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New Participant
April 4, 2025
Question

Correct Studio Display profile for editing

  • April 4, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 417 views

Should I be using the Photography (P3-D65) profile on my Studio Display for processing in lightroom? If not which?

I'd think that for photos I want to print I should be editing using the best profile for editing and that it be complementary to the color profile I use in Lightroom/Photoshop.

I do not currently have the ability to calibrate my monitor.

Any suggestions on the profiles I should be using?

 

    1 reply

    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    April 7, 2025

    Presets are not precise enough for this. You will get a result, but there will be a lot of trial and error and low predictability.

     

    For printing you need to visually match the monitor white point with the paper color, and the monitor black point to max ink (on a test print).

     

    • For most "normal" scenarios this will be around 110-120 cd/m² white luminance, and 0.3-0.5 cd/m² black luminance. But those are ballpark starting point figures, depending on type of paper and your whole working environment - ambient light, print viewing light, even the application interface. The match is visual. If it looks right, it is right.
    • Similarly, the monitor white point color should usually be in the vicinity of D65. But you may need to adjust that a little on the Kelvin scale, to 6300 or 6200 or so. But again, it depends.
    • This is how you get a perfect match from screen to print. Then you know that what you see is what you get.

     

    You would normally do this with a calibrator, either directly setting those parameters in the calibrator (if the calibrator connects to the monitor's internal processor), or indirectly, by letting the calibrator read values off screen as you make adjustments to the monitor.

    NB, colourmanagement
    Community Expert
    April 15, 2025

     @D Fosse I agree, even for the Apple Studio Display it's, good to have your own calibrator such as the Calibrite Display Pro. models. This will calibrate then profile the actual display so that profile can be used by applications such as Photoshop to tailor image data on. its way to the screen to assure accurate reproduction.

     

    This all gets rather complex with the Apple Pro Display XDR model as there's not even anywhere to put an ICC display profile in System Settings. Best one can do is to tune one of the presets using a colorimeter for guidance 

     

    I hope this helps

    neil barstow colourmanagement - adobe forum volunteer,

    colourmanagement consultant & co-author of 'getting colour right'

    See my free articles on colourmanagement online

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