Can't calibrate new XDR MacBook Pro display - missing 'Color' button, calibration option.

[Sowelu]

So I just received my 14" M1 Max MacBook Pro and the first thing I like to do when I get a new Mac is to calibrate the display (they all skew very green to my eyes with the default factory color profile). But, I do not see an option for this as I do on my other Macs. I am not sure if this is due to the new MacBooks, or Monterey, but there is no longer a 'Color Profile' button in Display Preferences. In fact, the entire display preference pane is completely different. I can't figure out how to bring up the Display Calibrator Assistant. Am I missing something?

 

[camhabib]

Well first of all, I'd wait a bit for that display to stabilize before bothering calibrating it. Second, I wouldn't do it just by eye, but would rather use something like an i1Display to do so.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

Calibration needs your ambient lighting to be constantly the same temperature. You should turn off True Tone and Night Shift also. If there are shifts in the temperature of light on the display or in your ambient surrounding then the colors you see will also be shifting slightly around the clock. Your surrounding and display has to be same kelvin if you are doing color work. About 5800k average.

 

[Sowelu]

Well first of all, I'd wait a bit for that display to stabilize before bothering calibrating it. Second, I wouldn't do it just by eye, but would rather use something like an i1Display to do so.

I always calibrate by eye using the Display Calibrator Assistant. I just find it odd that there is no obvious way to bring up the calibrator. Even the 'help' notes in the display preference pane refer to the Display Calibrator Assistant, but the usual buttons to bring that up are gone.

 

[Sowelu]

Calibration needs your ambient lighting to be constantly the same temperature. You should turn off True Tone and Night Shift also. If there are shifts in the temperature of light on the display or in your ambient surrounding then the colours you see will also be shifting slightly around the clock.

Yes, I always turn off True Tone and Night Shift before calibrating. But I can't figure out how to bring up the calibrator! So odd...

 

[ponzicoinbro]

Yes, I always turn off True Tone and Night Shift before calibrating. But I can't figure out how to bring up the calibrator! So odd...

I never liked the built in one anyway. Prefer to use Eizo or Spyder’s app as it comes with the calibrator.

 

[Sowelu]

I never liked the built in one anyway. Prefer to use Eizo or Spyder’s app as it comes with the calibrator.

Yes, I've always wanted to checkout Spyder and the physical calibrator. But I just think it's odd that the current Calibrator Assistant is MIA. I hope I am just missing something obvious.

 

[Wando64]

It is great how nobody is answering your question.
I don’t have my 14” MBP yet, nor I have installed Monterey, so I will not be able to help either I ‘m afraid.

 

[Wando64]

Does this help?

Use Fine-Tune Calibration in the Pro Display Calibrator

On your Mac, you can fine-tune the white point and luminance of supported displays.

support.apple.com

 

[Sowelu]

Does this help?

Use Fine-Tune Calibration in the Pro Display Calibrator

On your Mac, you can fine-tune the white point and luminance of supported displays.

support.apple.com

Thanks for the link - I did see this earlier when I googled, but the 'Fine Tune' option is grayed out. When I adjusted the Limit Luminance to Full Screen Capability, it just lets you adjust white point.

I am just trying to figure out how to create and or apply color profiles - as with every other Mac.

I really hope this isn't Apple saying that they know best and that their factory calibrations are all you need and disabled this feature on these new displays. This isn't an iPad - the user should be able to adjust colors on a $4000 MacBook!

 

[macphoto861]

Well, even WITH a hardware calibrator like the i1 or Spyder, how do you select the color profile that it creates?

 

[Sowelu]

Well, even WITH a hardware calibrator like the i1 or Spyder, how do you select the color profile that it creates?

Yes, very good point. I also see that there is the default 'Color LCD' color profile sitting in the typical file path, so the MacBook is using one. I just do not see an option to edit it, or create a new one as I've done with all my Macs for the last 20 years.

