Presentation is too dark on external monitor

I have a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MBP 17" with 4GB of factory RAM running OS 10.6.3.
At the last two meetings I've been at, my presentation on the external VGA monitor for the audience (large room, 1000 people) has been a bit too dark. The presentation looks great on my screen. Someone from the audience said that this is a known issue with a new Mac software update, something to do with the gamma curve, but I don't really understand what this means.
I have a Mac in a corporate PC world, where many folks are just looking to find a reason to "dis" Mac technology. Any suggestions as to how to fix this bug would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

It is indeed a known issue (see, for example, http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11408594) and there are a lot of users waiting with bated breath for a solution. In the meantime, the only way to 'correct' the problem completely is to revert back to 10.6.2 (instructions provided in the thread quoted above). Short of that, some suggestions that others have made that might help:
Go to Displays in System Preferences
Select Color and Display all profiles
Selecting Generic RGB Profile or perhaps Wide Gamut RGB
This is a serious problem for me as I am a university professor and rely on my laptop to give lectures. And I too am conscious of the PC users that love to heckle while glowing smugly at the slightest evidence of a Mac bug. We will always have the last laugh, however.

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Images too dark on Samsung monitor - please help!

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Thanks Peter & Sid. I appreciate the advice, but it doesn't match our experience over 12 years of designing web applications so I'm having trouble understanding what's different, can I ask for any more advice you might have?
If we calibrate the monitor using the recommended tools, will Photoshop images look 2-3 f-stops brighter (i.e. as they should look) and will images in all other apps (which look fine now, have always looked fine) look 2-3 f-stops too bright? Or would we be changing JUST the way Photoshop sees the images?
Through probably a dozen different previous CRT and LCD monitors, we've never calibrated anything. Even on our immediately-previous Samsung 213T monitor, images appear pretty much the same in Photoshop as they do in all other places. That includes published web sites viewed with several popular browsers and viewed on literally hundreds of different systems inside and outside of our office.
The previous monitor was being used with exactly the same software and hardware as the new one. The only thing that's changed is the monitor.
Peter asks about brightness or white point luminance. I haven't used any tool to determine that. The monitor is set to 50% brightness, for whatever that's worth, but I can tell you that it is substantially BRIGHTER on white than the previous monitor. The previous Samsung monitor is being run side-by-side with the new one, and it looks quite dull and yellow beside the new one (and we thought it was a great monitor!) The new 30" Samsung has MUCH whiter whites. Does that help even a little?
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Images too dark on external display

Hello,
I use Lightroom on my (Lenovo) notebook. Because of the small screen size, I tried using it with an external (Samsung) display. However, when I open Lightroom on the external display, all the images suddenly seem way too dark. It is the case that this display is generally too dark, because when I view the same picture in a photo viewer or a browser it is not too dark. See for example this screenshot. On the left hand you see an image (export from Lightroom) in my browser, on the right hand the same image in Lightroom. You can clearly see it is much darker. When I view both images on the screen of the notebook itself, there is no difference between them.
Actually, when I move the Lightroom window from the notebook display to the external display, you can clearly see Lightroom adjusting the images from light to dark.
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Thanks!

I guess you misunderstood my problem. It's not only that images on the external display are way darker than on the notebook, but also that on the external display images in Lightroom are much darker than when I view the same image on the same display in a photo viewer or a browser. In the screenshot pictured above both the light and the dark version of the image are on the same external display.
However, in the meantime I found a solution. Changing the Windows Color System device profile to a non-WCS-profile did the trick: Photos appear as black, gray rectangles | Lightroom | Windows
Thanks anyway for trying to help.

Pictures too dark - not a monitor calibration problem

I believe this is some kind of color space or EXIF data issue I'm having. The jist of it is this: if I view one of my pictures (they're in jpg format) in Windows Explorer, they look fine. But when Lightroom opens the picture or displays it in the library, it looks too dark. (Important note: this is not a monitor calibration issue. Searching on Google reveals tons of advice along these lines, but that's not what's happening here. Lightroom is simply displaying things differently than anything else.)
Photoshop had this problem also, but Adobe supplied a patch that made Photoshop ignore the color space EXIF data so my pictures would display "correctly". There does not seem to be any such equivalent fix for Lightroom. I'm using Windows XP - perhaps there's something I can do in the OS to fix this issue? I believe most of my pictures are sRGB.
How do I get Lightroom to display my pictures correctly? They are, of course, impossible to edit while they display like this. Thanks in advance for any help!

