Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How to fix 15" rMBP Samsung yellowish tint

P

pedrofan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 9, 2008
306
5
Since I bought my retina Macbook pro back in January I've gotten a lot of troubles with it. Two broken logic boards, two LG screens with image retention, GPU throttling issues.. etc, etc, etc..

But finally after a lot of time spent in the technical service, I have a Samsung screen and a good logic board... but wait a minute, it looks so yellowish!!

I think that the problem is that when they exchanged the LG screen for the Samsung screen, OSX remained calibrated for the original LG screen as they didn't change the hard drive.

I really don't want to go to a Genius bar again in my life, so I tried to make the trick with OSX's integrated Image Calibration tool.

Just go to  / System Preferences / Displays / Color / Calibrate / Click Expert Mode and continue / Go through all steps / Set gamma 2,2 / And at the end just set the white point to a level that a white safari's background looks white.

My white point is set to 8000 ºK, and now it looks just OK. Which is yours?


 
Last edited:
8000K is a very cool color temperature. you need to calibrate your screen to 2,2 gamma, 6500K,

Ask someone with calibration sensor.
Setting screen to 8000K is just wrong.

I have Samsung replaced from LG in my rMBP and it has some yellow patches etc even after calibration. I can't be bothered any more as I use external Eizo monitor for my photography and general stuff.

Originally retina is very yellow/red. After calibration it cools down with color temperature.
 
I don't know what is happening with this display, but, altough 6500k should be the default white point, it has it at 8000ºk for some reason (at least in my case). At 6500 º it looks definetly yellow. At 8000 it looks white and greys grey.
 
Last edited:
I updated the original post with pictures taken with iphone's camera with AE/AF lock, comparing both calibrations with color picker. At 8000ºk it has neutral white, at least for my screen.
 
Thanks for the information. The default values on my Samsung equipped rMBP are 2.2 for gamma, 6506K for the white. 8000k would turn my screen blueish color, I'm letting my colors default for now.
 
Last edited:
anarti said:
8000K is a very cool color temperature. you need to calibrate your screen to 2,2 gamma, 6500K,

Ask someone with calibration sensor.
Setting screen to 8000K is just wrong.

I have Samsung replaced from LG in my rMBP and it has some yellow patches etc even after calibration. I can't be bothered any more as I use external Eizo monitor for my photography and general stuff.

Originally retina is very yellow/red. After calibration it cools down with color temperature.
Click to expand...

I've used Eizo since the CG211, which was arguably one of the best. Using any profiling software like i1, you will find that the cMBP measured at native white point will come out around 8000K. They are very cold displays. The rMBP has been reported as closer to sRGB. Also take note that in the generic color lcd profile, it doesn't have all channels set to 2.2. Red is something like 2.4 and green is much lower. This is assuming the default profile and cMBP. You can look it up. Notebooks are very limited in what you can do to calibrate them compared to your Eizo. The Eizo can make corrections internally, so the profile is primarily used to describe the display to the OS and the actual output instructions are left linear. With a notebook it makes these changes via a per channel transformation matrix. As I said, it's more limited. Have you experienced decent results with D65 on the cMBP? I tried that as I prefer the sRGB look. It causes too much weird behavior.

For the OP, I would typically advise against the use of the calibration assistant in OSX. It does sort of the same thing as the other software in the way that it sets output instructions if I'm not mistaken, but it's very very quirky, and it has no way to update the gamut description. Also it's typical to run a display 30 minutes prior to calibrating and turn off any energy savers. I doubt most people do any of that when they mess with this stuff.
 
thekev said:
I've used Eizo since the CG211, which was arguably one of the best. Using any profiling software like i1, you will find that the cMBP measured at native white point will come out around 8000K. They are very cold displays. The rMBP has been reported as closer to sRGB. Also take note that in the generic color lcd profile, it doesn't have all channels set to 2.2. Red is something like 2.4 and green is much lower. This is assuming the default profile and cMBP. You can look it up. Notebooks are very limited in what you can do to calibrate them compared to your Eizo. The Eizo can make corrections internally, so the profile is primarily used to describe the display to the OS and the actual output instructions are left linear. With a notebook it makes these changes via a per channel transformation matrix. As I said, it's more limited. Have you experienced decent results with D65 on the cMBP? I tried that as I prefer the sRGB look. It causes too much weird behavior.

For the OP, I would typically advise against the use of the calibration assistant in OSX. It does sort of the same thing as the other software in the way that it sets output instructions if I'm not mistaken, but it's very very quirky, and it has no way to update the gamut description. Also it's typical to run a display 30 minutes prior to calibrating and turn off any energy savers. I doubt most people do any of that when they mess with this stuff.
Click to expand...
Is there any alternative software to calibrate the display?
 
pedrofan said:
Is there any alternative software to calibrate the display?
Click to expand...

