LCD Scrub: Get Rid of Unwanted Burn-in

Posted by Greg Healy on 06/7/08 in Featured, Graphics, Home & Personal, Utilities

LCD SCrub Burn-in (or Image Persistance), on LCD Monitors, is caused by “the continuous display of static graphics on the screen for extended periods of time.” This causes pixels to become “stuck” and only display one color. If you have ever had this happen to your screens, you know that it can be annoying, and depending on where the persistence is, difficult to work around.

A few weeks ago, I was looking at a photo full-screen in iPhoto on my iMac, when I noticed a line of white at at the top of the screen (pictured below), where the menubar usually ends. Restarting didn’t seem to fix the problem, so it was at that moment, I realized that I might have Image Persistence.

Burn In

Searching across the internet to get rid of it brought a few different methods, like certain movie clips to play fullscreen, and certain screensavers. After poking around a little, I settled on trying the application LCD Scrub, from ToastyCode. LCD Scrub is a screensaver that is supposed to get rid of unwanted Image Persistence. The instructions were to turn on the screensaver, and leave it for several hours. After following these instructions (I left the screensaver on overnight as I slept) I was pleased to see that I could barely see the persistence anymore. After I had gotten home from school later that day (the screensaver on all the while), I could no longer see the white line.

Options

Of course, the line was never that big a deal in the first place, as it was not visible when the menubar was visible, though it was annoying when in fullscreen. Overall, I was pleased that this application actually functioned as advertised, though your results may vary. Let us know how you got rid of your Image Persistence

LCD Scrub is $18 from ToastyCode.

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5 Comment(s)

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Opaque said on

June 8th, 2008 at 7:40 am

Couldn’t we just open an animated GIF that flashes high contrast colours in full screen and save those $18 for something else?

Gavin said on

June 8th, 2008 at 7:59 am

Or you could just switch your monitor off for a while, lol, who on earth would pay money for this?

Sometimes I get an after image because of being on my console which is connected to the same monitor I use for my Mac because the image is wider than the monitor’s ratio there is a black border at the top and bottom of the screen and as the heat rises to the top there will be a line if I’ve been on the console a while and switch back to my Mac, but even if I do nothing that line will fade after a while.

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Opaque said on

June 8th, 2008 at 9:48 am

For those that want to save their $18:

- http://killdeadpixel.com/ ; will help you wake up pixels from your browser.
- http://www.jscreenfix.com/ ; a Java Applet this time, they also offer a little extra text about this.

I must say that I havn’t tried LCD Scrub, it might work better than the pages above and might use more tested animations. I’m also not trying to keep them from making money

Greg Healy said on

June 8th, 2008 at 10:57 am

Thanks for all the free alternatives guys, the next time I find myself with image persistence, I’ll make a post testing the ones that you guys suggested.

i have one said on

June 8th, 2008 at 4:33 pm

maybe there should be an epilepsy warning as well!