other limitations (performances, complexity, various bugs).
I encourage anyone willing to do it, this program is open source.
So i tried the mini program NegativeScreen on my 2 screen, Win 7 Ultima, 64bit, NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 . . .
and nothing was working . . . reboot . . run as admin . . confirm Areo is on (yes, dwm.exe in Task manager shown) . . . Then I saw your beta version or protoype version of multi screen version of same program:
As soon as i ran that program everything worked . . . then I tried running NegativeScreen with the NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe . . . and I am now able to switch between settings that are offered in NegativeScreen . . .
Yet 😄 2 minutes later the program NegativeScreen also let me turn on and of inversion by clicking the taskbar icon in the lower right corner . . . (turn on and of program by clicking NegativeScreen icon) . . .
And now 😄 NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe option of altering individual screens is off (does not work) . . . it is likelly that the NegativeScreen program is functioning and overlaying NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
Long story short :
NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe clears the way for NegativeScreen.exe to work ; where as, NegativeScreen.exe alone and without NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe does not do anything.
So is it cause i have 2 screens . . . is it cause i have not ever formated the main drive since . . 2005 issshh . . what ever it is . . you can ask people to run NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe and then NegativeSCreen inorder to fix some " it aint workin issues ".
I'm afraid it's not possible to "just" invert the blacks and whites. The closest solution you have is the smart inversion, which is the default filter.
Hello,
A couple of days ago I restarted my computer and NegativeScreen wasn't there anymore. (My shortcut to it was broken and the files had gone). I tried to re-download it but when I click to activate the .exe file I get an error that tells me:
To run this application, you must first install one of the following versions of the .NET Framework:
v4.0.30319
Thank you so much for creating this! I have this installed at home and work and it's made everything a whole lot easier for my eyes. I've actually been using it for months but it dawned on me just now just how much I use this and how valuable this program is to my day to day life. My favorite is the Smart Inversion 3 (Win, Alt + F4) - I'd say this is the most user friendly and also looks the sleekest. Finally, thank you for making it freeware. I'm a little poor right now but come next payday I will certainly be making a donation.
You can do it with the config file, I actually did it for myself some time ago but since I lost all my app data you'll have to do it yourself. Just copy the values for the Red profile and move the values for the first 3 rows one column to the right (the first 3 columns are for RedGreenBlue so you move Red to Green), also remember to change the name and give it another hotkey. You can do it.
One feature I would suggest would be the possibility of choosing the startup mode via a command line argument (for example -"Negative Red" would launch the program in Negative Red mode regardless of the default starting mode). Not a pressing issue though, thanks again!
What would be the difference with the starting mode set in the config file? I'm not against adding more features, but I also would like to keep NegativeScreen clean and simple.
Well it would just be a little cleaner to directly launch in different profiles. For now I made an Autohotkey script for each profile that launches NegativeScreen and then send the keys corresponding to each mode's hotkey. For me that was simpler than learning C# 🙂
Another feature request of minor importance: being able to deactivate hotkeys. For now it can't be done with the config file because if you create two profiles both without hotkeys, the program won't launch because it says they have the same hotkey.
Just wanted to tell you that I am incredibly grateful for this program. It works like a charm, and the different modes are very useful to adapt to different situations, plus you added configurable hotkeys which is awesome. Thank you.
Just can't get it to work on Vista 😦 Program reverses the screen then crashes on start, not sure where to go from here, I think all my .NET is up to date v. 3.5, 4, and 4.5. I compiled via VS 2010 also and same crash happens, the screen reverses and immediately crashes and bails "Windows is looking for a solution" etc.
Do you have any specific info about the crash? (exception name, etc.)
If you can compile it with Visual Studio, then you could try to debug it.
With some chance, you will see the exact line causing the crash.
I could better help with more info...
I downloaded the latest binary version and the net.frame v.4.5. After installation it is still not working. When I try it, I get the warning: "Windows Aero should be enabled fot this programm to work probably!"
I have a Acer Aspire with Win7.
Should I put the Binary folder in special folder? Could you please help me?
When it will work you are the hero for my eyes 🙂.
Well, do you have Aero enabled?
If you don't know, and to simplify, Windows Aero is the thing that turns your windows transparent.
If you have Windows 7 Starter edition, Aero can't be enabled (thanks Microsoft), otherwise, there are a lot of reasons why Aero is not enabled, you should be able to find a solution on the internet...
This app works quite well for me. I notice that it fades to the appropriate color over a short delay. It would be really cool if there was an animation mode that slowly changed the level of inversion over time to simulate cloud cover and exercise the eye's pupil dilation throughout the day.
Thanks very much for this useful program! I normally use two monitors, and on my old system was able to invert colors on just one of the monitors, and not the other. Is there any way you could make that a feature in your next version?
Unfortunately, the api used in the version 2.* can only work with the entire screen, without distinction between monitors.
I did a prototype based on the first version a few months ago to support independent activation of multiple monitors, you can try it there if you want: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
Keep in mind this version is experimental, and based on an old version...
All the sources are on the Hg repo, just check the branch "custom multi monitor support". It works as the first version, but adds an icon in the systray to enable/disable a monitor.
Great add-on, thanks for coding it. helps me a lot when my eyes hurt, I just want to ask if you may add like a box that isn't inverted and follow the mouse? I think that would help me for reading things without having all the lights from the blank unused white.
It didn't work at first because I was not using an aero theme. If you have this problem then try loading a different theme. It started working for me when I loaded up the Dell theme.
Linux has had this for some time with the xcalib package -- setting up Windows 7 test environment I found myself not liking all the glaring white screens, thanks!!
I've been looking for exactly this, its so simple to use and such a very tiny file. powerstrip works but its overkill just to use the invert gamma ramp, and more complicated to use, it inverts games witch looks cool but not as playable, powerstrip also made applications un-minimize noticeably slower "and not from weak hardware" just a random bug i guess. your program does exactly what i need and only what i need nothing i don't. I'll be using this on every windows pc I own. THANKS!
Is there any way for you to perhaps add magnification? I use the Windows Magnifier in conjunction with Autohotkey tweaks to make magnifier behave more like Compiz (in Linux) but the Magnifier app is really irritating in that it gets in the way / doesn't minimise properly and sometimes glitches.
It'd be so great to have something like:
Win+Mousewheel to zoom in / out
Win+Middleclick to invert/revert
In case anyone wants to use my Autohotkey script, see below
Autohotkey can be downloaded from here: http://www.autohotkey.com/
This works in Win7+8 64bit for me just fine.
hotkeys:
Windowskey + mousewheel to zoom in/out
Windowskey + middleclick to invert/revert
Requires Magnifier to be started first (Windowskey and +)
The whole point of NegativeScreen is to invert the screen colors without any magnification effect.
To be honest, I don't think I would do better than the Windows magnifier anyway...
Your Negative screen program is really great! Please produce a similar App for Windows phone 8: I really need it! Thank you for your help, regards, Ach
As I already explained in my reply to your mail, I don't think this is possible for a Windows Phone app to do that.
There is too many security restrictions preventing access to the overall system, and no api available.
I know a true color inversion feature (unlike the high contrast mode) exists on iPhone, but I don't think there is such a thing on Windows Phone.
This is a shame, and I'm sorry I can't help you.
Amazing program and an instant addition to my "productivity/zenware suite"! I have been looking for this for so long and it will surely accompany me for years. When used together with "f.lux", this takes away all the drama from my screen 🙂
I am also quite impressed by all the color modes provided as much as the minimalist interface; while looking for something that'd merely invert screen colors, finding different inversion modes was just too good to be true. I think especially the mono-color inversions are much better solutions than simple inversion, especially for scenarios involving continuous usage for several hours. Of course, having an inverted black & white/sepia screen also adds a certain feeling of nostalgia!
Thank you very much for creating this great tool and making it free!
You are a total winner! I can't stress how much I like the updates after December, it now works flawlessly. I would totally give you a hug for this amazing sofware. (I don't hand out hugs very easy)
Thanks for your suggestion. I already thought about adding a ClearType auto disabling feature a while ago, but after some testing, it seems there is no good way to do so.
Windows has at least 3 ways to smooth fonts, including ClearType, and not one is correctly applied on every font. Some programs also use their own font smoothing systems...
Additionally, I don't really like the idea of messing with such obscure parameters: if my program crashes, there is no way for the user to know exactly what have been changed to the system configuration.
So, sorry about the red fringes, but I don't think this feature is worth the drawbacks. If someone thinks otherwise, they can still do a pull request, NegativeScreen is open source.
Thanks a bunch for sharing this. I used to achieve comparable effects via my graphics card settings, but will now start using your utility since it's simpler & more functional.
One idea for the next version, if it won't be too difficult to implement: Allow targeting a particular subset of applications to be affected by your utility, or allow selected apps & the desktop background to be explicitly exempt (excluded) from its effects -- For ex. my development & design environments, desktop background slide-show, and a few other apps are already themed with dark backgrounds but things such as adobe reader or most internet pages are not...
Unfortunately, there is no way to accurately filter a specific window in an effective way.
I'm thinking for a long time about adding an option to automatically toggle the inversion, based on the actual global luminosity of the entire screen...
I have a working prototype of this system, but it requires the user to install some directX libraries, and this is not very convenient.
Moreover, it is very gpu intensive, and does not perform very well without a good graphic card.
I am also thinking about adding a way to toggle NegativeScreen based on the currently focused application. This would at least, I think, resolve the performance problems.
I still need to make some tests though.
Nice app. I imagine one other thing where Negative Screen might be useful is for maximizing the duration of your laptop's battery, isn't it? (a dark display should consume less energy than a light one).
By the way, a nice new feature for the next version would be to let the wallpaper be replaced with a black one while inversion is toggled.
This is an interesting question.
There is indeed more dark pixels, but I would say the calculation of the applied graphic effect actually uses more energy than it saves...
This assumption might be worth checking, though.
Regarding NegativeScreen automatically changing your wallpaper, I must say I don't like the idea.
This is a personal preference I would rather not disturb, and also, I like the KISS principle.
Thank you for writing this application! Because of low-vision I've been using powerstrip for years to invert the gamma ramp. Unfortunately this program has many issues constantly switching back to a normal gamma ramp when windows or popups are created or the focus changes to them. And it tends to disable hot keys at random. Recently I had to upgrade my graphics controller. This lead to powerstrip no longer being able to invert the gamma ramp at all because of incompatibility with newer nVidia GPU's.
I can see again where the mouse cursor is located on the screen without endlessly moving the mouse around hoping to be able to spot the movement somewhere on the screen. And I'm relieved of severe headaches after using the computer for a couple of minutes.
I use your program in combination with a screen reader and at times the windows magnifier. There is commercial software available (like Magic and Zoomtext, et cetera) to replace the windows magnifier which offers multiple ways to invert the gamma and brightness and remap the RGB channels. But this software interacts with the system on many API levers to provide multiple mouse and keyboard cursor enhancements, focus highlighting, on the fly OCR to prevent blocky fonts after magnification etc. Making these applications prone to cause interference and incompatibilities with many applications other than the most commonly used set of office applications. Especially with multimedia type applications.
Hello there!
I was used to using the invert screen function and nocturne on Mac OS and this Tool here does exacly that: invert and apply grayscale. Fantastic!
Only missing something like removing transparency of all windows and shadows while applied, as well as replacing the desktop wallpaper with simple black.
This is very much apprecaited. I had been using the Win7 magnifying glass option but it malfunctioned and only an area, rather than the full screen, would invert, which wasn't usable. So your programme has been extremely helpful.
Thank you so much!
Fantastic! Wish I would have known of this sooner. This makes it easier for my eyes. Negative sepia is a nice touch. Thank you so much for this solution.
The code is on Bitbucket, an alternative to github.
The main reason for this choice being, I don't use git for source control, but mercurial, which github does not support...
While the fade in/out effect is neat the first time, like most UI animations it becomes distracting quickly and serves no purpose other than to slow you down. Is there a way to disable it?
Well, I don't know for you, but I don't switch the inversion nearly often enough to be annoyed by the smooth transitions!
Anyway, I will make a switch in the next stable version (yeah, I know, it's been a few months since I last spoke about that version^^')
It's not a huge deal of course, but when I'm surfing the web for non-work or looking at photos that friends and family send, I find myself switching back and forth a lot. At least there's no dialog that pops up every time.
"It looks like you're trying to invert the colors. Would you like me to help you with that?" 🙂
I have been a long-time user of this app without any trouble until this morning. I woke up my Windows 7 PC to find the screen whited-out, though the mouse still worked. I was able to bring up the Start menu and shut the computer down, and while apps were closing, finally the screen came back to reveal a window saying that I had run out of RAM (I have 8GB and don't use anywhere near that much) and that I could stop NegativeScreen. I did so and rebooted.
However, now every time I invert the screen it's fine for a few seconds and then begins flickering constantly. The screen updates, but it flickers between inverted and all-black. Reverting back to normal stops the flickering. I haven't done any manual updates at all, but I'm wondering if there was a Windows update overnight that is causing this.
I just downloaded the beta you posted below--problem SOLVED! What would have changed overnight to have caused the flickering that you happened to solve months ago with the beta? Strange, but thank you.
This is strange, at the least... but I'm afraid I really can't help with this. 😕
I use some Microsoft apis, and though I can't speak totally for sure, the memory leak probably occured inside their code (I don't do much beside calling them).
And the fact that you have flickerings after a reboot is really really odd! (maybe Aero is not running anymore?)
I'm glad the beta version solved everything though.
Just wanted to add my 2 cents - Been using Negative screen for a few months without an issues, worked great. Yesterday and today found flickering on my Win7 x64 machine when the screen is inverted. Saw on the comments that the beta fixes this and it did. I'm guessing a windows update may have broke it as well, but thanks for the beta - my eyes appreicate you!
After some frustration with nvidia drivers which no longer allow gamma ramp functions using nvcpl.dll in Win7 64 bit, and nvidia's lock out or other utilities like Powerstrip from directly writing to the color space for inversion, I was glad to see this program.
Question though - I am working in a 5-monitor setup where I need one monitor inverted. Any possibility of a toggle or command line mode with monitor number so that I can invert only the one monitor?
I added a system tray icon with a menu on the right click, allowing to toggle a monitor...
This is a quick and dirty patch, tell me if something does not work properly.
Firstly thank you for the app, it's exactly what I was looking for and works perfectly. I don't know how hard it would be to implement something like this, but if you ever find yourself updating it in the future, and if there are others who'd be interested, it'd be great to have a negative green option like the F9 negative red.
Either way though, thanks again! This is so useful to me - it'd gotten to the stage where I just couldn't get any work done after a certain time of night. Now I need never sleep again! 😉
In the next version, I think grayscaling the red/green filters would be a good thing to have. I've shared your application with my friends and coworkers and they like the grayscaled filters more the non-grayscaled. I just edited the code (64 bit only) and used that lately (I think I mentioned this before. Sorry, if I did repeat myself).
I liked how your beta has the smooth/blending transitions. Someone asked me if there was a way for the user to designate a certain area/window/screen to have a different effect (like two modes active simultaneously or one mode active with an area that is not affected). I've tried to dabble around with the code, but to no avail.
I don't know if this would be a good thing to have, but I don't think that it's really necessary: for some background, they wanted to have NegativeScreen affect everything except for a window in Photoshop or for streaming videos on Youtube. Still eager for next big release. If you think I can help with anything, just let me know (^_^).
In fact, I would like to allow the users to choose theirselves the color transformations and the key bindings, using a config file.
Of course, I will add some default parameters, as I think not everyone want to write theirs own color matrices... 🙂
Also, it is theoretically possible to filter a window out, but it would mean going back to using some hack instead of the new fullscreen mode. It would also mean adding some way to designate a window to filter, in a way or another, and it is not something I'm willing to do...
Ya, I personally think toggling to normal mode is fine. I'll probably just make a customized version for him when I get the chance to play around with the MW_FILTERMODE_EXCLUDE. Oh, I forgot to ask about NegativeScreen's support for multiple monitors. A coworker was experiencing some flickering on his secondary monitor when scrolling on either monitor and when moving the cursor between screens. Both monitors are Dell 1900x1080 on a Dell Pricision T3400 with Intel Xeon, running 64-bit Win 7, using 32-bit color. Any ideas?
I keep hearing about flickering, but I can't see what could possibly cause them 😕
The use of the full screen apis, as in the beta, should fix that though...
Oh, and good luck with the window filtering, I would be interested to see the result!
There's another coworker with the same specs and he doesn't experience the flickering so I'm at a loss. If it's not too much trouble, could you send me the source code for the beta?
