Tom94
[BUG] tev region appears over-bright during screen clipping selection when HDR mode is enabled on Windows
Description: When HDR mode is enabled in Windows display settings, the tev window region becomes noticeably over-bright during screen clipping operations. This happens with any screen clipping tool I’ve tested — including both the Windows Snipping Tool (Win + Shift + S) and Snipaste.
The over-bright effect only occurs during the frozen “region selection” phase (when the screen is dimmed for clipping). Once the clipping operation ends, tev returns to normal brightness. The clipped image also contains the over-bright tev region.
When HDR mode is disabled, this issue does not occur — the brightness remains normal throughout the clipping process.
Steps to reproduce:
- Enable HDR mode in Windows display settings.
- Launch tev.
- Start a screen clipping operation (e.g., using Windows Snipping Tool or Snipaste).
- Observe that during the frozen selection phase, tev’s window region appears over-bright.
- End the clipping operation — tev returns to normal.
Expected behavior: tev’s brightness and color should remain consistent during screen clipping, regardless of HDR mode.
Actual behavior: tev’s window region becomes over-bright only during the HDR clipping selection phase, and this over-brightness is reflected in the captured image.
System information:
- OS: Windows 11
- tev version: 2.5.2
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 5090
- Display: HDR-enabled monitor
Additional notes: This may be related to how Windows handles tone mapping and color space conversion during HDR screen captures. It seems the compositor applies different tone mapping to HDR surfaces when the desktop is frozen for clipping.
Hi there, I don't think tev can do anything about this. The way selection mode of tools like snipping tool typically works is to take a fullscreen screenshot on which the selection process happens -- i.e., even if tev could figure out that you're currently in selection mode, no rendering updates would be reflected. It's really up to the screenshotting tools (and the Windows API) to support necessary color management for mixed HDR/SDR situations.
I don't have a Windows system w/ HDR capabilities handy for testing right now, but I found on the web that snipping tool supposedly has an HDR toggle somewhere in its options. Any chance you've tried that already? https://www.reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/1f8s0af/windows_sniping_tools_now_can_toggle_hdr/
Thanks for the quick response!
I’ve tried toggling the HDR option in the Snipping Tool’s settings, but unfortunately it doesn’t make any difference — the over-bright behavior remains exactly the same.
That said, I suspect this might be one of the many quirks (or bugs) in Windows 11’s HDR handling. For instance, when HDR is switched off, I’ve noticed that even the official window switcher (Alt + Tab) shows all application previews with incorrect brightness. It seems like their color management under HDR is still quite inconsistent. :(