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Proper color calibration needed for LrC and Macbook Pro (m1 2020)

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
October 9, 2023
2 replies
10944 views

Hey there, i need to properly set up my color calibration with my Macbook Pro (m1 2020). I know, theres a lot of tutorials out there but a lof of them were wildly inaccurate! Please advise.

While we at it, what do you keep my LR color profile?I use camera standard. Either way, please let me know. Thanks!

macOS

Correct answer Jao vdL

It depends on which type of screen you have on your Mac Book Pro. Some are capable of HDR display and they have additional settings available. It will also have a dedicated photography profile which will set the screen to a precalibrated brightness and will disable the HDR bringhtness extension. Apple describes these modes here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210435

Not all Mac Book Pros have the liquid retina display and on those you have more limited choise. For Lightroom work (which will likely soon include HDR photography follwing in camera raw's footsteps) the HDR modes are usually best with the brightness dialed to a more reasonable setting using the trick described above. If you don't have a liquid retina you have more limited choices and you typically just choose the default color LCD for the profile there and dial in the brightness or use calibration hardware. Apple's calibration is fairly good and usable out of the box with recent hardware. It is not perfect though and you will see subtle differences. You will even see subtle differences if your display were perfectly calibrated however as print is just a very different medium than an emissive display and you will never really get perfect matching. Soft proofing like you can do in Lightroom Classic's develop module will help a bit but is also not a perfect way to understand what the print will look like.

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

For a recent M1 machine, you either want to use the standard built-in display profile and choose the photography or HDR settings (they are functionally the same) and dim the screen to a reasonable level (the default is way too bright which will make your prints come out dark). The trick is to hold a white piece of the paper you will print on next to the display with an empty blank page showing and dim to the point that your display is similar brightness as the piece of paper.

It is better to use a hardware calibrator. Unfortunately there are very few that are really compatible with the wide gamut HDR screens that are now standard on these machines. Basically only the higher end ones are good such as colorMunki. i1display, etc.. Make sure to calibrate to something like 120 cd/m2 for brightness. The software should guide you in that. These are the only two options. Use the built in calibrations and trust Apple's calibration which i reasonably good, or use a hardware calibrator. Any other type of calibration will result in inaccurate color. Doing either of these two things should result in good matching of display with prints if the profiles your system has for the printer are also accurate (another can of worms!) and the printer driver is well behaved (not a given).

The RAW profile used in the develop section has nothing to do with the color accuracy of the display or with how well your display will match a print. It is a completely separate thing as Sean already said. It is how Lightroom interprets the raw data and is a creative choice. None of them are colorimetrically accurate. The "camera" profiles aproximate how your camera renders jpegs and is a choice by the camera makers that they think their costumers think looks good. The Adobe profiles are made by Adobe and are what they think looks good. If you want colorimetrically accurate you have to create your own camera profiles by shooting a color chart and running it through specialized sotware. This is what people that reproduce paintings and other art objects do. The images will look boring.

P

papologyAuthor

Participant

Thank you for the explanation! I never considered holding a white piece of paper to the screen but it makes sense 🙂 One more thing: you said you either want to use the standard built-in display profile and choose the photography or HDR settings - where can i find these? I dont have both of these display profiles.

J

Jao vdL

Correct answer

Community Expert

It depends on which type of screen you have on your Mac Book Pro. Some are capable of HDR display and they have additional settings available. It will also have a dedicated photography profile which will set the screen to a precalibrated brightness and will disable the HDR bringhtness extension. Apple describes these modes here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210435

Not all Mac Book Pros have the liquid retina display and on those you have more limited choise. For Lightroom work (which will likely soon include HDR photography follwing in camera raw's footsteps) the HDR modes are usually best with the brightness dialed to a more reasonable setting using the trick described above. If you don't have a liquid retina you have more limited choices and you typically just choose the default color LCD for the profile there and dial in the brightness or use calibration hardware. Apple's calibration is fairly good and usable out of the box with recent hardware. It is not perfect though and you will see subtle differences. You will even see subtle differences if your display were perfectly calibrated however as print is just a very different medium than an emissive display and you will never really get perfect matching. Soft proofing like you can do in Lightroom Classic's develop module will help a bit but is also not a perfect way to understand what the print will look like.

Sean McCormack

Community Expert

The camera profiles and color calibration are not related. Profiles choose a color rendering for your photo. Choose the one that's most pleasing for the photo.

To properly color calibrate your monitor you need a hardware device. Check https://calibrite.com/ for a variety of options. Not sponsored.

Sean McCormack. Author of 'Essential Development 3'. Magazine Writer. Former Official Fuji X-Photographer.

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papologyAuthor

Participant

"The camera profiles and color calibration are not related. Profiles choose a color rendering for your photo. Choose the one that's most pleasing for the photo."

Thanks but it appears that there is a minsunderstanding here, partly because i forgot to mention that i want to print.

The image on screen should appear as identical as possible to the print. This is why i am looking for a solution/calibration. So changing a camera profile will only complicate matters substantially when printing. This is why i asked, what the workaround is, leave camera profile as shot?

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papologyAuthor

Participant

No, you don't understand. Camera profiles are how Lightroom interprets the colors from the Raw data. They are the basis for every other step in Develop.

To get an accurate edit, you need a color calibrated monitor so that what you see on screen can be translated to a print. To keep the color managed path, you need to select the correct printer paper profile in the Print Module. You do this via the Profile section in Color Management in the Print Job panel. These profiles are generic, but you can get custom ones using a dedicated print color management device. Again additional hardware. Paper Profiles are not related to camera Profiles.

Oh boy, you must be fun at parties. I can only imagine what your book is like. Either way, I got some answers elsewhere, to the questions I actually asked

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