The last changesets depend on the SlimDX library (I'm trying to auto toggle inversion, based on current screen brightness. It works almost fine, but it's not perfect...)
As a person with low vision problems, your app has been a lifesaver. Using black background and white text makes the page much more readable to my eyes. Thank you.
My only problem is with Google Chrome in win 7. With negativescreen running, when I click on a hyperlink, it takes long enough that Chrome moves my tab to a new window. Lately, I have started doing Win+Alt+N before and after clicking on a hyperlink as a workaround. But I am wondering if there is another way to solve this.
Thanks for your comment, and for using NegativeScreen.
Unfortunately, I don't have any idea what could cause the behavior you are describing, so I'm afraid I can't do much...
Did you try the beta version I posted a while ago in the comments? (NegativeScreen2beta warning: works only on Seven x64)
It may help.
Wow! Awesome app! Thank a lot for it. After I started using negative in Linux's compiz-fusion I long such function in Windows. Fortunately Win 7 provided Magnifier with it but at first a had a problem with Alt+Ctrl+L (I'm PL key: "ł") and then I realized I'm so used to "Win Classic Theme", that I can't endure reflections etc. in Aero. Finally I came back to "Windows Classic". You've given me a new hope 🙂.
Maybe you or somebody of this page reader' have some idea or theme for Aero so as it be more readable?
Sincerely
Tom.
Once again, thanks for making easily the best inversion utility out there
I had an odd flickering problem earlier with the original on a gtx580 graphics card and the beta version you released in the thread fixed it, if you want any details I'll let you know, so far i like the smooth transitions in the new version.
I also had a chance to play with the windows 8 inversion feature, its very cool, it wireframes all the UI elements and inverts most colors, but most significantly, it seems to detect most (not all) images and does not invert them, if it only had your smart inversion filters it would be perfect.
Sorry about the long time coming answer, I did't had the time to check the windows 8 rtm before yesterday...
what do you mean, "the windows 8 inversion feature"?? I didn't see anything like that. Are you talking about the high contrast theme?
apart from that, I'm glad the beta version worked better 🙂
Thank you, sir, for this awesome program. My mother set a couch on top of my laptop (true story), causing the screen to crack in one part, and negate every color on display. This switched it back so it only looks half bad. Thanks for the time you put into this!
thnx a lot developers....this is what I call an excellent piece of software...amazing///screen inversion is not new to me..I have worked on linux for over 5yrs and had my experience with compiz-fusion.Even with the backing of a full-fledged team they couldnt achieve the feat this tiny piece of software has accomplished with astonishing simplicity.I salute u guys...The sepia is a true winner mode incorporated.....thnx a tonn...
You should change the order of the comments on this website, so new comments appear first, and older ones later. The new comment are better then the older comments = more downloads.
You should also look into fixing the Google description of your website which says "24 Feb 2012 – Unfortunately NegativeScreen doesn't work on both my laptop and my computer. Both run windowsXP Professional, SP3 and should be up to"
I'm glad you like NegativeScreen, and thanks for the tips, the chronological order is more logical, but less relevant with many comments. I will also see what I can do for the description...
The program works very well on my Tablet PC. Thanks a lot. I only wish I could have found this program earlier.
The Microsoft Magnifier's color inversion really buggy in windows 7. When I used the Microsoft magnifier with color inversion on and change screen orientation from landscape to portrait half of the screen would become the corrupted. I tested it on other computer, laptops and tablets, all of them had the problem. I even emailed Microsoft and told them where the error was occurring and how to fix it, but the didn't really care.
Thanks to your program NegativeScreen, I can read books on my tablet pc in portrait mode with color inversion. My eyes thank you.
So that flickering bug sounds a lot like what I'm getting right now, I'm running win7 x64 sp1, with two nVidia GTX580's, and two monitors, one 1920x1200 and the other 1280x1024. Decreasing the frame rate will cause longer black screens (and vice versa), but seems to have no effect on the frequency of
download dont work
What are you talking about?
Do we have Mac version for this awesome piece?
Windows only, sorry!
(But I'm sure there are substitutes for other OSes...)
Is it possible to invert based on some application and not apply the invert effect to specific application?
Thanks!
This is not possible. Sorry.
Hi,
Are you able to configure these settings for just one monitor in a dual monitor set up?
So essentially I would like one screen to be negative whereas the other to be normal.
Thanks
It’s unfortunately not possible with the current version of NegativeScreen. It was technically possible with the old version, and I released a modified (but a bit crude) version here if you want to give it a shot: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
Hi,
Even with the ActiveOnStartUp set to false the negative screen is invoked with the exe in startup.
This is on Windows 10.
Do you think this is peculiar to Win10 and is it fixable?
Many thanks
The
ActiveOnStartupproperty only controls whether the effect is applied when the application starts.It has nothing to do with the startup folder.
Thanks Melvyn...
So the application exe is in the c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Start-Up
When Windows loads the negativescreen exe is loaded as expected.
What is not expected is that it applies the negative screen effect despite the ActiveOnStartup being set to false.
I would suggest the false setting attribute is being ignored?
If I close negativescreen and start it again then sure enough the effect is applied again despite the false setting attribute.
Thoughts?
Mmh.
This may be related to the user-specific fallback configuration when NegativeScreen starts from a read-only location.
NegativeScreen can be installed machine-wide, but allows different users to have their own configuration file.
For this to work, NegativeScreen first tries to load a user configuration from
%AppData%/NegativeScreen/negativescreen.confbefore trying to load a configuration file located next to the executable.In your case,
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUpis probably read-only, so if you used the "Edit configuration" menu in the application, the file has probably been created in%AppData%/NegativeScreen/negativescreen.conf.As mentioned above, this means that if this user-specific file indeed exists, it will be loaded, and a
negativescreen.conffile next to the executable will be ignored.TL;DR: if you want to make sure the
negativescreen.conffile next to the executable is actually used, delete%AppData%/NegativeScreen/negativescreen.conf.Hi, thanks for the update...I was quite excited that you had sussed this out but then I found my %AppData% directory only to find that there is no NegativeScreen folder present.
I am doing a search on the entire drive to find instances of negativescreen.conf and will report back
Hi, here on Win7 x64 I'm having the same issue with the v2.5 update; the ActiveOnStartUp is set to false but on every startup it starts anyway the negative screen. The negativescreen.conf is located next to the executable. That was not happening with the previous version, so I'll back to that one. Cheers.
Hello! Does this software allow you to only invert one monitor color?
is it still possible to download the crude beta version? the link posted on the github issue no longer works?
Sorry about that. I fixed the link.
Your browser most likely cached the request, so it won't work unless some dummy query params are added at the end of the url: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe?nonce
Hi, Bro! one more time thank you fro you great programm.
Im using it on my desktop, there I have a keyboard and its ok. But also Im using it on a ASUS T100TAM transformer book. In case I using it like a tablet, it has no keyboard. Then in become a bit difficult to switch display mode "win+alt+n". I would like to as you to help me to find a way, how can I make an Icon which I place on START line (bottom of windows screen). And when I press whis icon it toogle display mode. Is it possible?
Thank you very much.
Best regards, Mike.
Are you aware you can just click/touch the NegativeScreen icon in the systray to toggle the current effect?
yes I know of course and I but ot be able to click on this icon I must clisk on the tray arrow first. It is not usefull enough 😦
Ah I see.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to add a button in the task bar to do what you want.
I guess you could try to configure the systray icons to always show (there is an option to do that).
Another option would be to find a physical button on your tablet and bind it to the toggle command (not sure how you would find the code of the button though...).
Finally, with some work, it would be possible to create another independent application with maybe a simple topmost window and a button that would send a command to NegativeScreen to toggle its effect. I'm not sure it's worth the effort...
I will try to make the tray Icon always visibly. I hope it helps. But to tell the true I don't remember for sure maybe about 1 year ago I already tryed to do this 🙂 Thank you, man!
Hi! all smart inversion make the font blurry. Has anyone found a solution to this problem?
Hi,
This is because of ClearType.
There is no easy solution. You could try disabling it and see if the result is acceptable to you, but I find it's usually worse without it...
Just wanted to share my 4 custom modes (from brightest to darkest):
F1=win+alt+F1
{ 0.00, -0.25, -0.25, 0, 0 }
{ -0.25, 0.00, -0.25, 0, 0 }
{ -0.25, -0.25, 0.00, 0, 0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1, 0 }
{ 0.6, 0.6, 0.6, 0, 1 }
F2=win+alt+F2
{ 0.00, -0.26, -0.26, 0, 0 }
{ -0.26, 0.00, -0.26, 0, 0 }
{ -0.26, -0.26, 0.00, 0, 0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1, 0 }
{ 0.6, 0.6, 0.6, 0, 1 }
F3=win+alt+F3
{ 0.00, -0.27, -0.27, 0, 0 }
{ -0.27, 0.00, -0.27, 0, 0 }
{ -0.27, -0.27, 0.00, 0, 0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1, 0 }
{ 0.6, 0.6, 0.6, 0, 1 }
F4=win+alt+F4
{ 0.00, -0.28, -0.28, 0, 0 }
{ -0.28, 0.00, -0.28, 0, 0 }
{ -0.28, -0.28, 0.00, 0, 0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1, 0 }
{ 0.6, 0.6, 0.6, 0, 1 }
Display all the remaining comments...
Hi, thanks for the great program!
I was wondering if it's possible already, or if you have any plans in the future, to make the program run at Startup. I realize that it's only a quick click to get NegativeScreen started but it would be nice to have it running from the get-go.
Thanks again!
No plan to add that inside NegativeScreen. Just put a shortcut in the startup folder and be done with it!
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/startup-folder-in-windows-8
Thanks for the link Melvyn!
By accident, my screen gone to B&W mode and never return to normal color mode.
I re-installed NegativeScreen and did some modification on color matrix but, I can't get my screen back.
Another user screen on the same PC is not affected. So, I think that I can fix this with simple operation on one of user-dedicated files. But, I can't recognize what is it.
I really need some help to recover my screen.
If it happened without you changing anything with NegativeScreen, and it does it even after you deleted NegativeScreen, I’m afraid this is not NegativeScreen doing this to your computer.
If you are on Windows 10 you can open the task manager and see in the “startup” tab if there is anything that might cause your problem. Otherwise you are on your own to try and find the program responsible. Sorry.
Thanks for your comment.
Something dropped on my keyboard when I was typing it and my screen gone to B&W mode. Just after that, NegativeScreen works well, inversions, sepia, and so on. But only Alt+Win+N did not call back my color screen.
Strangely, mouse pointer and login/logoff/shutdown screen is displays in color! So, I think that this is not concerned with H/W but S/W.
Temporarily, I created other user on that PC. Temporary user has color-display as I expected.
I'm using windows 10.
Anyway, thank you for your answer.
Thanks for this program, it has saved me until I get cataracts surgery, much better than the simple inversion in Windows Magnifier!
I was going to ask about hotkeys for discrete enable/disable, which I did see one other post about, but I came up with a solution that someone else might find useful. Simply create a color matrix with no adjustment for "off", and use your preferred mode for "on". This makes the toggle not so useful, but I plan to emulate that in another program anyway, so I can trigger other events when inverting or not inverting (specifically different wallpapers).
No Adjustment=win+alt+F12
{ 1, 0, 0, 0, 0 }
{ 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 }
{ 0, 0, 1, 0, 0 }
{ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 }
{ 0, 0, 0, 0, 1 }
Would it be possible to run NegativeScreen for a specific application via command line argument OR from a batch file - enabling/turning NegativeScreen on before application starts and subsequently disabling/turning off when quitting?
There is currently no command line interface, but there is a web based API (see the readme), so this should be possible with some work.
Or you could simply set it to apply the effect you want on startup, then just start the process and kill it when you are done... 🙂
Do you have an example of how to set up NegativeScreen to start when a specific application is started and kill when application is either minimized or exited?
Maybe something like that in a .bat next to NegativeScreen?
Making it work when the app is minimized would be much harder...
Any potential for using NegativeScreen only for particular colors? I'm trying to just invert the three colors used by Skype for Business so I can read it as it doesn't adopt high contrast.
NegativeScreen makes use of color transformation matrices, and they always apply globally, so no, it's not possible to only invert some colors.
NegativeScreen has been extremely valuable to me. I use it everyday. Thanks!
One thing I;d like to do, but haven't been able to figure it out, is transform everything to inverted black and white. Like Windows High Contrast mode but without dropping out of Aero mode.
Another thing I'd like is to have a transform to change one color to black. I have some apps that use gray 0xABABAB as the background. I can't see black or white text on the gray background. If I could change 0xABABAB to 0x000000 or 0xFFFFFF it would really help. Is that possible?
being legally blind kinda sucks, but NegativeScreen helps me stay productive!
Keith
You can try this matrix (add it to the configuration file) to transform to inverted black and white:
Inverted Binary=
{ -127, -127, -127, 0, 0 }
{ -127, -127, -127, 0, 0 }
{ -127, -127, -127, 0, 0 }
{ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 }
{ 181, 181, 181, 0, 1 }
But you might be disappointed with the result...
The high contrast mode has been specially engineered for this purpose, and it's likely impossible to do it well with a global transformation.
Regarding the single color transformation, it's not possible. NegativeScreen uses global transformation matrices, and you can't just pick a color and change it without affecting other colors.
That said, it should be possible to increase contrast with a transformation matrix. I will look into it.
I'm not sure if this was answered... would it be possible to have NegativeScreen watch for CTRL+WIN+LEFT/RIGHT keystrokes, and turn on/off NegativeScreen based on which desktop I'm viewing? [This is not multi-monitor, but rather multi-desktop].
[I could perhaps see this being confused by using WIN+TAB and selecting a different desktop, but maybe there must be a system value thats exposed somewhere]
If this would work, this would give me a way to use NegativeScreen with specific programs [Chrome doesn't need it, but Evernote does need it... just full-screen them on different desktops]
Don't worry about this, unless you want to pursue it. I'm finding that ClearType is preventing this from working for me, unless I go greyscale inversion [Even though I love the smart inversion generally]
That's an interesting request.
I'm not sure a lot of people actually use the multi desktop capabilities of Windows 10, but it could make sense... Thanks for suggesting it, I'll keep it in the back of my head, even if it does not work for you like you said.
I love it, but it's not working on chrome when it's on fullscreen mode. I stays for some seconds and then stops working.
Maybe try to disabling hardware acceleration on Chrome... (not ideal, I know)
I too am having trouble using negative screen and Chrome. I'm using windows 10, never had this problem in 7.
Chrome will jump back and forth between inverted and not randomly, It makes chrome unusable for me. I tried disabling hardware acceleration and it made no difference. Has a fix been identified for this?
No fix for chrome as of now, aside from disabling hardware acceleration... sorry.
I would like to make a suggestion to this very useful application. It's about being able to set an automated toggle. If the app detects that the screen is darker than average, it should toggle off the Negative Screen because it is not needed anymore. On the contrary, if it detects that the screen is lighter than average, it toggles back the Negative Screen. This would be useful when often switching between dark and light screens.
Hi there 🙂 I realy tried to get into color matrices, but i cant seem to get my wanted result.
I have a Music-Program called "Bitwig" and i want to replace darkgrey (0,62, 0,62, 0,62) and light grey(0,85, 0,85, 0,85) with pitch black, but leave all other colors (blue,orange,purple,etc.) untoched. Is that possible?
and If so how can i calculate the correct matrix? 🙂 I also worked with "ColorMatrixViewer" but cant seem to get the right paramters.
Anybody? 🙂:):):) Thank you 🙂
First off, this has been one of my most important apps on Windows for probably 5 years now, thank you!! I have it on over 90% of the time I'm on my computer.
I just had to switch to Windows 10 at work, and now am having issues with NegativeScreen.
For example, Chrome keeps switching between inverted and not, depending whether my mouse is over a link (it inverts the Chrome window if my cursor is over a hyperlink on the page, then when I move it away from the link, the inversion get disabled (just in the Chrome window) after a few seconds)
Similar behavior with Atom IDE. If I switch focus to a different window, Atom window is no longer inverted.
Unfortunately this is a problem that has been reported a number of times already, but I can't do anything about it since I'm only calling a Windows api without much control over it.
A workaround that seems to work is to disable hardware acceleration in chrome. Hardly an ideal solution, I know...
Thanks a lot for the quick reply, Melvyn!
Yeah, it seems like using Magnifier directly has the exact same problem.
How do you solve this problem for yourself? By not using Windows 10? 😄
This is so important to me, that I will probably start looking into coding on top of a graphics driver, or maybe hacking the monitor firmware, unless someone has already done something similar... Will definitely use your smart inversion matrix (alt 2) in that case, which has been working so well for me!
hi how can i use it on linux and if i cant what can i use for grayscale.
