Bug 450264

Summary:	Background Contrast Effect is important for usability and shouldn't be disable-able when using Blur effect
Product:	[Plasma] kwin	Reporter:	guimarcalsilva
Component:	effects-various	Assignee:	KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	honza.klos, kde, nate, plasma-bugs-null
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Neon
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description guimarcalsilva 2022-02-15 00:25:13 UTC

SUMMARY

This bug is part of an ongoing effort to rethink the options available in System Settings. The end goal is to consolidate some obscure options to make Plasma feel simpler to use and improve the user experience. I was advised to make individual bug reports with my suggestions. More details with all the suggestions and talking points can be seen in this shared document: https://collaborate.kde.org/s/oEkdeYerKqaZNyC

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The Background Contrast Effect is meant to improve contrast in transparent regions to improve readability. Allowing users to disable it as a simple eye-candy effect creates the opportunity for people to unintentionally worsen the user experience.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: KDE neon Unstable Edition
KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.80
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.91.0
Qt Version: 5.15.3
Kernel Version: 5.13.0-28-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 6 × Intel® Core™ i5-9400F CPU @ 2.90GHz
Memory: 7,6 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Radeon RX 570 Series

Comment 1 Nate Graham 2022-02-15 04:31:53 UTC

Yes, I think you're right. Using blur should just automatically enable this. Perhaps it could even be merged into the Blur effect.

Comment 2 guimarcalsilva 2022-03-27 18:19:02 UTC

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1)
> Yes, I think you're right. Using blur should just automatically enable this.
> Perhaps it could even be merged into the Blur effect.

I think merging both is the best option. Disabling blur but keeping the contrast effect makes transparencies look really ugly. You can try that by yourself to see what it looks like.

Comment 3 Jan Klos 2022-03-29 07:53:38 UTC

Please DO NOT DO THIS until https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=451683 is fixed...

Comment 4 David Edmundson 2022-03-29 09:38:08 UTC

>The Background Contrast Effect is meant to improve contrast in transparent regions to improve readability

Whilst that is true it does report the state to clients that are then meant to use opaque backgrounds. It shouldn't affect usability.

Comment 5 guimarcalsilva 2025-06-15 19:47:56 UTC

Blur and contrast effects got merged in https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/6838