I am on the phone with Apple Support now - I am thinking this problem is going to be too new for them to troubleshoot. Even the built in Apple user guide (when you hit the '?' in the Display preference pane) is detailing the color profile process, even though the very buttons and windows its citing are not there.

Super frustrating. I do not know how anyone lives with these green skewing factory display profiles. I am eager to see this XDR display come alive.

 

[Sowelu]

I have a feeling Apple removed this option on the new MacBook Pros with XDR displays. Perhaps this is signature Apple arrogance where they believe that their factory calibrations are so perfect, no one would EVER need to have to deal with color profiles anymore. But, just like their iDevices, the display has a green hue out of the box (to my eyes). Nothing a simple color profile correction wouldn't fix. But, this is Apple these days... It's their way or the highway. I personally find it hard to believe they would block a 'pro' from calibrating their $4K+ 'pro' machine. But, I also wouldn't put it passed them.

I am still hoping that this option is buried somewhere else, but I have a feeling that Apple has replaced it with 'presets', which are not very intuitive, and also appear to be very limiting.

 

[praxis10]

Thought I was going crazy earlier today when I was going to calibrate the screen. I can confirm option still exists with MBP 13.3" M1 so it's a model-specific change due to their "XDR" display.

Just unpacked my 14" MBP today and similarly pissed that Apple decides I can't change the color temperature as I like. No I do not want to buy a calibrator just to make the screen look more white.

The "Presets" are wonky, if you create a custom preset, the brightness slider becomes locked. We are apparently locked into 500nits max on SDR. There are boxes you can change in the presets to change it, but it doesn't work.

I am so irritated that I will probably return the machine.

Plus ProMotion is choppy, nowhere near as smooth as my iPhone 13 Pro Max.

 

[white7561]

Thought I was going crazy earlier today when I was going to calibrate the screen. I can confirm option still exists with MBP 13.3" M1 so it's a model-specific change due to their "XDR" display.

Just unpacked my 14" MBP today and similarly pissed that Apple decides I can't change the color temperature as I like. No I do not want to buy a calibrator just to make the screen look more white.

The "Presets" are wonky, if you create a custom preset, the brightness slider becomes locked. We are apparently locked into 500nits max on SDR. There are boxes you can change in the presets to change it, but it doesn't work.

I am so irritated that I will probably return the machine.

Plus ProMotion is choppy, nowhere near as smooth as my iPhone 13 Pro Max.

Pro motion on Safari and other browsers is kinda broken right now according to threads. Definitely software issue idk from Apple's side or browser's side. It seems like if you want to test the ProMotion, apps like Messages works well . You can scroll there and it'll show.

 

[macphoto861]

Downloaded the latest version of the i1 profiler app, and it crashes on launch.

 

[Peter1967]

So I just received my 14" M1 Max MacBook Pro and the first thing I like to do when I get a new Mac is to calibrate the display (they all skew very green to my eyes with the default factory color profile). But, I do not see an option for this as I do on my other Macs. I am not sure if this is due to the new MacBooks, or Monterey, but there is no longer a 'Color Profile' button in Display Preferences. In fact, the entire display preference pane is completely different. I can't figure out how to bring up the Display Calibrator Assistant. Am I missing something?

View attachment 1879634

On your Mac, choose Apple menu

> System Preferences, then click Displays

.

• Click the Colour Profile pop-up menu, then choose Customise. A list of colour profiles for your display and other colour profiles appears.
• Click the Add button
  
  to open Display Calibrator Assistant.
  Display Calibrator Assistant walks you through adjusting your display, then creates a calibrated colour profile. The number of adjustments in the calibration process varies depending on the type of display.
  When the display profile is ready, it’s automatically assigned as your display’s colour profile.
• when you hold the option and shift and Click the Add button
  
  to open Display Calibrator Assistant you get the expert mode.
  

 

[Sowelu]

Downloaded the latest version of the i1 profiler app, and it crashes on launch.

Hmmm, interesting. It's as if the app noticed something was up with the current state of color profiles when it launched and crashed due to the changes Apple made for the new MacBook Pros.