NegativeScreen only works on Windows and I don't know the alternatives for linux, sorry.
most linux distributions use xcalib which can be used to invert the screen.
Hi,
Have you tried to use NegativeScreen in fullscreen mode? I find a bug there. Every time that I change to fullcreen mode after a few seconds that application stops inverting the color.
Anyone else facing the same issue?
Thank you!
what is a configuration file... what is it... please tell me
sorry, u discovered the stupid magic that if you rightclick the app when its open in the lower right list of apps in the taskbar, you can, using magic, magically go straight to the configuration settings
now that im all done, i just want to say; thank you for making this. it was very accessible even to a young teen like me, and now i have a bunch of cool effects available on my computer! yaaayyyy.... i even added sepia and hueshifting!
yay for continued replies to my own comments...
i know that this wasnt originally a setting you implemented, but i think it should still be noted that when hueshifting the image on your screen, it the colorslose contrast from one another slightly.
you can delete these comments if you want.... but seriously. when using smart inversion (the high saturation version), along with hueshift, colors lose contrast from one another to a small degree and i feel like this can be fixed
I know the colors are not exactly the same. That's why there are more than one smart mode: because it's not perfect. Also, no this can't be fixed (but you are free to try).
Now please stop spamming 🙂
please just delete my comments or tell me how... i dont want to spam but i dont know what else to do... i am learning a lot about color matrices from this program and i thank you very much for making it though.... thanks for the reply! hopefully i wont have anything else to comment about
The first execution, change colors
The second execution,appear message
can or not
change The second execution
when execution
change the color, do not appear message.
My mean is
The first execution, change colors (State one to State two;have change)
The second execution, change colors(State two to State one;no change)
The third execution, change colors (State one to State two;have change)
Hi, I'm having a hard time understanding what you are trying to say.
Basically, you see a message when starting the application again after it's already running, is that it?
This should be fixed with the latest update (from just before june). If you are still seeing a message with the current version, I'm going to need more information...
How does one edit the Win+Alt+N hotkey to disable/enable NegativeScreen? Just upgraded to Office365 and OneNote uses the same hotkey and overrides its application to NegativeScreen. If anyone knows how to edit the OneNote hotkey, I don't mind doing that instead.
You can do that by editing the configuration file. See the readme...
I don't think you can edit OneNote's hotkeys.
Thanks for letting me know about this hotkey conflict btw. This is unfortunate...
Firstly, thank you. I've used this for years on Windows 7. Now I'm on 10 and I cannot locate the configuration file to save my life. Where is it? All I see is; changelog, license, negative screen, and readme.
This hotkey conflict withy Onenote is driving me insane and I can't find a work around. Please help!
It's supposed to be next to the executable, but if it does not exist, you can create it from the default configuration by using the "Edit Configuration" menu. (Right click on the NegativeScreen icon in the systray)
Thank you, Melvyn. You're an internet hero!
Hi, thank you for your work!
I have a question: is it possible to invert the colors of a specific monitor? In the version 1.3 there was a multi-screen feature.
Sorry, this is not possible with the current version. The only version where it was possible was a crude beta version. There is an open issue on github where this feature has been requested: https://github.com/mlaily/NegativeScreen/issues/2
I disabled blue channel. Now it's yellow! Yay!
Hey,
Is it possible to add an option of "do not apply any effects after running"?
I would like to add this program to start-up so I could use key combinations when needed. 🙂
Sure!
Setting "ActiveOnStartup=false" (instead of true) in the config file will do just that!
I use this as a makeshift colorblind mode for Overwatch with a simple matrix that switches the red and green channels, works like a charm! Thanks!
Great use case! 😄
Just a heads up: the Windows 10 Creators update added something called "Full Screen Optimizations" which disables the color transformation effect for borderless fullscreen windows. It can be disabled per-application in the properties of the .exe file. Just spent 15 minutes wondering why the effect was disabled in Overwatch after updating Windows. 😕
This is awesome. Thanks so much for writing this!
Hey! I just saw that it was you who had put together a chocolatey package for negativescreen. Unfortunately the package is broken and outdated. Would you be so kind to consider updating the package and maybe create one for your ColorMatrix Viewer as well? This would be awesome!
Yeah my bad, I haven't really put the effort into this package. You are right, I will try to do a better job...
This application is really amazing. The "smart inversion" setting, together with it's alternative options, exceeds my expectations. I would readily pay for this.
Well, you can still make a donation... ^^
Hi. I very much like the Neg.Screen program. But it is not running smoothly with Chrome under Win10. It does make negative all other programs unde Win10 but Chrome remains the same. What could be the fault?
P.S. When moving cursor on a hyperlink, it goes to negative but when just on plain surface, it wont go to negative (although the program is up and running).
The cursor is never supposed to be inverted. This is a limitation of the current version. I should probably try to work on it...
I'm not sure what causes this, but you are not the first to report a similar problem.
What kind of graphic card do you use?
It seems a workaround is to disable hardware acceleration in the Chrome advanced settings.
Hello,
This is a awesome program, but i have 2 monitors and i only want it to one screen, can you please help me to how to do it
Thanks.
Thanks developer this was my solution, from having to quit my job due to headache and eyestrain , unable to look at letters for more than 5-10 minutes without problems.
i don't even have to use Glasses anymore..
So thank you so much, i hope you realize that you have helped a lot of people by presenting this solution to eye strain problems due to brigth pixels on LCD monitors and having jobs that requires to look at the monitor 8 hours a day...
Alsothe problem will not go away, as we get more digitalized the issue will be more spreading in years to come, so people will continue to cherish this application i'm sure.
As a person with a retina vision impairment, I love this program. Apologies if this has already been asked but is it possible to invert all the text and backgrounds but not invert the images?
Sorry, but no, this is not possible. The API used by NegativeScreen is only all or nothing.
couldn't you make a better, more customisable API?
What do you mean by that? Any specific idea to suggest?
OMG, I think I'm falling in love with this app!
Is it possible to switch the Windows app mode from dark to light when the app is on? Is it possible to change the desktop background when the app is on too? Running Win10 without this awesome app, I use the Win10's dark app mode, a black desktop background, and a black taskbar. It'd be really slick for the app to keep those things black when the app is on too.
Cheers!
Jimmy
Your code made me happy. Thanks)
This works fine under win10x64, I am so happy to finally find a solution to change the view to greyscale and back at any time. This helps me so much with photo-edeting, only Picasa used to have this feature as well, thank you for all you work <3
Hi, would it be possible to put screen brightness at the lowest when activating inverted mode?
This is not currently possible.
I'm not sure this can be done in a universally compatible way without too much trouble...
Thank you so so much, you are my hero, you are nothing short of genius! I have been wishing for app like this to exist for almost a decade and now finally, I can try what it would be like to have my screen in monochrome 😄 It's so gorgeous, can't take my eyes off of it!
Haha, thanks for sharing your enthusiasm 🙂
Great! Is there a way to increase the brightness?
Great program. I've been using magnifier until I found this and the quick toggle is neat. I run a multi-monitor setup and was wondering how difficult it would be to have the option to select which monitors have inversion and which don't. Thanks.
You are not the first one to ask this. This is theoretically possible, but would probably not run as well as the current full-screen version. See this issue: https://github.com/mlaily/NegativeScreen/issues/2
Hey there, been using this for years--haven't found anything like this on Mac. I'm pretty handy in Xcode, Xamarin, and some C#..., and I see this is open source.. Is this possible to do on mac (Smart Inversion) perhaps something with the ICC profiles? Would love to see a Mac release and I'm looking for a new project 😉 Feel free to email.
Thanks for your interest.
I don't use a Mac and since NegativeScreen uses Windows API, the useful part of the code is not directly portable.
That said, if you find a way to apply a color matrix transformation to the entire display on Mac, you could relatively easily port most if not all NegativeScreen's features to this platform, including smart inversion.
Regarding ICC profiles, I briefly looked into it at the very beginning of the project, but did not find an obvious way to use color matrices, or any other mean to dramatically change the colors.
This is great! Tnx
Awesome program. Just thought I'd share my negative-green preset, designed to imitate the appearance of an old green-phosphor monochrome CRT or the display in The Matrix. I find it fairly pleasant to use in a dark room.
Grayscaling is by the formula used for Y in YUV. Green reaches full intensity at about 80% black. Darker than that and some red and blue are added to make a lighter green that "blooms". This gives about as authentic an appearance as you can get without a pixel shader to bleed bright pixels into neighbors. The "blooming" green effect also improves the appearance of ClearType text over a plain negative-green based on the negative-red effect included with the program.
{ -0.4485, -0.37375, -0.4485, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ -0.8805, -0.73375, -0.8805, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ -0.171 , -0.1425 , -0.171 , 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0 , 0.0 , 0.0 , 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.3 , 1.25 , 0.3 , 0.0, 1.0 }
I'm glad you like it!
Thanks for your contribution 🙂
I was wondering, it invert's both saturation and color. is there a way to keep the saturation as is?
Saturation is part of a color's properties in a HSB model, and I don't think it makes sense to "invert" a hue, saturation, or brightness, so I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
The simple negative matrix is just applying the formula y=-1*x+1 to each color channel (RBG) where x is the original channel value, and y is the resulting value.
Can this program invert colors specific windows or applications, like only WordPad?
Not currently.
Thanks a lot for creating this useful application, really helpful for reading PDF at night. For this purpose, I add custom matrix (F12 seems unassigned 🙂) based on grayscale just to dim white or any contrast colors.
thanks for the great software Melvyn
if is there any way to make all the colors go black except for the pure white (255)
please help me out it's like a life saving tool dude 🙂
You want to make everything go black except pure white?
The result are not very useful in my opinion, but you could try with this matrix:
{ 600, 600, 600, 0, 0 }
{ 1200, 1200, 1200, 0, 0 }
{ 200, 200, 200, 0, 0 }
{ 1000, 1000, 1000, 1, 0 }
{ -2999, -2999, -2999, 0, 1 }
Thanks, man, I know it's not very useful for you, but it's going to help me find the error we get from the e-commerce website.
sometimes we mistakenly leave not pure white (254 to 250) background, and it's hard to see the difference, opening every image in Photoshop is not possible so now you now you save us from a headache thanks. 🙂
Ah, I guess that makes sense. Well I'm glad you find it useful. 🙂
Hello,
thank you a lot for NegativeScreen and for your good work. I use it on my PC and on my tablet. The PC runs with Win10 Pro, the tablet with Win10 Home. Both are on the same release and build. From one day to another NegativeScreen quits with an error message. It tells I should install .NET 4.0.30319. I was not sure if I have .NET installed so I downloaded the current version from Microsoft and tried to install it. But the installer of .NET says, it is already installed.
On the PC NegativeScreen runs fine as usual.
Please can you help me to fix this error? I'm so happy with the program. Because of my visual disabilities I need a dark background an white forground.
Thank you a lot
Frank
BUG submit:
It is will be disabled by mistake when turning on full screen in some video website like youtube , It is
just happened in windows 10 .
Needless to say, your program is really amazing. I just want to point out a technical issue. The only weakness of this program is ClearType™, a sub-pixel font rendering technology, supported by Microsoft. Why? Well.. the following is just my guess for this situation. ClearType™ depends on the assumption that subpixel arrangement of LCD display usually follows R,G,B order, from left to right. However, unfortuantely, this reasonable assumption does not make sense for us, who are using the “brightness” inversion only, and leaving “hue” intact.
Actually, I prefer to use the option, [F4: smart inversion 3], however, this inversion cannot convert black letters into purely white letters, but into bright pink letters, which is, of course, not a desirable result. (But if you try to invert the black letters in MS Word 2016 with NegativeScreen, you will get purely white letters. That’s because MS Word 2016 has abandoned these ClearType™ things from font rendering.)
One way to avoid such pink letters is "to enlarge the font size of Windows to 150%", (you can find that option at "Display Settings") because it reduces such bad, unintended effect of subpixel rendering.
Thank you.
Yes you are right, ClearType is a huge annoyance when using the smart inversion modes...
Unfortunately, disabling it, while it does remove the pink fringe, does not really improve the readability, so as you noted in another comment, it's not a proper solution. (Besides, not all applications use the native ClearType, so it's not even always an option)
I guess enlarging the font size works because characters become much bigger than sub-pixels, so it's less noticeable. But not everyone will be happy with such a solution 🙂
As high-dpi screens become more widespread, this will hopefully become less of an issue.
I love this tool and use it every day! Thank you!
Would it be possible to configure the tool to NOT adjust the colors of specific applications? I have some applications that are already dark and would like to leave those untouched.
Disabling inversion only for specific applications is not possible and it will most probably stay this way because it's technically impossible with the current implementation. Sorry.
Hello,
Im using the software on windows 7 Panasonic FZ-M1 Personal computer tablet. The top part of the screen does not show when i turn on to any mode. The mode does activate but only the bottom part of the screen can be seen. I would attach a screen shot of my screen if the was an option to attach a photo
You are probably experiencing a known bug, occurring on portrait mode displays... (I guess you are using your tablet vertically?)
I unfortunately can't do much about it, since the bug is present inside the Microsoft API NegativeScreen is using.
To convince yourself, you can try to use the Windows Magnifier, and set it to invert the screen's colors. You will probably notice the same behaviour as with NegativeScreen.
Hello, I just wanted to point out that if you download the legacy version (1.4) it will work in portrait mode as well, as long as you can survive without the improvements of the latest versions.
Just wanted to thank you as it is an amazing tool to help with eye stress. Have a great day.
I'm glad to hear it, thanks! 🙂
Is it possible to run the application on windows startup without inverting the colors? so that it is only running in the background and when needed can be used with the hotkeys?
You can use ActiveOnStartup=false in the configuration file so that no effect will be active when the application starts.
You can then put a shortcut to NegativeScreen in your startup folder: http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/s/starfold.htm
Any Chance to get the Multi-Screen Feature again?
So that it is possible to use the tool only on a dedicated screen in a Multi-Screen System? Or even on a single Program-Window?
Thx
This is unfortunately not possible with the better and more efficient full screen mode the current version uses.
As I said in the past, I might one day implement the previous method so that it's possible to switch between full screen mode and window/screen mode, but this is a lot of work, and it is not on my agenda for now...
It works and all but how do you make the colors back to normal again?
Just click on the program's icon in the taskbar (bottom right by default)
Or just toggle using + + N
Check the README.txt for Default controls.
This is the most useful application for people who suffers RP (Retinitis Pigmentosa). You are a genius!. Many thanks! It should be implemented in every OS!
Hi.
First off, great and fast app! 😄
I was wondering, would it be possible to implement color correction to specific parts of the screen and then apply it as overlay (or some similar) blending mode.
That could really help with monitors that have color uniformity problem on their monitors.
For example I have dell monitor that's more green on the left and more red on the right side.
So I was wondering if it would be possible to use this app for correcting something like that?
Again, thanks for the great app!
I think what you describe would theoretically be possible to do, but rather hard to implement (for example, how would you get the right irregular shape to properly blend the overlay to match your screen?)
In any case, this is too far away from the intended purpose of NegativeScreen. This is not the right app for your use case, sorry.
Shape does not have to be 100% accurate but with decent dslr you can take an image of the screen to just get the general idea about the deviations.
For example, that hue shift that some monitor have, are generally linear and most basic gradient fill with inverse color values fixes the problem.
Of course it does introduce some small banding in some specific cases, but it's choosing lesser of two evils in that case.
Hello,
First of all, I'd like to say thanks for this awesome app. Unfortunately, I'm also reporting that I'm having a peculiar issue when I run it. I have dual 1080 monitors in Eyefinity (portrait mode 2160 x 1920); when I run NegativeScreen, the left hand of the left monitor becomes corrupted (around 240px from the edge). When I turn off Eyefinity the issue disappears. I hope you have possible workarounds (except NOT using Eyefinity 🙂)
Thanks!
Well, I'm sorry to hear about your issue, but if you are using the latest version (> 2.*) I'm afraid I can't do anything for you 😕
Starting with 2.0, NegativeScreen uses the full-screen Windows Magnifier API, meaning I don't have any control other than applying a color effect.
You have probably found a bug in the API (Microsoft code). Just to make sure, did you try to use the Windows Magnifier color inversion? Did you notice the same problem?
Hi Melvyn,
Yes I did, and yes the issue did manifest unfortunately. So I guess this is something I should throw MS or AMD then... 😕
Oh well... Thank you anyway! 🙂
I guess to put a final nail on this coffin, I found a KB from Microsoft about it: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2486146
Seems like there isn't any plan to rectify this issue, so I'm pretty much SOL.
