Over-exposure in screenshots and recordings with HDR in Windows 11

I’m not blaming users for the “issue.” I’m trying to help people with the same issue I had. It was annoying. I found a workaround. It has helped fix this issue for many others in this thread that have confirmed the workaround fixes this issue for them.

And, no, the SDR slider has nothing to do with HDR. Turning it to 0 still gives games and videos that support HDR content the ability to use HDR.

The SDR slider brightens non-HDR content. Your desktop, your web browser, 95% or more of your apps do not support HDR. That slider is a gamma correction for that SDR content. It does nothing to HDR.

If you turn it to 0 HDR is completely unaffected. Then use your video card specific gamma settings to brighten SDR in Windows and the overexposure goes away.

I agree you shouldn’t have to do this and it should be fixed. But I’m trying to provide a workaround so people can do more than just yell at Microsoft. Because as you see that hasn’t accomplished a lot.

There’s a workaround in the thread that fixes the issue. Likely only one page back.

Short answer, the SDR slider causes overexposure in screenshots and other SDR image/video capture apps. Turn it all the way down to 0.

This could make your desktop and SDR content appear dark, but will give normal video and screen capture,

You can adjust your gamma settings with your video card to brighten the darkened content without affecting screenshots or video capture if you feel everything is too dark with the SDR slider at 0.

The problem is you guys don’t really know what you’re talking about. There was a post on the first page that would have solved the problem and was dismissed as not relating to the issue when it IS the whole issue.

I laid out a solution above that works perfectly fine. Turn down the SDR adjustment slider to 0 in the HDR section after turning HDR on.

That’s what causing your snips to be over exposed.

Then find the gamma settings for your video card and increase them until you’re happy with your desktop brightness. (Because it will be fairly dark after turning on HDR and turning the SDR slider to 0.)

It’s worked for me and another user above commented it worked for him as well.

This solution worked great! It's a shame we're having to hack together solutions to simple problems, but at least we've found a fix. Kudos and thank you very much for this. 1.0 gamma -> 1.5 looks great to me also; I wonder if somehow "gamma" in the Nvidia Control Panel and the SDR adjustment setting in the Windows HDR settings are addressing the same desktop gamma but the SDR settings also adjust the SDR content gamma, because in Windows HDR settings I lower the SDR modifier from 50 to 0, then in Nvidia I up the desktop gamma from 1.0 to 1.5 and then it looks exactly the same as before adjusting the SDR modifier. It seems that when adjusting the Desktop gamma up to 1.5 the HDR/SDR screenshot settings do not adjust with it, but instead remain lower as adjusted in the Windows HDR settings.

If any of that makes sense...

How is it possible that Microsoft still hasn't come out with a fix for this yet? We are discovering ambient air temp super conductors, aliens are about to be disclosed, and we still cannot capture screenshots property with HDR mode on...

Because Microsoft is a monopoly and they are acting like a monopoly; what OS are we going to switch to that actually handles HDR properly? Assuming MacOS does handle it, how am I going to install MacOS on my self-built PC? We're not exactly choosing from pizza places here.