Colour profile setting of iMac monitor while processing pictures in Lightroom.

Question

Everywhere I am reading I have to colour calibrate my (iMac) monitor to assure printed pictures will look the same as on the display (assuming the correct printer/paper profile is used). However, I am nowhere reading to what colour profile I have to set my monitor while processing pictures in Lightroom (Classic). So what does it help to calibrate if the display is not even showing the correct profile in the first place.

Lightroom is using (a kind of) ProPhoto RGB in the Development mode but Adobe RGB in the Library mode.

Does that mean I have to set my iMac to ProPhoto while developing and to Adobe RGB while looking at the pictures in the Library, in order to see how it would ideally look on the print? Thanks for your advice.

Conrad_C · Answer

Regardless of computer or software, the correct profile to select in Displays settings is always the profile that best describes the actual color reproduction behavior of that specific display.

If you have not calibrated or profiled the display yourself:

Leave the default display profile that Apple installed. I am not sure what it’s named for an iMac, but it will be something like “iMac” or “Color LCD”.

If you have calibrated or profiled the display yourself:

The calibration/profiling tool you used should have installed and selected the profile generated when it measured the display, leave it alone.

Print matching is a separate subject. You practically can’t make a display and print match exactly, because they reproduce color so differently. The closest you can get is to use soft-proofing to simulate the printing conditions on screen:

1. Make sure the display profile is correct, as described above (use the profile either installed by default, or a custom profile generated by a measurement device on your specific display).

2. In Lightroom Classic (or Photoshop or other applications), enable soft-proofing (View > Soft Proofing > Show Proof), and then in the soft proofing options under the histogram, select the correct output profile for the job.

Soft-proofing simulates print colors through the display. But for it to be reliable, 1) in Displays settings the correct display profile needs to be selected, and 2) in the application soft-proofing settings, the correct print profile must be selected. For example, if you are going to print on an Epson P900 with Photo Black ink on Hahnemuhle Baryta paper, you must select a profile generated from that exact combination of printer, ink, and paper for the simulation to be reliable. You can often download that profile from the printer or paper maker since it’s the same profile you’d use for printing.

ProPhoto RGB, Adobe RGB, etc. are spaces for editing, not display or output, so those profiles are not to be selected for display or output. There is only one exception, and that is based on the fact that a display profile must represent the exact color behavior of the display: If the display is actually precisely hardware calibrated to Adobe RGB or sRGB, then it’s appropriate to select that profile, because the profile does in fact represent what the display can do.

But for example, any recent iMac has a display that covers the P3 color gamut (similar in size but different color coverage compared to Adobe RGB), so assigning an Adobe RGB or sRGB profile to a recent iMac display is certainly the wrong and inaccurate thing to do.

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