Ah indeed, this is not a good sign... Sorry.
Hello, congrats on this nice utility. A couple of questions:
Thank you.
Kind regards.
Federico.
The 2.5 version is not officially released yet, but you can download a preview version here with the web api: http://cash.x2a.yt/b141592b72bbc3fd9919232f37f4f27b.zip
Refer to the README for more information: https://bitbucket.org/yaurthek/negativescreen/src/5723c03d34009e4c911469e88f34828b7b03bf53/README.txt
Using command line arguments would certainly be possible, but the feature is not currently implemented, and I have no plan to do it for now.
The web api is supposed to be the way to go for automation. I suppose another way to do it would be to edit the configuration file to change the default color effect, then restart NegativeScreen...
Anyway, let me know what you think about the web api if you use it.
Hi, thanks a lot for this awesome creation!
I was wondering if it was possible to implement a setting in the config file or something to allow me to choose which part of the screen will have its color inverted, because sometimes i don't want the whole screen to have inverted colors.
Thx!
It's not possible with the current version of the API the app uses, sorry.
Thank you for creating this program. I've been looking for something like this for a long time. Simple, but necessary- Might give my retinas a few more years of quality life.
Would it be possible for NegativeScreen to detect when the screen is locked and switch to normal colours? I'm using it on Windows 10 and it insists on pretty pictures which look weird when the colours are inverted.
Almost everything is possible 🙂
But I don't think this is a top priority. I guess you will have to live with it. Sorry.
No problem, I've added something to my AutoHotKey script to kill NegativeScreen on lock and restart on unlock. It's a bit messy in that it leaves an orphaned tray icon but that is a minor problem to me ( I can't send keystrokes to NegativeScreen because it has no window and the lock screen swallows any fake keypresses I send). Code below:
; Stop NegativeScreen when locked, run again when unlocked.
WM_WTSSESSION_CHANGE(wParam, lParam, Msg, hWnd) {
static init:=(DllCall("Wtsapi32.dll\WTSRegisterSessionNotification", UInt, A_ScriptHwnd, UInt, 1) && OnMessage(0x02B1, "WM_WTSSESSION_CHANGE"))
if (wParam=0x7) { ; lock
Process Close, NegativeScreen.exe
} else if (wParam=0x8) { ; unlock
if (A_Is64bitOS) {
Run %HOMEPATH%\PortableApps\PortableApps\NegativeScreenPortable\NegativeScreen.exe, %HOMEPATH%\PortableApps\PortableApps\NegativeScreenPortable
} else {
Run %HOMEPATH%\PortableApps\PortableApps\NegativeScreenPortable\NegativeScreenX86.exe, %HOMEPATH%\PortableApps\PortableApps\NegativeScreenPortable
}
}
}
Is it possible to create a matrix that inverses black and white whilst keeping the rest the same but also reduces the contrast / shifts the tone so that the result looks more 'flat' or 'material design'? Been playing around with the color matrix but I can't even get close to the result I want. Cheers.
Something like that? http://cash.x2a.yt/33aef67aaf218cd38677841ec9484943.png
I'm not sure I understand what you are after, but hopefully you can adapt this matrix to better suit your needs...
Cheers.
work on windows vista?
yes.
Great! Windows Magnifier used to annoy me because when I did Alt+Tab, it would also include the magnifier.
Negative Screen is easy, smart, free and open-source. Thanks developer.
Good day!
First of all I must say: this is amazing. You just realized what I dreamed for. I was totally surprised when I found this program.
Now lets get back to the message.
Not too long ago I started to work with 2 monitors. (MCU software, PCB design, schematics etc). And now I must ask you: is it possible to realize the version of this program which can invert colors of just 1 monitor?
In my case I want to invent IDE to be able to write code on the black background.
In any case thanks a lot. This is the best freeware program I've ever seen.
Hi, people keep asking me this, so here is a copy pasted answer:
Short answer: no.
Long answer: it’s unfortunately not possible with the current version of NegativeScreen. It was technically possible with the old version, and I released a modified (but a bit crude) version here if you want to give it a shot: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
BTW, there is an issue open about this… https://bitbucket.org/yaurthek/negativescreen/issues/2/multiple-monitor-support
Thank you, but Windows 10 shutting the program down. I tried to run as Administrator, but it wasn't run 😦
It looks like Windows SmartScreen is indeed preventing this version to run, I don't know why.
I managed to get it running after clicking on the link here: http://cdn.howto-connect.com/wp-content/uploads/windows-protected-your-PC-pop-up.png then "Run anyway".
Modified version works for me on Win 8.1. Awesome, thank you 🙂
Is this available for Windows 10?
Yes, it just works.
I'm sure it's not possible, but it could be cool if you had a smart dark mode, leaving program that are already dark alone but inverting programs that are light. Or allowed specific programs to be inverted with a toggle. I just started using Dark Reader for Chrome which is pretty sweet, not perfect. Other super bright programs I use for work I would love to darken.
Sorry, not possible.
Can you apply the program only in one part of the screen, leaving aside the bottom of the screen without reversing? (Eg Windows 10 taskbar, which has a black bar and become white when reverse)?
Sorry for my bad English.
Theoretically possible with the "legacy" version, but no way to do it with the current version, sorry.
Hi,
Is it possible to apply NegativeScreen to only on of the screen from multiple screen desktop?
Thanks
Short answer: no.
Long answer: this has already been asked several times, and it's unfortunately not possible with the current version of NegativeScreen. It was technically possible with the old version, and I released a modified (and a bit crude) version here if you want to give it a shot: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
BTW, there is an issue open about this... https://bitbucket.org/yaurthek/negativescreen/issues/2/multiple-monitor-support
Thanks for the link, there is no help file thats indicates how to run the app on one screen only and not on the other one, can u help please
If i recall correctly, you can choose which screens you want to run NegativeScreen on from the systray icon.
Hello,
I am using 'inverted green' colur. But there is lots of bright green places and dark green places. Can I have all of them become only one specific level of green say RGB(9,134,24) and replace dark portions winth completely black
Thanks & Regards
Mohiuddin
I'm not sure whether this is possible, but setting a maximum brightness for the green is :
{ 0.0, -0.3, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, -0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, -0.1, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.6, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
Is there a way to get this to work without Aero? Corporate IT has a master theme that doesn't allow Aero.
It's been a while since I last tested this, but if I recall correctly, NegativeScreen < 2.0 ("legacy" version), works without Aero, but the framerate is not excellent and it uses lots of CPU.
The current version of NegativeScreen doesn't work at all without Aero.
Add a polygamy feature to NegativeScreen so you can open multiple instances of it!
Why would you want that?!
Because I want to square the inversion effect that it makes.
Then use http://arcanesanctum.net/colormatrix-viewer/ to multiply your matrices.
But how do I do that?
Matrices in the list are automatically multiplied in their order of appearance, so just put the same matrix two times in a row or more, and see what you get. The result might not be intuitive but the result with two instances of NegativeScreen would be the same...
Here is one matrix I made of negative red squared:
{ 0.09, 0, 0, 0,0}
{ 0.18, 0, 0, 0,0}
{ 0.03, 0, 0, 0,0}
{ 0, 0, 0, 1,0}
{ 0.7, 0, 0, 0,1}
Hi - LOVE your program, its been extremely useful for me. While I may not use it for eye strain purposes, I do use it to see any odd color palletes on images that I can use. I was wondering if there was a way to invert the hue (rotate hue by 180 degrees I believe) BUT.. not to invert luminance. I would attempt to do this myself but the ColorMatrix editor doesnt seem to work on windows 10. Many thanks and you are amazing for making this useful program that helps so many people with this seemingly overlooked issue of eyestrain. 🙂
Hey, thank you! I ColorMatrix Viewer works fine on my Windows 10, so I don't know what's wrong for you. Here is a matrix to rotate the hue by 180°:
{ -0.3333333, 0.6666667, 0.6666667, 0.0000000, 0.0000000 }
{ 0.6666667, -0.3333333, 0.6666667, 0.0000000, 0.0000000 }
{ 0.6666667, 0.6666667, -0.3333333, 0.0000000, 0.0000000 }
{ 0.0000000, 0.0000000, 0.0000000, 1.0000000, 0.0000000 }
{ 0.0000000, 0.0000000, 0.0000000, 0.0000000, 1.0000000 }
WOW THANK YOU SO MUCH, WORKED BETTER THAN EXPECTED, YOUR THE BEST!!
Hey, it is a combination of normal inversion and smart inversion!
Actually, smart inversion is a combination of normal inversion and a 180° color rotation, but yeah, it's the same 🙂
And are you allowed to use Magnifier and NegativeScreen together?
There is a bug in the current version, making NegativeScreen crash. I've fixed it, but not yet released a new version.
Here's a matrix that has smart inversion and red:
Smart Inversion and Red=win+alt+shift+F1
{ 1.3533333, -0.6666667, -5.6666667, 0.0000000, 0.0000000 }
{ -0.6666667, 0.3333333, -0.6666667, 0.0000000, 0.0000000 }
{ -0.6696667, -0.6666667, 5.3333333, 2.0000000, 0.0000000 }
{ 0.0000080, 0.0000000, 0.0000000, 1.0000000, 0.0000000 }
{ 1.0050000, 1.0000004, 1.0000000, 0.0000000, 1.0000000 }
Any idea on how to invert only scale of grays?
Well, it's part of the default color effects... (Alt+Win+F8)
Actually that matrix makes everything in the scale of grays. I was looking for a matrix that inverts only black to white, light gray to dark gray leaving all other colors intact.
Since black is a combination of other color channels, I'm afraid this is impossible with a color matrix then.
I love your tool!
And thank you for sharing the source code!
If I have any feature suggestions, I will let you know.
Smart Inversion 2 ﴾Win+Alt+F3﴿ is the most beautiful one.
I wish that an Android App could also do this.
I have TouchWiz Nature UX 2.5, which has still the legacy natural Samsung colours.
But if somebody upgrades to Android Lollipop, he will need your tool to compensate the ugly user interface.
Everytime I want to apply changes in Configuration, I must to restart the aplication.
Could you for example add the "Apply changes" to the program menu?
This is not in my plans right now. I agree the whole process of editing the configuration could be improved (and I might get to it one day), but modifying the configuration is supposed to be a one time thing, so it should not be too much of an annoyance.
Just for fun, a rotated hue:
ForFun=win+alt+F12
{ -0.9, -0.9, 1, 0, 0 }
{ 1, -0.9, -0.9, 0, 0 }
{ -0.9, 1, -0.9, 0, 0 }
{ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 }
{ 0.9, 0.9, 0.9, 0, 1 }
paste in the end of your configuration
But you can change the hotkey of Win+Alt+F12.
And for more fun:
ForMoreFun=win+alt+shift+F12
{ -0.8, -0.9, 1, 0, 0 }
{ 1, -0.9, -0.9, 0, 0 }
{ -0.9, 1, -0.8, 0, 0 }
{ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 }
{ 0.9, 0.8, 0.9, 0, 1 }
And:
ForFun^2=win+alt+F12
{ -0.99, 2.62, -0.99, 0, 0 }
{ -0.99, -0.99, 2.62, 0, 0 }
{ 2.62, -0.99, -0.99, 0, 0 }
{ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 }
{ 0.180000, 0.180000, 0.180000, 0, 1 }
Does this work on Windows 10?
Yes it does.
And one more question, do antiviruses seem to detect it?
No they don't. There is nothing malicious or that could be interpreted as suspicious with it.
Why not add more inversion colors?
One little request: I want you to get me the colour matrix to turn the display into green and amber (NOT negative green or amber).
If you already have a color matrix and want the negative version, you can use ColorMatrix Viewer to multiply the first matrix with the negative matrix, and the result will be a negative version of your color effect.
It would also be great if you could add two keycommands to specifically enable and disable the inversion. Currently, I will need my script to launch NS (with ActiveOnStartup=true) and then use win+alt+H to switch it off by ending the NS process. It seems better to me that it should stay running in the background and on/off should be toggled.
To prevent an incorrect state, we could use direct keycommands to enable and disable inversion.
Cheers!
Dax.
I've made a version with command line switches that can enable and disable the effects of an already running instance. I can share if you're interested.
I'm working on an AutoHotKey (AHK) script that will enable inversion only when a certain program is on-screen and only at night (18:00-06:00).
It should be possible, but it would be even nicer if this feature was built into your program.
Wish me luck!
Dax.
White to green, black to white.
For my eyes ideal for reading of black texts on white background.
{ -1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, -1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 1.0, 1.4, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
I just tried this and it worked perfectly.
Great work.
Would it be possible to write a simple plugin API, to be able to feed NegativeScreen information when and what to ignore? Then for example we could write plugins to make exceptions for pictures and video, for example a Firefox plugin, VLC plugin etc.
Thanks for your comment.
At first, I thought your suggestion was a great idea. Then I paused for a moment and tried to think about the use cases for such a plugin API, and couldn't quite find any:
There is no way to exclude a specific window, so at best you could programmatically toggle the active color effect. You would then need to detect whether your application is visible on screen (which is harder than it seems to do reliably and efficiently), and unless I'm missing your point, all plugins would basically do just that.
If this is what you had in mind, wouldn't it be better to simply allow users to instruct NegativeScreen to disable itself when an application, identified by its name, is on screen?
On a side note, I experimented a while back on a similar idea, but more generic: NegativeScreen would auto-toggle based on the current screen brightness, refreshed every few milliseconds. It basically worked, but was very CPU intensive, and sometimes borderline seizure inducing, so I never released it... This idea might be worth testing again...
Why don't you post the changelog on this page (along with the latest version number) so that people can see at a glance if there are any updates to the program?
It would be useful to have this done.
But, it already is on this page ^^'.
Just click on the "Changelog..." title and it will unfold. (It was taking too much space otherwise)
I will try to make it more visible the title can be clicked.
"The color inversion takes effect immediately after starting the program." ... How do I have it NOT do this? I'd like the program to initialize upon startup but not invert. Right now I have the exe in my startup folder and it initializes fine, but it also inverts automatically (which I don't want).
The "ActiveOnStartup" property in the configuration file is there for that exact purpose 🙂
Just edit the file, and replace ActiveOnStartup=true with ActiveOnStartup=false and you are done.
And thanks for your donation by the way. It's always much appreciated!
This program is great, thanks very much.
It doesn't work with f.lux, so I made some matrices for simple inversion and uninverted that reduce blue light. Not sure if that's already mentioned here. I don't know what I'm doing with the matrices, but they seem to work! I am not using the smart modes because they smudge anti-aliased text a bit.
Inv Red=win+alt+F1
{ -1, 0, 0, 0, 0 }
{ 0, -1, 0, 0, 0 }
{ 0, 0, -1, 0, 0 }
{ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 }
{ 1, .8, .6, 0, 1 }
Red=win+alt+F2
{ 1, 0, 0, 0, 0 }
{ 0, .8, 0, 0, 0 }
{ 0, 0, .6, 0, 0 }
{ 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 }
{ 0, 0, 0, 0, 1 }
Hey! Thanks for the matrices definitions.
The smart modes indeed do smudge text when ClearType is enabled, because the red and blue subpixels used with this kind of anti-aliasing and supposed to be aligned with the actual physical pixels, are inverted with the rest of the screen. If you disable ClearType, you will notice the effect disappear. (But it might not be more readable without any anti-aliasing though...)
I found another matrix which I find interesting if you just want less luminosity:
{ 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.4, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.3, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
It's slightly warmer than the previous one, and more readable.
Awesome program! Is there a way to invert colors on one monitor only on a multiple monitor setup?
Hey, if you want, I made this little matrix which reduces luminosity without changing the colors 🙂
{ 0.4, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.4, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.4, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
Wonderful app , I love it !
I use it to negative color in ppt presentation , it's OK on all version before powerpoint 2016 .
In powerpoint 2016 presentation mode , it not works , but when I back to edit mode , it's all right.
I don't know why , can someone help ?
huge thx 🙂
Is there a way to exclude applications from Negative Screen? I appreciate that it doesn't mess with 3D applications but I would still like the ability to disable certain applications from being affected.
By the way, I love Negative Screen. It's a real helper, thank you!
There is currently no way to exclude a specific window from NegativeScreen. Sorry.
Thank you so much for this! There are some years since i try to find an user-eye's friendly version of changing ALL that is displayed. Just saved me!
One tiny request: I would like to go a little further and turn the display into sepia (NOT negative sepia, as you provided already). Because I'm quite code-dummy, I'd kindly ask you for provinding the code for "classic" sepia so that I just copy it into the txt file and than use it.
