Macos – 1080p – MacOS X – Screen / Font rendering very bad

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I have a MacBook Pro mid 2009 and a samsung SyncMaster B2230 monitor. I have connected them through the standard display port adapter and a DVI to HDMI connector cable. Now the display resolution is at 1080p.

My problem is, the font and the display or the pixels, are not as they should look like.
If you look at the example screenshot I've provided, you will notice a white-ish fade in the font. The AntiAliasing wich should be there is not there or something like that.

What is the cause of this problem?
What would you suggest?

Best Answer

This Mac OS X Hints tip describes how to fix the problem:

In Snow Leopard, you can only choose between Automatic and Standard CRT. Since few people use CRTs these days, most users now have only one option: Automatic. The problem with the Automatic option is that OS X incorrectly detects many third party LCD monitors as CRTs, and consequently, disables LCD font smoothing.

You can force OS X to use LCD font smoothing on all displays with this Terminal command:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2

The number 2 here corresponds to Medium - Best for Flat Panel. You may also use 1 for light smoothing, and 3 for strong smoothing, as per the original OS X font smoothing options.

You'll have to relaunch applications to see the effect in them.

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