I'm having a major headache with taking screenshots in Windows 11 and need some help figuring this out. Whenever I take a screenshot—whether it's with the Snipping Tool, Print Screen, or any other method—my images come out looking washed out or overly bright, which makes the text appear really pale and faded. The strange part is, this only happens when HDR is turned on in my display settings. When I switch off HDR, screenshots look perfect.
Here's a bit about my setup: I have a Dell UltraSharp 40 Curved monitor as my main display and a secondary ASUS 27" TUF Gaming monitor. Both monitors experience this issue, so it's clearly not hardware-related. I've got the latest updates for Windows 11 installed.
Is this something that others have experienced with HDR on Windows 11? Is there a setting that allows screenshots to be taken before HDR tone-mapping impacts the images? Is there a way to capture SDR content properly within the HDR setup? Any workarounds besides disabling HDR every time for decent screenshots would be greatly appreciated!
3 Answers
One quick fix is to take a screenshot with the Snipping Tool, then go to the settings in the top right corner and enable HDR color correction. That should help with the washed-out look!
Honestly, I avoid using HDR unless I'm gaming or watching movies. Windows tends to handle HDR pretty poorly overall, so I just keep it off unless I absolutely need it.
If you're having issues in Chrome, I found a solution! Just visit chrome://flags/#force-color-profile and switch the color profile to sRGB. I noticed that it fixed the washed-out screenshots when HDR is on!
Thanks for the tip! It worked well for me, but I wish the Snipping Tool had a feature to quickly add arrows or highlight stuff after capturing. Do you know of any other screenshot tools that support HDR and have that functionality?