Many many MANY thanks!
Thanks for using NegativeScren.
Here is the color matrix for sepia:
{ 0.393, 0.349, 0.272, 0.000, 0.000 }
{ 0.769, 0.686, 0.534, 0.000, 0.000 }
{ 0.189, 0.168, 0.131, 0.000, 0.000 }
{ 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 1.000, 0.000 }
{ 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 1.000 }
Permanently missing colors.
I love this program. It's really, really useful for me, and I wish I'd had it for years.
Just one problem... in Chrome on Windows 7, it's permanently turned my pages grey. They stay grey even when I reboot without loading NegativeScreen.
I've tried deleting the cache, etc.
The page loads in color, and then flicks to greyscale.
Curious....
Mmmh, what you are describing is very strange...
I have no idea what could be the cause of this but I'd say that's unlikely to be NegativeScreen, especially if it's not running when it happens.
Did you check for any unwanted extension in your browser, maybe?
Wow... uh... thanks for your reply, and questions.
I thought at first, "What an idiot, of course it's caused by negativescreen - this just started when we got it."
Turns out, while trying to get the greyscale to work, we'd also installed, yes, an extension to chrome.
Pshhh....
Turned that off an color's back... well, when I want it.
Thanks so much.
Haha, it happens even to the best of us 😉
I love NegativeScreen, and actually used it before it was patched to work on windows 7, and even made my own custom transformations at the time -- inverted green and amber are a must for the nerdy desktop 😉
I'm now using it because SolidWorks, though it allows a bit of color customization, does not allow changing the colors of the interface (toolbars, buttons, etc). For some reason the 3d view flickers to be normally rendered when I click on something in it (the rest stays inverted). Any idea why this might happen?
Cheers!
On review, it appears that it is in fact applying the effect a second time, rather than removing it. if I keep clicking, it will apply the effect over and over again until the view is fully saturated (or dimmed). It remains such on the screen until something else changes about the view (I.E. rotating the scene)
Which version of NegativeScreen are you using? Flickering and refresh problems were common on versions 1.*
Have you tried inverting the screen colors with the Windows magnifier? Does is work as expected, or do you experience similar problems?
If this is the case, then it's a bug in the magnifier API, and beside transferring it to Microsoft, I won't be able to do anything...
If it works properly with the magnifier, then it might be fixable. Honestly, this is very strange, and I have never seen this with any application, even games or other GPU accelerated programs.
Good luck, and thanks for using NegativeScreen 🙂
Version 2.4
Sadly, it seems to do the same thing for the regular magnifier, and keeps applying a zoom whenever I click (even when it's in lens mode). Oh well. Should I try asking microsoft or the makers of SolidWorks?
I doubt SolidWorks has anything to do with the bug, because it's definitely one, but Microsoft might be interested to know, and actually do something about it...
Are you on Windows 7? If you have the opportunity, you could try to test this on Windows 8 or even 10, it might have been fixed!
While I think about it, have you tried updating your graphic drivers to the latest version? I'm not sure, but it might be related.
Well, I just got home and tried it on windows 10, and it had the same bug. Not sure where to go from that.
Oh, and I tried updating display drivers on the Windows 7 copy I was working on and there was no difference.
Sorry about that 😕
Maybe you could open a thread somewhere around here http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows explaining your problem with the Windows Magnifier on all Windows versions, and hope the right persons from Microsoft see it...
Undersampled,
Could you share the amber and green customizations?
Sure! Green was a fairly simple modification from negative red:
Negative Green=win+alt+F12
{ 0.0, -0.3, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, -0.6, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, -0.1, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
Amber was a bit harder, I had to use the color matrix viewer, and I'm still not sure I like it. (it's really just orange, half green full red from grayscale)
Negative Amber=win+shift+alt+F12
{ -0.300, -0.225, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000 }
{ -0.600, -0.450, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000 }
{ -0.100, -0.075, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000 }
{ 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 1.000, 0.000 }
{ 1.000, 0.750, 0.000, 0.000, 1.000 }
Wonderful! Thank you.
Any idea how the Smart Inversion F2 option gets white text? I would like to have the negative green or amber only for all text versus having the entire background awash in green or amber.
There isn't currently a way to modify only small parts on the screen, though I have played around with ways of doing that. If you just want to get rid of grays, you can try this version that has a higher gamma:
Negative Green Sharp=win+alt+F11
{ -0.15, -1.50, -0.15, 0.00, 0.00 }
{ -0.15, -1.50, -0.15, 0.00, 0.00 }
{ -0.15, -1.50, -0.15, 0.00, 0.00 }
{ 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 1.00, 0.00 }
{ 0.30, 3.00, 0.30, 0.00, 1.00 }
Not gamma, contrast.
Can you share the blue customizations?
This is an awesome app. I can now actually see what i'm doing. Now if I only had this for my Windows Phone.
hi! I really really thank you for like this app!!!!!!
really thanks!
and i have a question!
is it a free of charge? can i you this app in my office?
Yes it is free, and you can use it however you please, as long as you respect the license.
The program is distributed under the GNU General Public License, if you want to look for more information about it...
Thank you so so so SO much. You are a brilliant person and I appreciate it so much! I'm legally blind, going into university, and really needed something simple like this to work with. You are amazing!
Hey, thanks! Receiving messages like this is amazing! 🙂
All good! I'm having only one little problem, it seems like there is no way to remember last mode used, so that it will be activated automatically next time you open it.
In other words, once you close the app, the last used mode will be lost and you will have to set it each time you open the app by pressing the shortcut for that mode. That to me is totally unnecessary and can be avoided very easily, but for some reason it just hasn't been coded...
...however, IS THERE ANY WAY TO DO THIS? like through the configuration file or something?? thanks!
Yes there is. Try to change InitialColorEffect="Smart Inversion" in the configuration...
Is there a way to have all text inverted to a bright green color instead of white? I think green text on black background when inverted is easier to read.
Could you do a "inversion" where the screen simply gets better readable, not a complete conversion but better and easier to read and no so tiring the eyes?
i need version for mac
Hi,
could you add the feature that only specific programs / the region of the screen where the program is if it is in foreground get color inverted? e.g. the new Skype 7 white/blue design is really annoying and you cant customize it anymore so it really hurts the eyes reading in the dark. Would also be the first program to be able to do smth like dis and I think it wouldnt be a waste since there are ALOOOT of ppl complaining about it .. just read this:
http://community.skype.com/t5/Windows-desktop-client/How-to-change-Theme-Color-Background/td-p/3785952
Does it work on a lollipop andriod tablet well I've downloaded it and I don't know what to do next?
No, sorry. This a Windows only application.
Thank you for this awesome app.
Do you have any plans to release a OS X version? OS X has the built in Invert Color option but it's simply Simple Inversion, nothing like Negative Red which I need to use a lot.
I'm running Windows 8.1 and using the Invert option in Magnifier, it does invert the color of the cursor. Could you please add this to the app to make it invert color of the mouse pointer too?
I'm not sure about the technical side of this, but is it possible to use color matrix to change color temperature, like Flux does?
Thanks
No plan for any version other than the Windows one, sorry. The main reason being that I don't own a Mac and don't intend to.
You are right, the Magnifier does invert the cursor. I don't recall the details but I believe it's doing additional work to handle this case (this is not just a switch). I remember trying to achieve the same thing, but I ruled it out for reasons I have forgotten. I might work on it again though...
I don't know very much about the theory of color matrices, but in my understanding it should be possible to achieve something similar to F.lux, moreover if precise color temperature is not required (as when the goal is not photography, but reducing the eyes strain).
This would mean adding a timer to automatically adjust the color transformation, and a lot of other settings though. I don't think I will ever add this feature to NegativeScreen.
Besides, if I'm not mistaken, F.lux does what it does by adjusting the system settings according to the time of the day. This is very efficient as the low level work is handled directly by the system, but it also severely constrains the range of allowed transformations.
Hi,
will Negative Screen work with Windows 10?
Thanks
It does!
lovely! simple amazing tool! 🙂
As a researcher, this is like the most cool stuff ever to avoid multiple tests when grayscale printing. AMAZING, thanks !
Is there a way for the app to invert everything except a selected program (like Chrome or iTunes?)
No there is not. Sorry.
I have put together an AutoIT script which allows you to whitelist certain programs so that when they are in the foreground NegativeScreen is turned off.
It is a hack and will work best when those apps are fullscreen because all it does it turn NegativeScreen on and of when the app comes into the foreground and then goes to the background.
I will post the script this weekend I hope you will find it useful...
NegativeSwitcher.au3 - If you already have AutoIt installed.
NegativeSwitcher.exe - Standalone exe
Program runs in the system tray. To Add the title of the currently active window into the Whitelist (So that it is excluded from the NegativeScreen effect) press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-N
Download Links from Google Drive can be found by clicking the hyperlink in my name above. The window whitelist is stored in the AppData folder, called "NegativeScreen.cfg".
On flipping between Whitelist and non-whitelist window there will be a slight delay to flip NegativeScreen but this is partly because of the way it works. i.e. By monitoring the Window Title of the currently running window and flipping NegativeScreen as soon as it is found, however there will always be that Interim moment.
I want this so bad
Thanks! Really helpful. I miss this feature back when I still use ubuntu with compiz. The easy magnifying and invert feature are a bliss
I use Ubuntu for development and find xcalib a passable alternative. It doesn't have smart inversion so I always get tripped up when I see "All Tests Passed" in blazing red text (smart inversion keeps green text green). 😦 But at least my eyes aren't assaulted by bright colors all day.
$ echo "xcalib -i -a" > invert
$ chmod a+x invert
Now assign a keystroke to execute the file in your window manager. Money!
The xcalib program uses ICC (International Color Consortium) profiles instead of the simpler color matrices in Windows that NegativeScreen uses. Since its sole purpose is to calibrate monitors/cameras/printers/scanners/etc., I'd bet with some work you could make one. I can code, but I don't know the first thing about ICC profiles. 😦
... time passes ...
So I spent the last hour doing a little research, and it is indeed not trivial. For one thing, I couldn't find a pre-built graphical ICC profile editor for Linux. LPROF looks like the ticket, but I can't devote a day getting it to build (lots of dependencies). I'll have to come back to this later. I'll see if I can convince someone that already builds profiles to make one for me. 😉
Holy crap! Thankyou so much this is a lifesaver
Just tried this neat software and, although it doesn't seem to fit me (I don't use Aero at all), I'd like to share a few findings:
Crashes if Desktop Window Manager Session Manager ("UxSms" service) is not running
1.1. different from not having Aero enabled - I've disabled it as it's not necessary when Aero is not used;
1.2. exception reads "An error occurred while applying a color effect." [...]
"System.Exception.SetMagnificationColorEffect()"
Application: NegativeScreenX86.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.Exception
Stack:
at NegativeScreen.BuiltinMatrices.ChangeColorEffect(Single[,])
at NegativeScreen.BuiltinMatrices.InterpolateColorEffect(Single[,], Single[,], Int32)
at NegativeScreen.OverlayManager.ToggleColorEffect(Boolean)
at NegativeScreen.OverlayManager.ControlLoop()
at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(System.Object)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object, Boolean)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object, Boolean)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object)
at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()
(I've used "NegativeScreenX86.exe" version 2.4.5447.24427)
2. After temporarily enabling Aero, I've noticed that the "Smart" variations make text look pretty fuzzy
2.1. that likely has to do with ClearType enabled, and changing colors messes with the RGB trickery which causes LCD screen to look nicer
2.2 not sure what could be done to improve this, but a warning in this page or in the application (detecting ClearType status and displaying a warning similar to Aero...?) might be a good idea in the meantime.
3. Few nits:
"Appart" --> "Apart" (typo, within this page)
"Last" --> "Latest" (meaning - I hope!, within this page)
"transfomation" --> "transformation" (typo, "README.txt")
Hey, thanks a lot for your comment!
Thanks for reporting the crash when UxSms is not running. I don't think it will bother many people, but it's a bug anyway...
I already knew about ClearType, and I already tried different things to disable it automatically, but I think the improvement is not that important, and certainly not worth messing around with the user preferences like that, even temporarily. Beside that, more and more programs nowadays don't even respect the ClearType settings and thus their text stay fuzzy... 😕
And thanks for the typos. Nobody ever reported them to me, so thanks again!
this is a great application, it removed eye strain for me using the gray-scale option, thanks a lot.
I am using windows 8, it worked for dual monitors efficiently.
Is there a way to get this to ignore a certain window? Example "Gw2.exe" I see the API supports it in a fashion, but unsure if it would work they way your wonderful program is setup or how to implement it.
In theory, there is indeed a way to exclude some windows from NegativeScreen.
Unfortunately, I never managed to get it to work...
Anyone is welcome to try and improve NegativeScreen!
I'd love to give it a shot, I could pull your source, but I wouldn't know what file to enter it into. According to the API info, the fullscreenmode does not take filterlists into account, only the boxed magnifier, and after peeking at your coding it appears you are using the fullscreen version.. This is why I was concerned it wouldn't work, and probably why you were never able to get it to work. But thank you for your swift response and if you are not using fullscreen mode let me know and I can try to see if i can do something.
Oh sorry, I forgot the feature was not available for the full screen mode.
The last version of NegativeScreen uses the full screen mode as it is way more efficient and easy to use, but the previous version (pre 2.0) used the "normal" API.
The code for this version is available in a dedicated branch as I still maintain it when necessary. http://hg.arcanesanctum.net/negativescreen/src/0e8afadcb1db44897642bb0ff8cbd0cbabd444d2/?at=legacy%20version
Ya I tried clicking the link provided, but I haven't the foggiest clue what i'd be doing other than poking around. I'm not really sure what I need to do to go from 'Our Conversation Here' > Inserting code somewhere > compiling a new package > runable.exe ---- too sophistcated for me LOL. But I appreciate your responses and follow up. I will research and play with it a bit, ultimately I love your program as-is, and if you find fullscreenmode is more efficient, then I will trust you on that, I'd hate for things to become clunky. - Your program is so great I leave it running 99% of the time, and only turn it off when I game or watch videos. - Hence my inquiry about ignoring windows. - Would have been awesome, but I'd feel like I am "fingerpainting on the mona-lisa" if i get into your coding and start messing things about. - I may research it more once i figure out what I am suppose to do at that source site you gave. Not sure how it works.
By the way I did see some of the stuff for multiple monitors, that could also work, if i could disable a monitor on the fly. Its just too bad that there doesn't appear to be a solution within that API that would allow us to do something as simple as coding a right-click on on the bar across the top of the window and choose Exclude from Negative Screen.
Unfortunately, the multiple monitors support is also impossible to implement with the latest API 😕
A possible solution would be to switch between the full screen mode and the legacy mode when required, but it's a lot of work and it probably wouldn't be perfect. I might work on it some day...
The ability to exclude or lock certain monitors or windows would make this applicaiton a lot better.
First install .net framework 4.
Next run negativescreen.
WORKS LIKE MAGIC!
Thanks a lot to the developer.
I think Microsoft should buy this application.
I think here is a better color matrix description:
http://rainmeter.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3119&p=105686#p105686
Looks great. I have no need for a fancy interface. What matters is that it does the basics well.
The simple utility in Linux that inverts the colors for the active window or the whole GUI is good enough for me. Using that, then you can customize the program and system colors to your liking (especially in Windows). There is no need to make it fancy. Performance is more important.
If I were worried about looks, I wouldn't be using color inversion. I use it for the reason you wrote it in the first place, to make viewing easier.
Thank you.
I had been using dark themes/schemes systemwide (for a decade). Using NegativeScreen and Chrome, there is an extension that will re-invert the colors of pictures and videos. So now I'm using Chrome instead of Firefox, mostly. Videos don't want perfect, but it's better than leaving pictures and videos inverted or frequently switching back-and-forth.
After a month or so of serious use, this NegativeScreen is better then trying to use dark themes/schemes. The only time I must turn it off is when viewing pictures and videos outside of Chrome. The Windows Taskbar and its icons look funky, but maybe that's because Windows 8.1 is using transparency for the Taskbar.
Thanks again.
Does Reluminate still work for anyone in eBay? It's a necessary add-on when using this screen inversion. Seems that recently Reluminate stopped working in eBay. Serious problem here. This screen inversion is by far the very best dark "color scheme" I have ever used. But it does require re-inverting pictures and videos.
I can't complain, but I will anyway... That should be the author's next task. Since you really cannot use Windows inverted without re-inverting pictures and videos.
Thanks.
