Hi, I have the new MBP 16" next to a Thinkpad with 4K screen. I found that when they were playing the same videos, the colors on the Thinkpad are more vibrant (the blue of the ocean more blue on the Thinkpad than that of the MBP 16", red is more read on the Thinkpad, etc.) Can we adjust the color of the MBP 16"?
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Can we adjust the color of the MBP 16" 2019 to make images more vibrant?
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That’s because the MacBook Pro is properly color calibrated and shows the actual colors of the content you’re displaying. Just like the creator of the content envisioned it (assuming it’s within the range of P3 which most things are.)
The ThinkPad, and many other Windows laptops will purposefully blow colors totally out of proportion to make them “vibrant”, but completely inaccurate, meaning you cannot trust what you see. It’ll display differently on different devices, and totally different if printed.
If you want though you can custom calibrate the colors just the way you want under System Preferences, Display, and Color. There’s a Color Calibration app on macOS that’ll guide you through it all. You can set up the color profiles very explicitly, and switch between several, both predefined and custom made. But as I said, macOS is automatically color managed for accuracy and the displays are properly calibrated already. By all means, change it if you prefer it differently, but a good display isn’t about vibrancy, it’s about accuracy, and vibrancy only when the content itself is vibrant.
The ThinkPad, and many other Windows laptops will purposefully blow colors totally out of proportion to make them “vibrant”, but completely inaccurate, meaning you cannot trust what you see. It’ll display differently on different devices, and totally different if printed.
If you want though you can custom calibrate the colors just the way you want under System Preferences, Display, and Color. There’s a Color Calibration app on macOS that’ll guide you through it all. You can set up the color profiles very explicitly, and switch between several, both predefined and custom made. But as I said, macOS is automatically color managed for accuracy and the displays are properly calibrated already. By all means, change it if you prefer it differently, but a good display isn’t about vibrancy, it’s about accuracy, and vibrancy only when the content itself is vibrant.
Thanks. When I watched Iron Man, Tony's face on the Thinkpad was more red like he were drunk.
To be fair, when it comes to Tony, he might very well have been
You are talking about saturation. A lot of systems (Samsung!) saturate their colors to make them pop. But, Apple favors accurate color saturation and rendering which I think is the correct decision.
Thanks. So even on my P53 there is a label "Color Calibrated", it is just for marketing purpose?
It may well be calibrated, but not to spec. Alternatively, it may be Windows. Color is both software and hardware, and Windows is not yet a color managed operating system like macOS. This means if a display is calibrated for a certain color space, but you display content from a different color space on it, Windows won’t automatically make it all conform. I.e. a display set for P3 colors on Windows won’t display right with sRGB content and vice versa.
For their Surface lineup Microsoft also ships several color profiles in the Windows settings, including a proper sRGB profile following the standard, as well as a ”vibrant” and “enhanced” mode.
macOS on the other hand takes the information about what content is supposed to be displayed and properly maps it to the display’s color space.
Not sure what a P53 is?
In general, Color Calibrated just means that ran a color calibrator app on it and it tweaked the colors to improve them. This is done on a display and produces a set of parameters know as a color profile. And then this profile is loaded into the video driver to produce the most accurate color rendering possible with the display.