Thanks for the responses. I freely admit I don't understand color management. I also admit I have not calibrated my monitor. I know, therefore, that my colors are not perfectly synchronized across all my devices - and I'm fine with that for the moment, because they are close enough. What comes out of my camera, what is displayed on my monitor, and what comes out of my printer are all pretty close. I will calibrate soon and get even closer, but for now perfect color isn't my chief concern.
My problem is not that the colors don't match, it's that the pictures are too dark when displayed in Lightroom. By "too dark", I mean several stops of exposure too dark. A picture will display a certain way on my camera and in Windows, and the histogram reflects this. Then I load it into Lightroom, and while the histogram looks the same of course, the picture itself is being displayed like I took it at night. Hence, as far as I can tell, it's not a monitor calibration issue. If I were to calibrate the monitor to display the pictures in Lightroom correctly, everything else would look too bright, wouldn't it? Including Lightroom itself. Besides, it wouldn't be possible to brighten my monitor to the point that the pictures looked acceptable - that's how dark they are.
Here's another clue: if I'm at work, and I RDP to my PC at home, and open Lightroom in the RDP session, everything looks great. So, I'm thinking it's a Windows color space issue of some kind. The question is, since I admit I don't know much about color space, what might be the problem and how might I fix it?
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Hi,
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Blurred display when presenting w Powerpoint via external monitor

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Scott,
Many thanks for your answer! If you're right, what do you suggest that I do whenever I have to connect an external beamer/projector?
Of course, it should show up fine on the projector (cuz that's what my audience will see) but I'd like to be able to see it in some form on my laptop display too. Would that be possible?
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Hans

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you can check in power option and monitor options too
>> start menu >> control panel >> Power options
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Please provide Kudos to whom has provided answers or
good points or advice..
Aslo if the questions or issues solved please check it
"Accepted"
Thanks and you are welcome _____ Rick

Macbook screen/display comes on and then goes dark; external monitor shows the screen in the mirroring mode; What's wrong, please. Thanks.

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Model Name:          MacBook
Model Identifier:          MacBook4,1
Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:          2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors:          1
Total Number Of Cores:          2
L2 Cache:          3 MB
Memory:          4 GB
Bus Speed:          800 MHz
Boot ROM Version:          MB41.00C1.B00
SMC Version (system):          1.31f1
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State:          Enabled
Chipset Model:          GMA X3100
Type:          GPU
Bus:          Built-In
VRAM (Total):          144 MB
Vendor:          Intel (0x8086)
Device ID:          0x2a02
Revision ID:          0x0003
Displays:
Color LCD:
Resolution:          1280 x 800
Pixel Depth:          32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Mirror:          On
Mirror Status:          Hardware Mirror
Online:          Yes
Built-In:          Yes
Philips 191EL:
Resolution:          1366 x 768 @ 60 Hz
Pixel Depth:          32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Display Serial Number:          AU11103006796
Main Display:          Yes
Mirror:          On
Mirror Status:          Master Mirror
Online:          Yes
Rotation:          Supported

Hi, firetiger.... i have the EXACT same problem!!! i have the same Macbook aluminum unibody screen also. I have no idea how to fix it. I'm also out of warranty and i've tried everything... resetting the pram, trying to restart in safe mode, trying to boot from a cd... .NOTHING WORKS!!! i can still control brightness itself but ive never tried attaching to an external monitor. I know everything is loaded correctly... i just don't know whats wrong. If you have any ideas.. please let me know. Also, I think apple will fix the macbook pros with a similar issue for free http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377 but i know this doesnt apply for me. hopefully they work something out because I really love that computer!!!

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Jack
Jack

External Keynote display too dark

Hello
I have several presentations made with Keynote on my main computer, an iMac 19". Once converted to movies I was able to use them successfully on a Toshiba portable and on an MSI Wind. Last week I purchased a white Macbook with a 2.13 Core Duo processor and 2Gb of memory (running OSX 10.6). When I link this to my Optoma projector, the presentations, whether in keynote format or as movies, are far too dark to see. I have calibrated the display for the Optoma, following the instructions, but this has no effect. Changing brightness and contrast on the Optoma make little difference.
Using OpenOffice as a whiteboard, the display is noticeably darker than with the Wind or the Toshiba, although it is still legible. jpgs in keynote, however, are usually far too dark to see.
As I purchased the Macbook primarily for use with the projector, this is a big problem.
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Try and do a color calibration again on the Mac when it's connected to the projector. This time, put a check mark in the "Expert mode" box before the calibration begins. When you get to the screen dealing with gamma, try moving the slider to the left (lower gamma values) and see if that brightens the image from the projector.

LCD monitor too dark on Mac Mini

I have tried both a Viewsonic VP730b and a Samsung 740BX and both are way too dark.
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Apple, are you there ?
Apple don't really monitor these discussions - they are user-to-user so the only way to have Apple themselves respond to this is by contacting them and reporting the issue. here, you'll only get responses from other Apple users - except in rare instances where an Apple staffer may hit on a problem he/she decides to help with. That isn't to say a Moderator may not notice you message and escalate the issue upwards, but of course that wouldn't help your specific case.
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External Monitor plugs in, then goes dark?

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Hello-
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