[pulsar124]

In this other thread, it was reported that fanart images can be made look exactly like when viewed from Pictures tab (the same contrast), when colordiffuse="88FFFFFF" parameter is deleted in a couple of lines in MusicVisualisation.xml (with no AS installed). That suggests that the low contrast issue originates somewhere inside the AS code.

EDIT: it looks like the culprit was found - the single line <include>ColoredBackgroundImages</include> in MusicVisualisation.xml . (Both inside the official Estuary skin, and the pkscout's skin mod.) Once this line is deleted/commented out, full fanart contrast/brightness is restored.