Brightness and contrast

[squakie]

I understand Linux Mint is based off Ubuntu, and I noticed it uses the Ubuntu repositories, so I hope it's okay that I post this here:

I recently switched to Mint - mainly because I can right click on an item in the menus and say place on desktop. For some reason, while it worked in Ubuntu 13.04 and prior, Ubuntu 13.10 now refuses to let me drag an app from the Unity menus to the desktop. Having installed 13.10 from scratch when I had to reload, I now don't have everything I had on my desktop - kind of makes a desktop onto itself useless. So I at least temporarily switched to Mint so I have the ability to build up my desktop.

That being said (and I would like to come back to just Ubuntu if this is ever rectified), I have a small annoyance with Mint that I'm sure just must be a lack of knowledge on my part: In order to get pictures I can actually view (otherwise they are too dark), I set the brightness and contrast on my TV (using HDTV as "monitor") to about mid-way/ Now anything that is light - such as white backgroungs, the light blue that's supposed to be on the top bars of Firefox, boxes from Mint itself, etc., are all washed out - to the point there is NO color visible and the printing, etc., is very light.

I don't know if this has something to do with the default theme or if there is something else simple I just don't know about.

Any help would be appreciated.

[squakie]

It would appear (knock on wood) that it was the video driver. I installed updates-fglrx, rebooted and now everything seems normal.