Bug 413309

Summary: SDDM looks much worse after Settings synchronization
Product: [Applications] systemsettings Reporter: David de Cos <david.decos>
Component: kcm_sddmAssignee: David Edmundson <kde>
Status: CONFIRMED ---    
Severity: minor CC: david.decos, filipfila.kde, katyaberezyaka, nate, plasma-bugs
Priority: NOR    
Version: 5.17.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Neon   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Attachments: Before sync'ing
After sync'ing

Description David de Cos 2019-10-22 11:40:14 UTC 
After the 5.17 update I applied the new option to sync the SDDM Look and Feel to those of my user. The SDDM turned out to look much worse. I would say most of the blame falls on the wallpaper blur. The whites are really burned, and are even unpleasant to look at, specially if your screen brightness is high. I'll post the before and after photos in the following comments.

Settings:

- Global theme: Breeze
- Plasma Style: Breeze Transparent Dark
- Color Scheme: Breeze
- Fonts: Noto Sans
Comment 1 David de Cos 2019-10-22 11:45:43 UTC 
Created attachment 123403 [details]
Before sync'ing

Sorry for the bad photo quality, I didn't know how to get a proper screenshot (e.g. with Spectacle) without being logged in.
Comment 2 David de Cos 2019-10-22 11:51:16 UTC 
Created attachment 123404 [details]
After sync'ing

To me, this looks much worse. The bad photo quality doesn't do justice to how burnt and bright the white parts are.
Comment 3 Nate Graham 2019-10-27 22:59:09 UTC 
Looks like all the UI elements on top of the blurred background have had their colors reversed. Some weird color scheme issue maybe?
Comment 4 Filip Fila 2019-10-27 23:28:14 UTC 
This happens in Plasma too when some third-party desktop themes are used with certain color schemes.

What happens when you use default Breeze as Plasma Style and then sync that?
Comment 5 Filip Fila 2019-10-27 23:54:05 UTC 
Yeah so in general this is actually a general Plasma feature. Some Plasma themes and color schemes trigger the lock, logout and login screens to go into alternative color mode. Text becomes black and the wallpaper fader doesn't darken the image but brightens it. 

Example: https://phabricator.kde.org/file/data/nooj6nc2ci5fj2kixuf3/PHID-FILE-tblhfhdwciwta3v76qfm/Screenshot_20180916_184052.png

It's a bit of a bigger task to rethink this whole thing. FWIW I can reproduce the "feature".
Comment 6 David de Cos 2019-10-30 08:32:56 UTC 
In case it helps, my color scheme is default Breeze.

Filip, I did what you suggested. If I choose default Breeze as Plasma Style and sync, SDDM looks exactly as it did before syncing, that is, what my first picture showed. I'm fine with how that looks, although I wonder why syncing does nothing. Should something have changed?

So I only get this problem with Breeze Transparent Dark + sync (I would probably get it with other Styles too, as Filip pointed out). As I said, I'm fine with how it looks without syncing, but if this is deemed to be a problem that needs to be solved, I'm happy to try other Styles or whatever you need to figure this out.
Comment 7 Filip Fila 2019-11-05 00:21:24 UTC 
By default the login screen is already set up to use all things Breeze so syncing defaults from Plasma shouldn't change anything.

I opened up a task regarding the issue you had here, hopefully we'll get some more input from the people who wrote the code for these screens: https://phabricator.kde.org/T11930