Macbook air showing pale colors in Photoshop CS5

[Scorpiono]

Hello there,

I just bought a new Macbook air 13" and a thunderbolt display 27".
Photoshop CS5 works perfect on the thunderbolt display, however on the macbook air, the color "red" for instance is extremely pale compared to how it should be. (#FF0000).

Any tips? I've heard something about different type of displays but that didn't apply to me, I had the one that was suppose to work properly.
Any calibrations .icc files that you guys use?

Thank you,
Sergiu

 

[elliotn]

The Macbook Air screens have a very small colour gamut (smaller than sRGB). They are not capable of displaying highly saturated colours. There's nothing you can do about this. Use an external display for colour critical work.

 

[dsc888]

The MBA has a lower quality screen that is only able to display about 44-46% of the sRGB color space vs about 80% for the 27" Apple Thunderbolt Display. The MBA tends to clip the reds and purples early so those colors are much less vibrant even with hardware profiling of the screen.

If you chose to photo edit with the MBA, it's pretty essential that you use an external monitor that has a wider color gamut. I use my MBA for basic web surfing on the couch. I have a MacBook Pro 17 with the matte screen for mobile photo editing and the original Apple Cinema Display when I am home.

I hope this answers your question.

 

[thekev]

Any calibrations .icc files that you guys use?

Thank you,
Sergiu

Using someone else's profile for any laptop display is not really asking for good results here. Like the others said, I'd stick to the TB display for photoshop. If you purchase a colorimeter to calibrate that one, be careful what you buy. Many of the older ones (and there are still a couple on the market) do a horrendous job with anything that employs LED backlighting. The Spyder 4 seems to be popular. I've always used X-rite devices. I've just noticed that the spyders are popular.

 

[Scorpiono]

Thank you everybody.

 

[mouthster]

Hello there,

I just bought a new Macbook air 13" and a thunderbolt display 27".
Photoshop CS5 works perfect on the thunderbolt display, however on the macbook air, the color "red" for instance is extremely pale compared to how it should be. (#FF0000).

Any tips? I've heard something about different type of displays but that didn't apply to me, I had the one that was suppose to work properly.
Any calibrations .icc files that you guys use?

Thank you,
Sergiu

If you are designing for the screen make sure you're not proofing in CMYK mode.