color setting for Imac

[Jean278799110vkv]

Im a graphic designer and just upgraded to Photoshop 25

What setting do I choose for the best color on my Imac Screen

[kglad]

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

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[D Fosse]

There is no such thing as "best setting for your screen". You use a calibrator to make a monitor profile for your screen. That profile needs to describe the actual and current behavior of your screen, and the calibrator does this by measuring.

The monitor profie is handled by the operating system, and Photoshop loads whatever profile it gets from the operating system at application startup. No user intervention.

Photoshop Color Settings deal with profiles on document level, which is unrelated to the monitor profile. The whole point of color management is that those two are divorced and do not need to match.

[Conrad_C]

You probably don’t need to change anything in Photoshop, unless you do print work and your print service provider has given you specific color setup advice.

On the Apple iMac, in System Settings > Display, the selected color profile should be iMac, or if you don’t see that in the list, choose Color LCD. Those should work fine for most things.

If you bought display profiling hardware and software, when you run it, it will automatically create and install a customized display profile and you can leave it set to that.

If you are asking what settings to use in the display profiling software, that depends on your graphic design work. If you mostly do graphics for website and mobile devices, a white point of 6500K and luminance of around 150 candelas per square meter (also called nits) is reasonable.

If you mostly do graphics for printing on a press, consider lowering the luminance to between 100-120 cdm2, and consult with your print service provider as to whether your display’s white point should be set to D65 or D50.

[NB, colourmanagement]

@Jean278799110vkv Please be more specific, are you referring to the iMacs settings (in System Settings/ displays) or to the settings used in Photoshop's Color Settings dialog?

As @D Fosse wrote, There is no such thing as "best setting for your screen". I agree that the best way to "set the screen, is to use a hardware calibrator such as the i1 display pro. 

The "best setting" is the right one for your particular circumstances

As @Conrad_C wrote, you might be OK with the "iMac" profile or, if you don’t see that, "Color LCD" selected in the mac's System Settings/ displays.

The  options in Photoshop's Color Settings dialog are generally based on your workflow, your reason for making images - is it for offset print? or maybe for Internet use? 

Which specific settings were you looking for help with? 

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net - adobe forum volunteer - co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
Help others by clicking "Correct Answer" if the question is answered.
Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

[Jean278799110vkv]

Thanks for the info

I'm looking for the best calibration of the colors in Photoshop for print purposes.

In the past I had to calibrate my computer monitor to get the best results in
Photoshop.

I've looked thru the settings in Photoshop 24 and didn't see where to
choose the correct color

Thanks again
J

[NB, colourmanagement]

To calibrate you'll need a hardware calibrator. The settings in Photoshop are in "color settings" 

I hope this helps neil barstow, colourmanagement net - adobe forum volunteer - co-author: 'getting colour right' google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management Help others by clicking "Correct Answer" if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts. 

[D Fosse]

@Jean278799110vkv This isn't in Photoshop.

It's in the profiling software you use with your calibrator.

[Conrad_C]

I'm looking for the best calibration of the colors in Photoshop for print purposes.
By @Jean278799110vkv

That is determined by the exact printing process you are editing for. Are you editing for printing on a desktop home/office color laser printer, on a desktop professional color inkjet printer, or on a CMYK press? Each of those needs a different approach to color.

In the past I had to calibrate my computer monitor to get the best results inPhotoshop.I've looked thru the settings in Photoshop 24 and didn't see where tochoose the correct color
By @Jean278799110vkv

For the last 20–25 years, calibrating the computer display is something that has been done outside of Photoshop, not in Photoshop. The last time display calibration was done with Adobe software was when the old Adobe Gamma utility used to come with Photoshop, but I think they stopped including it some time in the 2000s. And the reason they stopped including calibration with Photoshop is that at that time it became a standard feature in macOS, and maybe Windows.

Photoshop does have color settings, but they automatically hook up to the calibration or profiling that is done at the OS level. Because you have an Apple iMac, on that computer the display calibration is done using either the calibration built into macOS (not recommended unless you know what you’re doing), or using separately purchased calibration/profiling hardware and software (recommended, as others are saying).

For an iMac, the simplest reliable approach is two quick steps:

Step 1: If you don’t own a separate calibrator/profiler, then simply open System Settings on your iMac, then click Display, then in the Color Profile list, choose iMac or Color LCD. That takes care of your display. (For newer Mac displays you would choose a Reference Mode Preset instead, but I don’t think iMacs use those yet; I only mention it if someone reads this and has a newer Mac display.)

Step 2: In Photoshop, as it has been for many years now, you choose Edit > Color Settings and choose a Settings preset that most closely matches the type of work you do. For general purpose printing you can just leave it at the default preset; if you live in North America that default Settings preset is probably North American General Purpose 2. And then you just go and start editing.

The reason this is so easy is that when you choose a Settings preset at the top, that automatically sets everything else in the rest of the dialog box, so that you don’t have to change anything else unless your specific printing process needs it.

If you still have questions, for example if you’re not sure what the correct settings are for your specific printing process, let us know about those printing requirements because there are definitely several experts already giving answers here and at least one of us should know. But the settings above should work OK for most general types of printing.

However…if you are literally looking for “the best” as you said, that is a much higher bar. You would want to run calibration/profiling hardware and software on your display, and let it set the macOS color profile. You might also need to make more specific changes in the Photoshop Color Settings as to the color conversion settings and also in your overall color workflow; for example, you might need to choose a larger color space, work at a higher bit depth such as 16 bits per channel, and use soft-proofing. But, if you don’t remember having to do those things before, then to match what you are used to, you probably only need to do the two simple steps already pictured above.