You can use a colorimeter and whatever software comes with it for better results. These are comparative, and I don't know the camera settings used, but you shouldn't have to shift something that far to compensate. Some people have mentioned there being a bonding issue that has to settle. You may find more on that looking through the forums, but 90% of what you get out of that display is what comes from the factory. Calibration is used to stay as close as possible to a specific target over time. If you're working with photography or something like that, consistency is important. Displays are not always perfect, and they are unstable devices by their nature. A year from now they look different at the same settings, so for critical applications people tend to measure the values.
 
thekev - I've only calibrated rMBP so cannot tell.

With retina, I keep it at about D5500 to be on pair with my Eizo @ D6500 :)

Something is not right :)
 
rename the file with an .icc extension and put it in either
/Library/ColorSync/Profiles
or
~/Library/ColorSync/Profiles

then you can open Displays properties and uncheck "show profiles for this display only" and it should show up as 'Apple RMBP 2012.08'

I don't know how it was calibrated and I think each monitor is unique so not sure how much benefit this would give anyone but that's how you use the file
 
BL4zD said:
rename the file with an .icc extension and put it in either
/Library/ColorSync/Profiles
or
~/Library/ColorSync/Profiles

then you can open Displays properties and uncheck "show profiles for this display only" and it should show up as 'Apple RMBP 2012.08'

I don't know how it was calibrated and I think each monitor is unique so not sure how much benefit this would give anyone but that's how you use the file
Click to expand...

Nice!!! Just installed it and my Samsung display does look a little more white than the factory setting!! Will try it for a while to see how it performs in multiple colors and programs.

Thanks!!
 
Maybe you guys can clear this up for me -- I thought the yellow tint was just some substance/glue from newly put together LCD's. And over time, the yellow tint will go away when the substance fully cures/evaporates.

I forgot where I read this -- is this only with iPhones?
 
Here's mine.

Edit: To be clear, mine is the display on the right, the yellow one. The display on the left is an in-store unit.

IMG_2088.jpg
 
Last edited:
dastinger said:
Did you use the same profile as the OP? If not, could you share yours, please?
Click to expand...

I've tried all the ICC profiles I've seen people post around the Internet. None of them help. I bought a Spyder4Elite colour calibrator. That didn't help. It just makes the screen purplish-yellowish. You want the ICC profile I made with the Spyder4Elite? It won't help. I don't even use it. I just use the default colour profile and turn up the native white point up past 8000 K.

But anyway, here's an ICC file I made with the Spyder4Elite I bought for 200 bucks to try to solve the problem that Apple refuses to help me with. Put it in ~/Library/ColorSync/Profiles . It won't help though.

http://merchv.com/Apple/Spyder4-Apple-Color-LCD-1.icc

Edit: I hope you didn't think my display was the nice one on the left. That's a store unit. My display is the yellow one on the right.
 
Last edited:
Oh ok. Thought both were yours and you were making a comparison. I am using the profile that's available on this same thread and have been really happy with it since. I was just curious to test yours.. did it and, you're right, purple all around.
 
Moshe1010 said:
Calibrated Color profile for rMBP with Samsung display:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l96oz5mqr8jboxo/Apple_RMBP_Samsung
Click to expand...
Your profile has just one small glitch: because it doesn't contain the 'mmod' tag specifying that this profile is Apple Display specific, Color Preference pane does hide this profile if you check the Show profiles for this display only checkbox.
I managed to copy the tag from Apple provided default profile (Color LCD) using the sips command-line tool:
First export the tag from Apple's profile (you may need to identify it's filename beforehand!)
Code: 
sips -X mmod /Users/priit/tag.bin /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays/Color\ LCD-F7E52F93-B4AC-312E-87ED-39669F5C08B8.icc
Second add the tag from exported file to our profile
Code: 
sips --loadTag mmod /Users/priit/tag.bin /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays/Apple_RMBP_Samsung.icc
That's it!

PS After I calibrated my display with a colorimeter, it appeared that the Apple_RMBP_Samsung.icc is slightly blue for my display.
 
Last edited:
priitv8 said:
Your profile has just one small glitch: because it doesn't contain the 'mmod' tag specifying that this profile is Apple Display specific, Color Preference pane does hide this profile if you check the Show profiles for this display only checkbox.
I managed to copy the tag from Apple provided default profile (Color LCD) using the sips command-line tool:
First export the tag from Apple's profile (you may need to identify it's filename beforehand!)
Code: 
sips -X mmod /Users/priit/tag.bin /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays/Color\ LCD-F7E52F93-B4AC-312E-87ED-39669F5C08B8.icc
Second add the tag from exported file to our profile
Code: 
sips --loadTag mmod /Users/priit/tag.bin /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays/Apple_RMBP_Samsung.icc
That's it!

PS After I calibrated my display with a colorimeter, it appeared that the Apple_RMBP_Samsung.icc is slightly blue for my display.
Click to expand...
Could you, please, share the color profile? The one after you calibrated.
 
Thanks a lot mate.. does not work for mine unfortunately.. it becomes blue-ish and really faded.
 
dastinger said:
does not work for mine unfortunately.. it becomes blue-ish and really faded.
Click to expand...
That's the whole idea of screen calibration ;)
To compensate the specific imperfections of your particular screen.
My screen must have warmer hue than yours, from the factory then.
PS the D65 whitepoint means it's set for 6500K.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back