When I was writing this guide I was reading and doing researches online on how to do it and I remember that a lot of people said their screen looked different compared to when they used it as an Apple device, I remember especially the two things you said.
Since the board should have a "remote" board attached to it, you can try to edit the settings for brightness and color, which can probably improve the situation (but keep in mind that it'll probably never look as good as the original iMac display).