Seems that disabling JavaScript in Chrome on eBay is a work around, but it worked properly before even with JavaScript enabled. I suppose it could be my JavaScript controller add-on causing the problem.
This is a really awesome program!
Unfortunately, it makes my 32x Vista laptop run very slowly. I wanted it to conserve battery power while reading pdfs (so the majority of the screen was black, and I could turn the brightness down).
I have yet to test it, but I think the power saved by the screen would be lost by the program clogging the CPU
Yes, NegativeScreen is rather CPU/GPU intensive, and is really not intended to save battery.
Takes a while for Windows on startup, but I see no increase in CPU usage.
Hi.
Could you tell me what the settings
SmoothTransitions, SmoothToggles, MainLoopRefreshTime do?
SmoothTransitions enables or disables interpolation ("smoothness") when you switch color effects.
SmoothToggles enables or disables interpolation when you enable or disable the current color effect.
MainLoopRefreshTime controls the time between each iteration of the main loop, that is, the loop processing all the user inputs (hot keys...) to pause, toggle, or switch color effects accordingly. This parameter is now pretty much useless and I should probably remove it, but it used to be very important in the first version because it was directly tied to the performance of the program, as it was also controlling the refresh rate of the color effect.
Hello, I wanted to use this program and it worked really well, except, even when I turn off the program, it makes some of the youtube videos that I watch into black and white. Also even after I turn off my computer and I still havent opened it and go directly to youtube, it will keep turning some videos to black and white. This gets extremely frustrating to me because I get really bored of these videos because they are just stuck in black and white. PLEASE help me
Err, I'm sorry, but turning youtube videos into black and white is not something NegativeScreen can do. You probably have another thing going on...
Well it was worth asking, and its also affecting my videos in my computer and the media players. I think it got imbedded somewhere in the sortof thing cause I closed out of it a wierd way. Is there anyway you could tell me what the process is called so I could stop it on start up?
Well, it's NegativeScreen.exe I guess... Did you edit the configuration file? If so, there is an option to make the program start with Windows. But you didn't activate it yourself, it's not automatic...
You have SAVED my eyes!
Thank you sir or ma'am!
🙂
I'm recommending
Hi, loving negativescreen!, is there a way to leave the blacks black while inverting the whites to black?, y like keeping the colours, just hate bright whites
You can tweak the pixels' brightness globally, but not just for a specific color, so I don't think you can achieve what you want easily.
Well, technically, there is a way: it's called a black screen 😄
More seriously, you could try to fiddle with this: http://arcanesanctum.net/colormatrix-viewer/
For example, try this matrix:
{ 1.0, -1.0, -1.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ -1.0, 1.0, -1.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ -1.0, -1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.0, 1.0 }
Fantastic app. It relaxes my eyes so much, Thank you!! 🙂
I haven't used Windows for like 6 years, now because of a manfacturer no longer supporting a linux toolchain I had to switch to Windows. How used I was to Negative from compiz that I took it for granted.
You Sir are an EYE saver. Love this program!
Hi there, nice program, I have a question, are you emulating the magnifier inverse color by any chance?
I just want to emulate the inverse color from my c# program, if you can point me to any tutorial I'll appreciate
thanks
I'm using the exact same API the Windows Magnifier uses.
The old API has a flag to invert colors automatically, otherwise you have to apply a color matrix manually. NegativeScreen comes with a bunch of predefined matrices if you are interested, and the C# method definitions to use the native Windows functions.
If you just want to apply a color matrix to an image, see the ApplyColorMatrix method here.
BTW, the msdn documentation is also very nice...
I am using this on Windows 7, laptop connected to normal LCD monitors. In all the smart inversion modes, the text becomes slightly blurry, like some sort of chromatic aberration; the white characters are slightly pink on the left side and blue on the right side. In the simple inversion mode, text is clear.
Any thoughts on how to fix this?
Unfortunately, this is what happens when ClearType, the Microsoft's font smoothing technology, is enabled, and a smart inversion mode is used...
There is no way I know of to fix this problem. I tried several things to disable ClearType entirely when NegativeScreen is active, but firstly, some applications don't respect the system wide setting, and secondly, the text is still more readable with ClearType enabled and a redish blur around the letter than without it.
I noticed that if you run the ClearType tuner, there are modes* that look quite good under the Smart Inversion matrix, and it still looks OK in normal mode. It may be possible to save/restore the ClearType tunings when the various modes are changed.
I also noticed that the angle of the monitor really helps with the red outlines if you don't want to run the ClearType tuner.
Nice find!
I'll see what I can do about automating the change in NegativeScreen as you suggested...
Sorry. I see that others have asked about this already.
😄
For starters, awesome app!
Now I am just wondering if there is a way for it to only apply to a specific monitor (of two). Or to apply only to a specific program ( the new eye bleeding outlook 2013).
Thanks for the good work:)
Incredibly useful!
Thanks for this awesome little piece of software. 🙂
Hey, diggin' the software, but it doesn't work if the monitor is in portrait mode! Give it a shot, if you can fix this, I would really appreciate it. Right now I have to choose between decent colors or decent screen layout.
Thanks!
Thanks for the report.
Yeah, I'm aware of the problem, but as it's a bug in the api I use I can't do much 😕 (Not convinced? try to open the Windows Magnifier and invert the colors while in portrait mode.)
A workaround has been found to work for some people though: dragging a window to the bottom of the screen below the dead zone makes it work again. Not ideal, I know. It might not even work for you. Sorry.
Thanks.
I cannot get this to work after I downloaded the binary.zip file. I am running windows 7 and I extracted all files after the download. then I clicked on the .exe file not the x86.exe and the program worked fine and I was able to switch between colors and then I closed it with win+alt+H now i cannot get the colors to invert anymore help please. Thank you.
When pressing win+alt+H you are effectively closing the program, so it is normal it doesn't work anymore. You have to re-start it, by double clicking on the .exe file again...
Is there a way to modify it to work on only a section of the screen? I have an old monitor that has a permanent inverted vertical strip about 1" wide. If this program could be made to work on only that malfunctioning region it would be just what I need.
That would technically be possible with NegativeScreen v1.* and the API it uses, but I consider this feature too far from the original goal of NegativeScreen to implement it.
This is an open source project though, so you or anyone knowing how to code could fork it and do pretty much whatever they please with it... I'm aware that's probably not the answer you were expecting. Sorry...
I 'edited' config file to this;
#Grayscaled
Negative Green=win+alt+F9
{ 0.0, -0.3, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, -0.6, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, -0.1, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
but F9 is still Red
Well, did you forget to restart NegativeScreen by any chance?
I have restarted computer, which makes be double click to open program again.
One window is behaving weirdly with NegativeScreen. There is a screenshot at the web address above. It's an in-house program and It uses transparency and that may be the problem. There is the ghost of a window that was on top of it and was minimized. The ghosting doesn't show with normal colours. Is there any way of turning off transparency for windows and still keeping NegativeScreen operating?
Mmmh that's strange.
Maybe it's related to the (unconventional?) way the transparent window is implemented...
Maybe it's some kind of bug in the Desktop Window Manager both the transparent window and NegativeScreen use, I don't know.
What do you mean turning off transparency for windows? If you are talking about Aero, NegativeScreen works way better with GPU acceleration, but you could try the legacy version that can run without it.
I believe it's also possible to disable transparency while keeping Aero enabled, but I'm not sure it would be useful in your case where the transparent window seems to be independent of Aero...
I finally uploaded my Chrome extension to the Chrome web store. It is a fork of Deluminate designed to be used together with NegativeScreen. The purpose is to fix inverted images while leaving everything else inverted, or to de-invert certain web pages that already have a black background before using NegativeScreen. There are several options that will make sense if you are already using NegativeScreen. It includes all of the changes I in the long explanation I made a few comments down.
The extension is called Reluminate, you can find it here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reluminate/ejfgkpndiembgmnikjbdkbiiobdmcgji
Thanks for sharing!
Yo. I want to optimize Windows for performance. I know that NegativeScreen won't function without Aero enabled. Please tell me what should I enable in (path) "system-properties-performance" in order for the soft to work? Big thanks.
I've absolutely no idea. If you find out, I would be interested if you could tell me about it!
what do i need to download to get the 'neagative green' matrix installed?
Thank you so much for developing this program. I am visually impaired. I use NegativeScreen in combination with Windows 7 Aero full screen zoom EVERY day. It makes reading so much easier...
One question: I have customized my mouse pointer (Control Panel > Mouse > Pointer tab) so the pointer is "large" and "inverted". "inverted" meaning the cursor appears white on a black background, and black on a white background. I noticed that when I have NegativeScreen Inverting colors AND have Win 7 Aero full screen zoom on, the mouse pointer stays white, instead of inverting. Is this something you have control over, or is this a Win 7 zoom issue?? I am using v2.2...
Thanks!
Sorry, I don't have control over the mouse color effect...
In fact, even the Windows Magnifier tool, when the checkbox to invert the colors is checked, does not correctly handle an inverted pointer... (NegativeScreen uses a very similar method to do its job, so most of the same limitations apply)
I tried to find a way to make it work, but to no avail for now.
(oh, and sorry for the answer delay...)
Would it be possible to apply the inversion to only specified windows or applications?
I'm afraid it's impossible with the current implementation. Sorry.
Great app. Thank you developers.
By the way, please give me two matrix values for my criteria:
Thank you again. 🙂
Thank you.
Regarding the color matrices you are asking for, the first one already ships with NegativeScreen.
For the second one, there is no perfect way to do this. Try http://arcanesanctum.net/colormatrix-viewer/ - maybe you can get to something that suits your needs...
All inversion modes changes the other colors too. I need only black --> white and white --> black conversion. The other colors should be as it is. Should I want to change the matrix? 🙂
There is no way to just invert black and white without altering the colors!
How would you even do that for an image? How would you determine where the white or the black stop? Should a very light grey be turned black, or should a very dark grey be turned white? It's the same problem with the colors.
The smart inversion mode is probably the closest you will get to what you want...
Hmm, I understand. I tried Smart Inversion, and got similar output. Anyway, good work. Thank you again! 🙂
This is a great program that I use almost constantly. The only problem is that it is indiscriminate--all images and videos are also inverted. I have come up with a way to resolve this problem in the Chrome web browser using some basic CSS and HTML alterations of an already existent Chrome extension called Deluminate. This even fixes Youtube videos.
Deluminate basically works by doing what NegativeScreen does in smart inversion mode, except only to websites. The problem is the options are optimized for a not already inverted screen, so when combined with NegativeScreen some of the options do nonsensical things. My mod alters the settings to allow us to totally uninvert the entire page back to normal, to uninvert all images, or to smart uninvert images, which tries to uninvert things like artwork and photographs while leaving logos and other things that are supposed to blend in inverted. Of course, you can also tell it to leave the entire website inverted. It remembers rules for domains, so if you set something for google, google will always look like that until you change it. It is a great interface that allows you to alter settings easily on the fly. By default, subdomains are treated as totally independent, but I came up with a javascript mod that allows you to customize this setting.
All you have to do is install Deluminate from the Chrome extension store, then modify it by replacing the files listed below with my own files. I would highly recommend renaming the old files (eg. deluminate.css.old) before replacing them so that you can always return Deluminate to its default functionality. The new files must have the same names that the old ones once had. Just copy and paste the text from the links below into notepad, then save them as the name I list in the following folder (Windows 7).
These files are all located here: %UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions\iebboopaeangfpceklajfohhbpkkfiaa.3.2_0\
If you can't find that folder, the version is probably different, so go to this folder: %UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions\iebboopaeangfpceklajfohhbpkkfiaa\ and then double click on the version number. If the version number is different, use at your own risk. It should probably work, but I can't guarantee it.
deluminate.css is the CSS file that alters the functionality of Deluminate to suit our needs with an already inverted screen: http://pastebin.com/4MF3Q41d
popup.html is the HTML file that alters the text in the interface so you can understand what each radio button will do: http://pastebin.com/D9kHauhL
I also made a javascript mod for the common.js file that forces domain rules to apply to subdomains when subdomains don't already have their own rules sets, which is especially useful for websites like imgur.com and deviantart.com because you would otherwise be forced to make an independent rules set for every user gallery. Once you set a subdomain rule, that excludes it from the domain rule. Check it out here: http://pastebin.com/4shV8wxp
If you have any questions, I assume I will get notified for responses, but if I don't answer your reply, feel free to e-mail me at soldier9599@gmail.com
Alright, well this is very inconvenient. As it turns out, Deluminate was just updated today for the first time in months, which might pose some problems for this solution I came up with a few days ago. You can try my solution, it might still work with version 4.0 of Deluminate, but it will render null any new features.
Since Deluminate is open source, I'm going to work on a fork and release my own full extension that can work for us NegativeScreen users who use Chrome. With all the mods I've made so far I could put something on the Chrome Web Store almost immediately. However, if I actually release a full extension I don't just want it to be a quick and dirty mod of something else. I would like to incorporate the full functionality of Deluminate plus all my modifications and do so with a new interface to handle all the options plus maybe some new rule handling features. I have some ideas, but it will take me some time to put it all together. I'll come back and post here as soon as I come up with something.
Thanks man, this is just a wonderful tool ! I was only looking to invert the colors but being able to completely tailor it is amazing
Holy hell! This is soooo nice.
I work technical support for a software development company. This means I'm staring at a screen for 9+ hours per day. I had tried out Flux before and, while it works pretty well, everything was still fairly bright, even on its lowest setting.
This program has changed the way I view technical support, both figuratively and literally. I no longer have a headache after work and I don't have to wear those stupid (and expensive) computer glasses. As an added bonus, my computer looks 100% awesome-er!
I'm glad you like it 😄
Would it be possible to add this to chocolatey.org?
Chocolatey is an apt-get for windows.
Sure! but the package creation seems to be a pain in the ass, so you will need to wait for some time before I look into it...
EDIT: Actually, that was not that hard. Just really tedious. Here you go 🙂 https://chocolatey.org/packages/negativescreen
This is a fantastic program! Is there a hotkey for choosing which monitor has the negative colors in the custom multimonitor version? If not, how could I add this? Thanks for all your hard work!
No, there is no hot key for that. Adding this would require some modifications of the source code.
Since a lot of people want to be able to set different effects on different monitors, I might do some work again soon on the prototype to improve it...
Would be amazing if you did. I cannot express how much I appreciate your work. Without it, I do not think I could function in both my job and everyday tasks. This absolutely makes a world of difference to individuals with visual impairments my like myself - a thousand times thank you! One other question. Is it possible to use a color matrix to change a single color on the screen? For example, to change all light blue fonts on a white background to just black text on a white background?
"Is it possible to use a color matrix to change a single color on the screen?"
It's not possible to change a specific color. The nearest thing would be to change a specific channel (Red, Green, Blue)...
Maybe something like this?
{ 1.0, 0.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 1.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
You could give a try to my new tool to edit color matrices: http://arcanesanctum.net/colormatrix-viewer
It doesn't work in portrait mode. The top half of the screen is showing long vertical stretched pixels.
Are you using the last version? If so, it's certainly not supposed to happen!
The last version directly uses a Microsoft api, so if the problem is indeed a bug, I won't be able to do anything beside reporting it 😕
Thank you Yaurthek
I have two detached retina. My retina are not in contact with the back of my eye where the nutrients flow through capillaries. When a bright light is viewed the nutrients are quickly depleted in the neurons and it can take as long as 7 hours for them to replenish. The result is darkness and frustration. This program is very promising as a help for any one with this condition.
I am so frustrated with applications that will not conform to the color settings of Windows 7. I have spent hours trying to find a good way to get Avast! free antivirus and other "rogue programs" to conform to my customized high contrast theme. When I solve one problem I seem to cause another elsewhere. I can get the entire desktop to invert only to have a blinding white menu. At least with NegativeScreen I should be able to use configuration modification to tone down elements that were so blinding with other methods I have tried.
When I am over my current piercing head ache I will try to write a script to swap my non Arrow theme to an arrow theme, start NegativeScreen, set the configuration (Command-Line Options would be a help) and what ever else to make this a toggle I can hotkey quikley when ever I have to cope with a rogue program that refuses to conform to my theme requirements.
I have to use magnifier to be able to read most text. But I can enjoy videos in normal colors. Every thing is wrinkly but most things are discernible. VolumeMouse is a nice application that lets me use my mouse to decrease screen brightness on the fly. I mention it here as some may find it of use if they have vision issues.
Blessings and thanks again
chuck
fantastic program, so much more relaxing to read in the night! I used the inverted GREEN you suggested above, but it is still too bright. I remember the old computer with monochromatic screen back in the eighties, the green was less sparkling, more saturated, would it be possible to derive the matrix for a darker green?
thanks a lot!