I have a ticket open with Apple Support on this. Two supervisors said that they don't think Apple would remove the option to calibrate the displays on these 'pro' machines - including the built in calibrator. It's such a basic function and having an 'XDR' display wouldn't get in the way of that.

Since they do not have the new MacBooks in front of them, they connected to my MacBook so that I could show them the new Display Preferences window and how it's not possible to launch the Display Calibrator Assistant from there. We tried many things and looked for this option tucked away in the ColorSync utility and in Accessibility, but it's MIA.

Imagine telling designers, artists and photographers that their factory calibrations are as good as it's gonna get, and your trained eyes don't mean anything? I don't think even Apple could be that arrogant.

Senior Apple Support staff has elevated this to (macOS?) software engineers and the rep I am dealing with will be giving me updates as he gets them. I am expecting a call some time this evening - but I am not expecting a resolve any time soon.

 

[Sowelu]

Thought I was going crazy earlier today when I was going to calibrate the screen. I can confirm option still exists with MBP 13.3" M1 so it's a model-specific change due to their "XDR" display.

Just unpacked my 14" MBP today and similarly pissed that Apple decides I can't change the color temperature as I like. No I do not want to buy a calibrator just to make the screen look more white.

The "Presets" are wonky, if you create a custom preset, the brightness slider becomes locked. We are apparently locked into 500nits max on SDR. There are boxes you can change in the presets to change it, but it doesn't work.

I am so irritated that I will probably return the machine.

Plus ProMotion is choppy, nowhere near as smooth as my iPhone 13 Pro Max.

Yes, I told the Apple Support Rep that the new 'Preset' functionality is awful and buggy and not at all intuitive. Since I could not calibrate my display, I wanted to at least try to adjust the white point and wanted to give a preset edit a go. But, just as you mentioned, it rendered the brightness toggle useless and was stuck at full brightness. I tried several very basic presets based on the current built in ones.

 

[Sowelu]

On your Mac, choose Apple menu

> System Preferences, then click Displays

.

• Click the Colour Profile pop-up menu, then choose Customise. A list of colour profiles for your display and other colour profiles appears.
• Click the Add button
  
  to open Display Calibrator Assistant.
  Display Calibrator Assistant walks you through adjusting your display, then creates a calibrated colour profile. The number of adjustments in the calibration process varies depending on the type of display.
  When the display profile is ready, it’s automatically assigned as your display’s colour profile.
• when you hold the option and shift and Click the Add button
  
  to open Display Calibrator Assistant you get the expert mode.

Yes this is the normal way to calibrate using the built in Calibrator Assistant, this is what we are all looking to do, but Apple has removed this option (or hid it) in MacBook Pros with the XDR displays (or, that is the assumption as of now). See the screen shot in my first post - the buttons and options you've listed are not present in the Display Preferences.

 

[praxis10]

Yes this is the normal way to calibrate using the built in Calibrator Assistant, this is what we are all looking to do, but Apple has removed this option (or hid it) in MacBook Pros with the XDR displays (or, that is the assumption as of now). See the screen shot in my first post - the buttons and options you've listed are not present in the Display Preferences.

I had someone else tell me "Did I try to turn off TrueTone?"

Some people can't or won't read.

 

[marmiteturkey]

Can confirm that I'm having this issue on my new 14in Pro. There's seemingly no calibrate option, only the chance to select profiles. This is not true of the latest Monterey build on my 16in i9, so I'm assuming it's an XDR issue as you say. Will wait until a better lit room to see if that's an issue or not for me personally...

 

[Wando64]

Can you calibrate an external monitor?

 

[trizzo]

Thank you for making this thread. I am having the same issue with my 16in which arrived yesterday and am currently working with Apple Support. The person I spoke to was not aware of this issue. I hope enough people report how ridiculous this is to not be able to calibrate a "professional" display. I look forward to more of your updates.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

Just calibrated mine.

The system preferences are very changed in Monterey. You have to dig through the Profiles and choose custom at the end.

But I prefer Color Navigator.