Systems, methods, and computer readable media to improve the operation of a display system are disclosed. Techniques disclosed herein selectively darken a region of an image so that when text or other information is rendered into that region, the contrast between the text or other information and the underlying image in that area is sufficient to ensure the text or other information is visible and readable. In one embodiment, a region into which information is to be rendered may be combined or blended with tone mapped values of those same pixels in accordance with a given function, where the function gives more weight to the tone mapped pixel values the closer those pixels are to the midline of the region and more weight to untone-mapped image pixel values the further those pixels are from the midline of the region.