Give it a try!
Great tool! It would be awesome if there were a GUI tool to help pick our own matrices--e.g. to add color desaturation, reduce brightness for certain ranges of whites/colors, etc...
Give it a try!
Don't forget to adjust your Cleartype settings after inverting the screen. If you do lots of programming with colourful editors you might be better off turning cleartype off completely.
I just tried turning off ClearType, but it made all fonts very difficult to read: dialogs, web, and code. This may be due to my using very large fonts due to poor eyesight, though.
I really appreciate this application. Thanks!
I replied to another thread somewhere, then I found a post referencing
ShowAeroWarning
So I tried setting it to false in my conf file. When I start NS I get an exception. Is that option no longer supported? It would be nice to squelch that warning when I start running in High Contrast Mode.
Thanks!
This option is only available for the legacy version, which can run without aero enabled, unlike versions >=2.
But you are right, you can start it without aero even if it doesn't work, and this message is annoying. I will add the option to a new release so that you don't have it in your situation.
To answer your other comment: I had a hard time myself finding documentation about color matrices, and beside the link on MSDN, I didn't find anything really good...
I have been thinking about making a small utility to test new matrices for a long time now, and I might have time to implement it soon, so stay tuned! 🙂
EDIT: Regarding documentation on color matrices, I had forgotten about this great page: http://www.graficaobscura.com/matrix/index.html
EDIT 2: I finally released the tool I was talking about, to edit/view color matrices: Give it a try!
Thanks for considering both items!
I've been using NS for about a week now and it has become ingrained in my muscle memory. Much better than the simple invert colors provided by Magnifier. Plus Magnifier doesn't support a hotkey to turn invert colors on/off. Now I have independent control over color shifts and magnification. Much better!
You're definitely paying it forward!
Cheers!
Keith
This is a great utility. Love the smart inverse.
Like a previous commenter, I would also love to be able to have something similar to the red inverse, only with a different shade.
Another suggestion, it would be great if this tool also has magnification built in, so we can completely avoid the use of the magnifier, which has an annoying habit of getting in the way.
You can create other color transformations by editing the config file.
here is an inverted blue:
{ 0.0, 0.0, -0.3, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, -0.6, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, -0.1, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
and here is an inverted green:
{ 0.0, -0.3, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, -0.6, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, -0.1, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
As for the magnification, I don't think I will implement it. It's too far from the original goal of NegativeScreen and would not make much sense.
Thanks for the suggestion though!
Thanks - found that nice config file, going to play with it.
Understood aboiut the magnification, makes sense to keep this task-specific.
Great utility! Thanks!
So can I use the conf file to stop the dialog warning about Areo support from coming up? I swap between High Contrast mode and normal mode, and between NS and normal. If I first switch to NS when in High Contrast mode I get the dialog. (All seems to work ok after closing it...)
Also, is there a tutorial (other than the supplied link) that describes using the matrix to modify transforms?
Again, Thanks!!!
Works great on my laptop! Running Windows Vista. Any idea of how I can change the negative red so that it's the same, just blue?
Sure!
use this matrix in the config file:
{ 0.0, 0.0, -0.3, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, -0.6, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, -0.1, 0.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }
{ 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0 }
this is the best thing ever!
Love the program, but is there a way it can work with windows 7 classic? this is the only problem i could see if it being used for what I need it for.
Do you mean the Windows Classic theme? The last version of NegativeScreen requires Aero to work correctly, but maybe you could try the "legacy" version?
It should work, but it will probably be laggy and hard on your CPU...
Thanks. I had the same problem, but the legacy version works with Win7+Classic theme, like it did with Vista. Again I have added a shortcut to the Startup and have changed the ActiveOnStartup and the ShowAeroWarning to false.
Actually NegativeScreen is most useful with the Classic theme, since there you cannot set the Magnifier in full screen mode, as you can with the Aero theme.
Yep, and I think the reason why you can't set the Magnifier in full screen mode is because of the bad performance...
Love it. Is there support for applying colors to only one of two connected displays? Or for excluding color changes from particular windows?
Unfortunately, both of your requests are not possible with the api used in the versions >= 2.*
I released a "beta" patch a while ago allowing to select only some monitors, if you want to try: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
I never managed to make the filtering by window work though, even for the api used in the version 1.*, and even though the doc says it should work...
Hi,
Great little program, really saves the eyes when they are tired.
I would like to add the program to autostart, so I directly can go to negativescreen whenever I want to, without starting the program first. Putting in to autostart is easy, but how do I put in that "off" is the default when the program starts?
In the configuration file ("Edit configuration" option when right clicking the icon in the systray), there is an option ready for that.
Just change the line
ActiveOnStartup=truetoActiveOnStartup=falseand that's it!Hm... the line ActiveOnStartup don't exist in my conf-file. When I added it, the program didn't start but instead gave the error "System.exception: The value assigned to "activeonstartup" is unexpected. The hotkey must be separated from the matrix by a new line"...
Your version is probably outdated. Try with the last one and it should work!
You are a saint! I love you!
Inverting colors was one of the main reasons I moved from windows to linux system couple of years ago. Now I have to use windows on tablet pc and my eyes would moan from pain if it hadn't been for your application. Many thanks! I like also the smart inverse.
As for me it is worth donation.
Thank you!
Hey man! thanks for a great app!
I found a bug.
unfortunately it doesn't work when my display is rotated 90 degrees.
The top portion of the screen (with square 1200x1200) is inverted but the bottom portion is garbled (everything below 1200px down to 1920)
I guess it doesnt like the fact that my resolution is 1200x1920,
not the regular 1920x1200
Thanks for the kind words and the bug report.
Sadly, I'm afraid I can't do anything about it.
I'm using a Microsoft api ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms692402%28v=vs.85%29.aspx ) that automatically handles the full screen mode (since the version 2 of NegativeScreen).
The bug has to be in the internals of this api, and I can't think of any workaround...
Incidentally, the same bug is present in the Windows Magnifier, if you try to invert the display.
Thanks you save me, my laptop lcd goes negative (i dont know why but isnt a software problem) and your app fixed my problem on windows...on bios the problem exists but i dont care 😉
Perfect!
Exactly what i was looking for! Shared it with all of my friends!
Working perfect on win 8.1 with two extended screens.
One suggestion: make it possible to have night mode in each screen separately.
Thank you very much and good luck with the app.
Gil, Israel.
Hi,
great app! It really saves my eyes when working late. I have only one feature request: to also invert the mousepointer...
Thanks a lot. This is very awesome application.
I'm a student of bio-statistics and your application fix many things for me:
1- I can see a black & white preview of my charts before printing.
2- I can read PDF eBooks without eye pressure instead of printing them.
3- I can work with internet and use my work soft-wares like SPSS in many hours.
Good Luck
Thanks, glad you like it 🙂
Super cool tool. many many thanks!!
I'm feeling really stupid! Can't find the actual link to download this???
Eeeer, just up ahead, under the Downloads section? ^^'
(Yeah I agree, the changelog has gotten quite big...)
Hey there,
I would love the option to apply this on only my second monitor as I have a giant white list that sits on it and it is painful... the main display I want to keep as normal. is there any way to do this?
It's not technically possible with the current version, but it was with the older one.
I released an experimental version (means there are probably some bugs left, and it's not really polished) that has the ability to toggle the inversion for only some of the screens.
You can try it out here: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
It basically works as the old version (that is, you have to use the hotkeys) and adds a very simple icon in the systray, with a right click list of you monitors you can toggle independently.
I just tried this, but it crashes immediately. The other versions worked fine. I'm using Win 8 64 bit with dual monitors.
It should work now. here is the link http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
I also compiled a 32 bits version... http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor-x86.exe
Thanks for providing this! I've been trying to find a way to invert the colors for Evernote which I keep on a second display and this works great. I made a small donation for your work and will hopefully donate more when I have more funds.
Thank you!
Hello, thank you for the amazing app!. I just wanted to ask, if you any plans on implementing this feature (selecting monitors to apply inversion), as part of the main app (not the experimental or side versions)?
Also, is there a way to add exceptions to the inversion effect, images and videos for example? I'm not sure if this is even possible due to windows or other limitations, but it would be nice to leave this type of elements with normal colors, and invert the rest.
Thank you!
Thank you 🙂
All you are asking for (selecting specific monitor, filtering some windows, etc) is, sadly, impossible to do with the api used in the last version of NegativeScreen (2.)
It would be theoretically possible to do all these things with the original api used for NegativeScreen 1. but I'm not planning to implement them in a stable version, as this api has other limitations (performances, complexity, various bugs).
I encourage anyone willing to do it, this program is open source.
So i tried the mini program NegativeScreen on my 2 screen, Win 7 Ultima, 64bit, NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 . . .
and nothing was working . . . reboot . . run as admin . . confirm Areo is on (yes, dwm.exe in Task manager shown) . . . Then I saw your beta version or protoype version of multi screen version of same program:
http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
As soon as i ran that program everything worked . . . then I tried running NegativeScreen with the NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe . . . and I am now able to switch between settings that are offered in NegativeScreen . . .
Yet 😄 2 minutes later the program NegativeScreen also let me turn on and of inversion by clicking the taskbar icon in the lower right corner . . . (turn on and of program by clicking NegativeScreen icon) . . .
And now 😄 NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe option of altering individual screens is off (does not work) . . . it is likelly that the NegativeScreen program is functioning and overlaying NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
Long story short :
NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe clears the way for NegativeScreen.exe to work ; where as, NegativeScreen.exe alone and without NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe does not do anything.
So is it cause i have 2 screens . . . is it cause i have not ever formated the main drive since . . 2005 issshh . . what ever it is . . you can ask people to run NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe and then NegativeSCreen inorder to fix some " it aint workin issues ".
THANK YOU FOR SAVING EYES 😄
Just whites and blacks....the rest remain the same. Thank you
Thank you so much, it make my life a lot easier. However, can you teach me how to just invert de whites to blacks and vice versa?
I'm afraid it's not possible to "just" invert the blacks and whites. The closest solution you have is the smart inversion, which is the default filter.
Hello,
A couple of days ago I restarted my computer and NegativeScreen wasn't there anymore. (My shortcut to it was broken and the files had gone). I tried to re-download it but when I click to activate the .exe file I get an error that tells me:
To run this application, you must first install one of the following versions of the .NET Framework:
v4.0.30319
Can you help me?
Thank you
I have no idea why it would disappear, but maybe you should try to do what the error message says and install the .Net Framework v4...
http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=24872
version 1 of NegativeScreen doesn't require .Net v4.0, version 2 does...
Thank you so much for creating this! I have this installed at home and work and it's made everything a whole lot easier for my eyes. I've actually been using it for months but it dawned on me just now just how much I use this and how valuable this program is to my day to day life. My favorite is the Smart Inversion 3 (Win, Alt + F4) - I'd say this is the most user friendly and also looks the sleekest. Finally, thank you for making it freeware. I'm a little poor right now but come next payday I will certainly be making a donation.
Thanks for your kind words. Much appreciated!
This is great!, works like a charm, thanks.
HOW DO YOU GET THE 'SMART INVERSION' ?
HI, IT'S THE DEFAULT FILTER WHEN YOU START THE APPLICATION.
a GREEN screen like the RED F9 would be good.
You can do it with the config file, I actually did it for myself some time ago but since I lost all my app data you'll have to do it yourself. Just copy the values for the Red profile and move the values for the first 3 rows one column to the right (the first 3 columns are for RedGreenBlue so you move Red to Green), also remember to change the name and give it another hotkey. You can do it.
One feature I would suggest would be the possibility of choosing the startup mode via a command line argument (for example -"Negative Red" would launch the program in Negative Red mode regardless of the default starting mode). Not a pressing issue though, thanks again!
What would be the difference with the starting mode set in the config file? I'm not against adding more features, but I also would like to keep NegativeScreen clean and simple.
Well it would just be a little cleaner to directly launch in different profiles. For now I made an Autohotkey script for each profile that launches NegativeScreen and then send the keys corresponding to each mode's hotkey. For me that was simpler than learning C# 🙂
Another feature request of minor importance: being able to deactivate hotkeys. For now it can't be done with the config file because if you create two profiles both without hotkeys, the program won't launch because it says they have the same hotkey.
Just wanted to tell you that I am incredibly grateful for this program. It works like a charm, and the different modes are very useful to adapt to different situations, plus you added configurable hotkeys which is awesome. Thank you.
thanks 🙂
Just can't get it to work on Vista 😦 Program reverses the screen then crashes on start, not sure where to go from here, I think all my .NET is up to date v. 3.5, 4, and 4.5. I compiled via VS 2010 also and same crash happens, the screen reverses and immediately crashes and bails "Windows is looking for a solution" etc.
Do you have any specific info about the crash? (exception name, etc.)
If you can compile it with Visual Studio, then you could try to debug it.
With some chance, you will see the exact line causing the crash.
I could better help with more info...
Hello,
I downloaded the latest binary version and the net.frame v.4.5. After installation it is still not working. When I try it, I get the warning: "Windows Aero should be enabled fot this programm to work probably!"
I have a Acer Aspire with Win7.
Should I put the Binary folder in special folder? Could you please help me?
When it will work you are the hero for my eyes 🙂.
Thanks
Well, do you have Aero enabled?
If you don't know, and to simplify, Windows Aero is the thing that turns your windows transparent.
If you have Windows 7 Starter edition, Aero can't be enabled (thanks Microsoft), otherwise, there are a lot of reasons why Aero is not enabled, you should be able to find a solution on the internet...
Good luck!
This app works quite well for me. I notice that it fades to the appropriate color over a short delay. It would be really cool if there was an animation mode that slowly changed the level of inversion over time to simulate cloud cover and exercise the eye's pupil dilation throughout the day.
That would be possible, but this feature is rather far from the original purpose of NegativeScreen. I will think of it.
Thanks very much for this useful program! I normally use two monitors, and on my old system was able to invert colors on just one of the monitors, and not the other. Is there any way you could make that a feature in your next version?
Unfortunately, the api used in the version 2.* can only work with the entire screen, without distinction between monitors.
I did a prototype based on the first version a few months ago to support independent activation of multiple monitors, you can try it there if you want: http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe
Keep in mind this version is experimental, and based on an old version...
how do you use it?... seems to work the same way (affects both monitors)... do you have the source for this one?
All the sources are on the Hg repo, just check the branch "custom multi monitor support". It works as the first version, but adds an icon in the systray to enable/disable a monitor.
Thank you!
Great add-on, thanks for coding it. helps me a lot when my eyes hurt, I just want to ask if you may add like a box that isn't inverted and follow the mouse? I think that would help me for reading things without having all the lights from the blank unused white.
That might be a nice addition indeed. I will do some tests, thanks for the suggestion.
ya... i've been trying to get that working... no success so far (-_-)
Amazing!!
Thank U!
Great Little Application ... Thank you so much !!!
Hi,
It does not do anything. I'm running 32 win7ultimate. Anybody else experience this?
are you using Aero Theme? It's possible that you're not if it doesn't work at all.
Fantastic little app. Thank you!
It didn't work at first because I was not using an aero theme. If you have this problem then try loading a different theme. It started working for me when I loaded up the Dell theme.
very nice indeed on the eyes 😉
Linux has had this for some time with the xcalib package -- setting up Windows 7 test environment I found myself not liking all the glaring white screens, thanks!!
So glad I found this program. If only I knew it existed earlier! A great idea and excellent implementation.
Thanks! Spread the word... 🙂
Fantastic program! Very useful for working on code at night. Thanks for sharing your work!
I've been looking for exactly this, its so simple to use and such a very tiny file. powerstrip works but its overkill just to use the invert gamma ramp, and more complicated to use, it inverts games witch looks cool but not as playable, powerstrip also made applications un-minimize noticeably slower "and not from weak hardware" just a random bug i guess. your program does exactly what i need and only what i need nothing i don't. I'll be using this on every windows pc I own. THANKS!
Great app!
Is there any way for you to perhaps add magnification? I use the Windows Magnifier in conjunction with Autohotkey tweaks to make magnifier behave more like Compiz (in Linux) but the Magnifier app is really irritating in that it gets in the way / doesn't minimise properly and sometimes glitches.
It'd be so great to have something like:
Win+Mousewheel to zoom in / out
Win+Middleclick to invert/revert
In case anyone wants to use my Autohotkey script, see below
Autohotkey can be downloaded from here: http://www.autohotkey.com/
This works in Win7+8 64bit for me just fine.
hotkeys:
Windowskey + mousewheel to zoom in/out
Windowskey + middleclick to invert/revert
Requires Magnifier to be started first (Windowskey and +)
Thanks!
