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

[papology]

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!

[Sean McCormack]

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. 

[papology]

"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?

[Sean McCormack]

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. 

[papology]

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 

[Sean McCormack]

I'm a delight actually. 

And plenty of those answers are telling you to consider a hardware calibrator. And to use the correct printer profiles for your paper and printer combination. And that camera profiles have nothing to do with it. 

My books have had great reviews and I've had a few well-known photographers thank me for the help they gave as they started their journey.. but there you go. 

[Christopher H Bellamy]

I consider it pretty damn rude to bring out the fun at parties line when someone is trying to help you, regardless of if you found it useful.

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

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.

[papology]

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.

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

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.

[D Fosse]

In addition to the white point, the main reason for a screen-to-print mismatch is the black point. The black level has a huge impact on the perceived "punch" of the image.

Just like monitor white should be a visual match to paper white, monitor black should be a visual match to maximum ink density. Once you have the two endpoints well visually matched, the rest will fall into place and you can in fact get a surprisingly close match - to the point where what you see is what you get. That's the holy grail.

A good inkjet print on high grade glossy paper has a contrast range of at most 300:1, but usually closer to 250:1. For matte paper, and offset print, it's much lower, sometimes down to 100:1. A computer display, however, has a contrast range of at least 1000:1 out of the box, but nowadays usually much higher.

So that punchy vibrant image on screen turns very flat and dead on paper. You can't improve the print contrast range - but you can calibrate the monitor to match, so that you don't get any surprises and can prepare the image accordingly.

If your monitor white point is 120 cd/m², and you target 300:1 for a glossy inkjet print, that gives you a black point at 0.4 cd/m². If you're preparing files for offset print, you may need to go as high as 1.0 cd/m² or even 1.2 cd/m².

Not all calibrators allow setting a black point. But if it does (most high end calibrators do) - then you are much better equipped to predict what the finished print will look like. You can also keep several targets for different printing conditions.