Screen Color Display

[jparker402]

I currently have an early 2015 MacBook Air, and have been following reviews on the new MacBook Air 2020 and expectations a 13/14 MacBook Pro. Today on the boards I discovered P3 and sRGB mentioned (of which I am blissfully ignorant). Of course, being in quarantine, I leapt right in! And now I am confused!

Discovered I can go to my MacBook Air display settings and do a bunch of changes. But I honestly don't know what I am doing, and decided to stop experimenting before I messed something up big time! The first reasonable question I should ask is "why would I want to change what is already there?". Second reasonable question is "is there a simple to understand tutorial somewhere on what these different settings do?". Plus, a corollary, "why are the settings where they are in the first place?".

 

[hobowankenobi]

Are you talking about screen color calibration?

All monitors are calibrated for color, along with everything that reproduces color, like color printers.

You can do it manually as described here, or you can use pre-existing calibrations (like the ones you mentioned).

Typically Apple has a premade calibration for each model screen that is reasonably good, and most folks don't need to adjust.

Serious color accuracy can be attained with a device like this to accurately test and record color production and generate a custom color profile for photographers and graphics professionals. 97% of users don't have the need.

If you are bored, consider how designers need to check to see if colorblind folks can use their designs. Tools like this let them adjust their monitors to simulate colorblindness.

 

[jparker402]

Are you talking about screen color calibration?

All monitors are calibrated for color, along with everything that reproduces color, like color printers.

You can do it manually as described here, or you can use pre-existing calibrations (like the ones you mentioned).

Typically Apple has a premade calibration for each model screen that is reasonably good, and most folks don't need to adjust.

Serious color accuracy can be attained with a device like this to accurately test and record color production and generate a custom color profile for photographers and graphics professionals. 97% of users don't have the need.

If you are bored, consider how designers need to check to see if colorblind folks can use their designs. Tools like this let them adjust their monitors to simulate colorblindness.

Wow! Thank you so very much! Yes, was asking about screen color calibration. You precisely answered every question I had! And from your answers I see that I have no need to do any adjusting for I am not a photographer or graphics person. I would probably mess things up! Interesting that people have thought to simulate colorblindness.

 

[hobowankenobi]

The good news is, you can create a new color profile (or as many as you want), and always switch back to the default profile. As long as you don't delete the original, which won't happen using the ColorSync tool.

If you were wondering, the profiles (for both monitors and printers, or any other devices) live here:

Library/ColorSync/Profiles/

New profile files get added:

• Installing drivers for things with profiles (printers)
• Creating new profiles with the ColorSync app
• Downloading profiles for specific printing paper (primarily for high-quality photo printing) like from Canson Paper
• Using a calibration device as mentioned above to create custom monitor or printer profiles

One place you might actually use the ColorSync tool is if you use an external monitor and found a substantial difference in colors compared to the internal screen. You could try to manually tweak settings with the monitor menus...or you could create a new profile.