The whole point of NegativeScreen is to invert the screen colors without any magnification effect.
To be honest, I don't think I would do better than the Windows magnifier anyway...
Your Negative screen program is really great! Please produce a similar App for Windows phone 8: I really need it! Thank you for your help, regards, Ach
As I already explained in my reply to your mail, I don't think this is possible for a Windows Phone app to do that.
There is too many security restrictions preventing access to the overall system, and no api available.
I know a true color inversion feature (unlike the high contrast mode) exists on iPhone, but I don't think there is such a thing on Windows Phone.
This is a shame, and I'm sorry I can't help you.
Amazing program and an instant addition to my "productivity/zenware suite"! I have been looking for this for so long and it will surely accompany me for years. When used together with "f.lux", this takes away all the drama from my screen 🙂
I am also quite impressed by all the color modes provided as much as the minimalist interface; while looking for something that'd merely invert screen colors, finding different inversion modes was just too good to be true. I think especially the mono-color inversions are much better solutions than simple inversion, especially for scenarios involving continuous usage for several hours. Of course, having an inverted black & white/sepia screen also adds a certain feeling of nostalgia!
Thank you very much for creating this great tool and making it free!
You are a total winner! I can't stress how much I like the updates after December, it now works flawlessly. I would totally give you a hug for this amazing sofware. (I don't hand out hugs very easy)
Oh, thank you! 🙂
Thanks for a great program. I've been using a hacked version of VNC viewer to do the same but that takes two computers and doesn't work with video.
Just a suggestion: you might want to turn off Cleartype except for when using "Simple Inversion" mode.
Thanks for your suggestion. I already thought about adding a ClearType auto disabling feature a while ago, but after some testing, it seems there is no good way to do so.
Windows has at least 3 ways to smooth fonts, including ClearType, and not one is correctly applied on every font. Some programs also use their own font smoothing systems...
Additionally, I don't really like the idea of messing with such obscure parameters: if my program crashes, there is no way for the user to know exactly what have been changed to the system configuration.
So, sorry about the red fringes, but I don't think this feature is worth the drawbacks. If someone thinks otherwise, they can still do a pull request, NegativeScreen is open source.
Thanks so much, this is exactly what I needed to relieve my eyes!
Thanks a bunch for sharing this. I used to achieve comparable effects via my graphics card settings, but will now start using your utility since it's simpler & more functional.
One idea for the next version, if it won't be too difficult to implement: Allow targeting a particular subset of applications to be affected by your utility, or allow selected apps & the desktop background to be explicitly exempt (excluded) from its effects -- For ex. my development & design environments, desktop background slide-show, and a few other apps are already themed with dark backgrounds but things such as adobe reader or most internet pages are not...
thanks again
Unfortunately, there is no way to accurately filter a specific window in an effective way.
I'm thinking for a long time about adding an option to automatically toggle the inversion, based on the actual global luminosity of the entire screen...
I have a working prototype of this system, but it requires the user to install some directX libraries, and this is not very convenient.
Moreover, it is very gpu intensive, and does not perform very well without a good graphic card.
I am also thinking about adding a way to toggle NegativeScreen based on the currently focused application. This would at least, I think, resolve the performance problems.
I still need to make some tests though.
Nice app. I imagine one other thing where Negative Screen might be useful is for maximizing the duration of your laptop's battery, isn't it? (a dark display should consume less energy than a light one).
By the way, a nice new feature for the next version would be to let the wallpaper be replaced with a black one while inversion is toggled.
This is an interesting question.
There is indeed more dark pixels, but I would say the calculation of the applied graphic effect actually uses more energy than it saves...
This assumption might be worth checking, though.
Regarding NegativeScreen automatically changing your wallpaper, I must say I don't like the idea.
This is a personal preference I would rather not disturb, and also, I like the KISS principle.
Sure, never meant the wallpaper replacement to be compulsory, just an option that some users could find useful.
Thank you for writing this application! Because of low-vision I've been using powerstrip for years to invert the gamma ramp. Unfortunately this program has many issues constantly switching back to a normal gamma ramp when windows or popups are created or the focus changes to them. And it tends to disable hot keys at random. Recently I had to upgrade my graphics controller. This lead to powerstrip no longer being able to invert the gamma ramp at all because of incompatibility with newer nVidia GPU's.
I can see again where the mouse cursor is located on the screen without endlessly moving the mouse around hoping to be able to spot the movement somewhere on the screen. And I'm relieved of severe headaches after using the computer for a couple of minutes.
I use your program in combination with a screen reader and at times the windows magnifier. There is commercial software available (like Magic and Zoomtext, et cetera) to replace the windows magnifier which offers multiple ways to invert the gamma and brightness and remap the RGB channels. But this software interacts with the system on many API levers to provide multiple mouse and keyboard cursor enhancements, focus highlighting, on the fly OCR to prevent blocky fonts after magnification etc. Making these applications prone to cause interference and incompatibilities with many applications other than the most commonly used set of office applications. Especially with multimedia type applications.
thank you, i have been looking for this for some time now
keep up the good work.
Hello there!
I was used to using the invert screen function and nocturne on Mac OS and this Tool here does exacly that: invert and apply grayscale. Fantastic!
Only missing something like removing transparency of all windows and shadows while applied, as well as replacing the desktop wallpaper with simple black.
This is very much apprecaited. I had been using the Win7 magnifying glass option but it malfunctioned and only an area, rather than the full screen, would invert, which wasn't usable. So your programme has been extremely helpful.
Thank you so much!
Fantastic! Wish I would have known of this sooner. This makes it easier for my eyes. Negative sepia is a nice touch. Thank you so much for this solution.
Have you thought of posting this to github.com? You may even get a few helpful patches.
The code is on Bitbucket, an alternative to github.
The main reason for this choice being, I don't use git for source control, but mercurial, which github does not support...
Thank you so much! My eyes appreciated!
While the fade in/out effect is neat the first time, like most UI animations it becomes distracting quickly and serves no purpose other than to slow you down. Is there a way to disable it?
Well, I don't know for you, but I don't switch the inversion nearly often enough to be annoyed by the smooth transitions!
Anyway, I will make a switch in the next stable version (yeah, I know, it's been a few months since I last spoke about that version^^')
It's not a huge deal of course, but when I'm surfing the web for non-work or looking at photos that friends and family send, I find myself switching back and forth a lot. At least there's no dialog that pops up every time.
"It looks like you're trying to invert the colors. Would you like me to help you with that?" 🙂
I have been a long-time user of this app without any trouble until this morning. I woke up my Windows 7 PC to find the screen whited-out, though the mouse still worked. I was able to bring up the Start menu and shut the computer down, and while apps were closing, finally the screen came back to reveal a window saying that I had run out of RAM (I have 8GB and don't use anywhere near that much) and that I could stop NegativeScreen. I did so and rebooted.
However, now every time I invert the screen it's fine for a few seconds and then begins flickering constantly. The screen updates, but it flickers between inverted and all-black. Reverting back to normal stops the flickering. I haven't done any manual updates at all, but I'm wondering if there was a Windows update overnight that is causing this.
Is anyone else having these issues?
I just downloaded the beta you posted below--problem SOLVED! What would have changed overnight to have caused the flickering that you happened to solve months ago with the beta? Strange, but thank you.
I cannot use Windows without this tool.
This is strange, at the least... but I'm afraid I really can't help with this. 😕
I use some Microsoft apis, and though I can't speak totally for sure, the memory leak probably occured inside their code (I don't do much beside calling them).
And the fact that you have flickerings after a reboot is really really odd! (maybe Aero is not running anymore?)
I'm glad the beta version solved everything though.
Just wanted to add my 2 cents - Been using Negative screen for a few months without an issues, worked great. Yesterday and today found flickering on my Win7 x64 machine when the screen is inverted. Saw on the comments that the beta fixes this and it did. I'm guessing a windows update may have broke it as well, but thanks for the beta - my eyes appreicate you!
After some frustration with nvidia drivers which no longer allow gamma ramp functions using nvcpl.dll in Win7 64 bit, and nvidia's lock out or other utilities like Powerstrip from directly writing to the color space for inversion, I was glad to see this program.
Question though - I am working in a 5-monitor setup where I need one monitor inverted. Any possibility of a toggle or command line mode with monitor number so that I can invert only the one monitor?
Thanks,
Walt
This is currently not possible to choose only one monitor, but it would be relatively easy to implement.
...
Well, actually I just did it after reading your message. ^^
Try this version : http://arcanesanctum.net/other/NegativeScreen-custom-multi-monitor.exe (x64 only)
I added a system tray icon with a menu on the right click, allowing to toggle a monitor...
This is a quick and dirty patch, tell me if something does not work properly.
I've been using this for five minutes and already my eyes are thanking me!
Thanks for this! As a partially sighted user this is (perhaps) the only viable way of using Windows. Much appreciated!
Hi,
Thanks for the app... I wanted to be able to read long emails and stuff and this app makes it a lot easier on the eyes.
Thanks a mil,
Jay
Hey Yaurthek,
Firstly thank you for the app, it's exactly what I was looking for and works perfectly. I don't know how hard it would be to implement something like this, but if you ever find yourself updating it in the future, and if there are others who'd be interested, it'd be great to have a negative green option like the F9 negative red.
Either way though, thanks again! This is so useful to me - it'd gotten to the stage where I just couldn't get any work done after a certain time of night. Now I need never sleep again! 😉
Thank you for your kind words 🙂
Regarding your request, you will be happy to know this is actually something I'm planning to add in the next version.
I don't know when though... Sorry.
Meanwhile, beware of sleep deprivation!
In the next version, I think grayscaling the red/green filters would be a good thing to have. I've shared your application with my friends and coworkers and they like the grayscaled filters more the non-grayscaled. I just edited the code (64 bit only) and used that lately (I think I mentioned this before. Sorry, if I did repeat myself).
I liked how your beta has the smooth/blending transitions. Someone asked me if there was a way for the user to designate a certain area/window/screen to have a different effect (like two modes active simultaneously or one mode active with an area that is not affected). I've tried to dabble around with the code, but to no avail.
I don't know if this would be a good thing to have, but I don't think that it's really necessary: for some background, they wanted to have NegativeScreen affect everything except for a window in Photoshop or for streaming videos on Youtube. Still eager for next big release. If you think I can help with anything, just let me know (^_^).
In fact, I would like to allow the users to choose theirselves the color transformations and the key bindings, using a config file.
Of course, I will add some default parameters, as I think not everyone want to write theirs own color matrices... 🙂
Also, it is theoretically possible to filter a window out, but it would mean going back to using some hack instead of the new fullscreen mode. It would also mean adding some way to designate a window to filter, in a way or another, and it is not something I'm willing to do...
If you are interested though, throw an eye at this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms692396%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
Ya, I personally think toggling to normal mode is fine. I'll probably just make a customized version for him when I get the chance to play around with the MW_FILTERMODE_EXCLUDE. Oh, I forgot to ask about NegativeScreen's support for multiple monitors. A coworker was experiencing some flickering on his secondary monitor when scrolling on either monitor and when moving the cursor between screens. Both monitors are Dell 1900x1080 on a Dell Pricision T3400 with Intel Xeon, running 64-bit Win 7, using 32-bit color. Any ideas?
I keep hearing about flickering, but I can't see what could possibly cause them 😕
The use of the full screen apis, as in the beta, should fix that though...
Oh, and good luck with the window filtering, I would be interested to see the result!
There's another coworker with the same specs and he doesn't experience the flickering so I'm at a loss. If it's not too much trouble, could you send me the source code for the beta?
The bitbucket repository is up to date. The last clean changest is here : http://hg.arcanesanctum.net/negativescreen/changeset/d06f29c89f0b3f50d65469894988abde196c76ba
The last changesets depend on the SlimDX library (I'm trying to auto toggle inversion, based on current screen brightness. It works almost fine, but it's not perfect...)
As a person with low vision problems, your app has been a lifesaver. Using black background and white text makes the page much more readable to my eyes. Thank you.
My only problem is with Google Chrome in win 7. With negativescreen running, when I click on a hyperlink, it takes long enough that Chrome moves my tab to a new window. Lately, I have started doing Win+Alt+N before and after clicking on a hyperlink as a workaround. But I am wondering if there is another way to solve this.
Thanks for your comment, and for using NegativeScreen.
Unfortunately, I don't have any idea what could cause the behavior you are describing, so I'm afraid I can't do much...
Did you try the beta version I posted a while ago in the comments? (NegativeScreen2beta warning: works only on Seven x64)
It may help.
Great App!! any way to get it working with windows magnifier? every time you invert, the docked magnifier box goes away.
Thanks!
Hmm, this should work fine in the next version. I posted a beta executable in a comment below, if you want to test...
Wow! Awesome app! Thank a lot for it. After I started using negative in Linux's compiz-fusion I long such function in Windows. Fortunately Win 7 provided Magnifier with it but at first a had a problem with Alt+Ctrl+L (I'm PL key: "ł") and then I realized I'm so used to "Win Classic Theme", that I can't endure reflections etc. in Aero. Finally I came back to "Windows Classic". You've given me a new hope 🙂.
Maybe you or somebody of this page reader' have some idea or theme for Aero so as it be more readable?
Sincerely
Tom.
I don't really see the connection between NegativeScreen and the Windows Classic theme, but whatever, I'm glad you like it! 🙂
Once again, thanks for making easily the best inversion utility out there
I had an odd flickering problem earlier with the original on a gtx580 graphics card and the beta version you released in the thread fixed it, if you want any details I'll let you know, so far i like the smooth transitions in the new version.
I also had a chance to play with the windows 8 inversion feature, its very cool, it wireframes all the UI elements and inverts most colors, but most significantly, it seems to detect most (not all) images and does not invert them, if it only had your smart inversion filters it would be perfect.
Sorry about the long time coming answer, I did't had the time to check the windows 8 rtm before yesterday...
what do you mean, "the windows 8 inversion feature"?? I didn't see anything like that. Are you talking about the high contrast theme?
apart from that, I'm glad the beta version worked better 🙂
Thank you, sir, for this awesome program. My mother set a couch on top of my laptop (true story), causing the screen to crack in one part, and negate every color on display. This switched it back so it only looks half bad. Thanks for the time you put into this!
Well, I hadn't this usage in mind, but I'm glad it is useful ^^
thnx a lot developers....this is what I call an excellent piece of software...amazing///screen inversion is not new to me..I have worked on linux for over 5yrs and had my experience with compiz-fusion.Even with the backing of a full-fledged team they couldnt achieve the feat this tiny piece of software has accomplished with astonishing simplicity.I salute u guys...The sepia is a true winner mode incorporated.....thnx a tonn...
Thanks to you 🙂
Have you thought of adding the program to the CNET site: downloads.com?
I added it to some similar websites, but not this one I believe...
You should change the order of the comments on this website, so new comments appear first, and older ones later. The new comment are better then the older comments = more downloads.
You should also look into fixing the Google description of your website which says "24 Feb 2012 – Unfortunately NegativeScreen doesn't work on both my laptop and my computer. Both run windowsXP Professional, SP3 and should be up to"
I'm glad you like NegativeScreen, and thanks for the tips, the chronological order is more logical, but less relevant with many comments. I will also see what I can do for the description...
The program works very well on my Tablet PC. Thanks a lot. I only wish I could have found this program earlier.
The Microsoft Magnifier's color inversion really buggy in windows 7. When I used the Microsoft magnifier with color inversion on and change screen orientation from landscape to portrait half of the screen would become the corrupted. I tested it on other computer, laptops and tablets, all of them had the problem. I even emailed Microsoft and told them where the error was occurring and how to fix it, but the didn't really care.
Thanks to your program NegativeScreen, I can read books on my tablet pc in portrait mode with color inversion. My eyes thank you.
i feel sorry for this, thanks dear Yaurthek
Strange.
I really really don't see what may be wrong, sorry 😕
PS: no need to write in full caps...
AFTER EXTRACTING, I DOUBLE CLICK ON NEGATIVE SCREEN X86 ICON (FOR 32 BIT SYSTEM) NOTHING CHANGED, NO ERROR MESSAGE
i downloaded the program, unfortunately it doesn't work : windows 7 on hp mini
That's not very helpful...
Could you give me more details on what happens?
So that flickering bug sounds a lot like what I'm getting right now, I'm running win7 x64 sp1, with two nVidia GTX580's, and two monitors, one 1920x1200 and the other 1280x1024. Decreasing the frame rate will cause longer black screens (and vice versa), but seems to have no effect on the frequency of