Weird display issue on OS X Lion when switching external monitor

I'm using a MBP with a second (external) monitor and since I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion, I encountered some display issues that appear in the Application Switcher, and sometimes in the menu-bar.

In case of the menu, the font in the dropdown appears with jagged edges, as if there suddenly was a huge contrast-change affecting only the menu-items.

In case of the Application Switcher, the effect is even worse as shown in this image:

Interestingly, this glitch seems to only affect overlays like the Application Switch or the menu. The rest of my OS and all Applications are looking fine.

If I go to System Preferences and choose another color-profile for my monitor, the issue is gone. If I select the previously selected color-profile, the issue appears again. The issue happens with every profile though. So if I choose Adobe RGB (1998) and restart my computer, the issue occurs. It disappears when I select another profile, for example Apple RGB. After a restart, the glitch will re-appear (even with the newly selected Apple RGB) and only a profile-change will remove it.

It's not too big of a deal, but if anybody has some pointers how to resolve this, I'd really appreciate it. Btw. the issue appears on different monitors, so it's not some monitor-hardware fault or anything.

Update: I was under the impression that the issue reappears after a restart. That assumption was wrong, the issue appears whenever I switch the external monitor (eg. change from monitor at work to the one at home).

Solution 1:

I've had an identical problem on my 2010 MBP since upgrading to Lion last fall. Here's what I did today that seemed to fix the problem:

1) Go into Macintosh HD and find /Library/colorsync/profiles/displays
2) Move all files in the 'displays' directory into a backup folder on your Desktop
3) Open System Preferences > Displays and click on "Color" for each of your displays
4) Your computer will take a few seconds and create a fresh display file for each monitor.

After doing this all the weird screen artifacts and colors have gone away on both my MBP LCD display and my 19" external monitor connected with mini-DVI.

Solution 2:

I am also experiencing the same problems and have posted a thread to the Macbook Pro Apple Forums. While there isn't any answer yet you might be interested in following along that thread.

So far the only reliable way to fix it would be to restart the machine. Or to log out and log back in. Neither method is satisfactory.