Display adjustment on MacBook Pro

glitch · 15 Jul 2009 at 19:14

Being a complete newbie to the world of Mac I'm not sure if there's an obvious solution to this question staring me in the face, but I'll ask anyway. I'm running some profile tests on the display to check its accuracy against the various profiles but I need some more flexibility in my adjustments.

So are there any adjustments that can be made to the MacBook Pro display other than brightness? Ideally I'm looking for some control over contrast, gamma, RGB, etc etc.

I've had a little hunt around but so far I've drawn a blank, although that's likely to be more down to not knowing what to look for!

Cybertronic · 15 Jul 2009 at 21:42

Is the Calibrate feature in the Displays preference pane under the Color tab what you're after?

glitch · 18 Jul 2009 at 15:18

Unfortunately not. It does allow for a certain degree of adjustment but only when applied with the resultant profile. When I'm calibrating the display and testing profiles for accuracy I need to be able to make adjustments 'on the fly' as it were.

natedog · 20 Jul 2009 at 09:21

give these a try, they work on my MBP

To decrease your screen contrast
Cmd-Option-Ctrl -,

To increase your screen contrast
Cmd-Option-Ctrl - .

chronicfathead · 21 Jul 2009 at 21:20

How are you testing profiles for accuracy?

It sounds like you could do with a pantone huey (?) or a Spyder 2 to calibrate the display professionally. I think the Spyder will also calibrate the output of a printer, so everything should look similar.

Colour and calibration is very subjective. Your idea of an accurate profile is based on your understanding of colour and perception of colour.

I often have issues replacing colour inkjet printers with colour laser (copiers) printers. Inkjest tend to make colours more Disney like, where as lasers tend to produce more lifelike colours.

It also depends on the quality of screen and printer. A £1000 screen will have a bigger gamut (range) of displayable colours, hence the price difference. A £50,000 colour laser printer will produce better prints than a £2000 printer.

It all comes down to what you want to achieve, and how much cash you have.

Generally people want to spend the least, and get the best.

Rant over.

glitch · 21 Jul 2009 at 21:26

natedog said:
give these a try, they work on my MBP

Very handy tip, thanks for that. I also found the same controls under System Preferences > Universal Access > Seeing.

chronicfathead said:
How are you testing profiles for accuracy?

With a LaCie Blue Eye Pro v4.

chronicfathead said:
It sounds like you could do with a pantone huey (?) or a Spyder 2 to calibrate the display professionally. I think the Spyder will also calibrate the output of a printer, so everything should look similar.

The Huey is okay-ish but the Pro is so much better. Wouldn't touch the Spyder range with a bargepole though.

chronicfathead said:
Generally people want to spend the least, and get the best.

Fortunately I want the best and I'm happy to spend to achieve it.

chronicfathead said:
Rant over.

Don't stop on my account!

glitch · 21 Jul 2009 at 22:02

So I finally got around to calibrating, profiling and testing the display on the MBP 17". This was a quick first-time effort and I know, from past experience, that I can get the accuracy even more, er, accurate. But it'll do for now and it's nice to know the screen is actually all it's cracked up to be.

Profiling my 24" TFT was a breeze and gave me the following results:

[Target] Gamma: 2.2 | Kelvin: 6500 | cm/m2: 140

[Actual] Gamma: 2.2 | Kelvin: 6500 | cm/m2: 140

However the MBP was a slightly different prospect. Lacking the range of adjustment I'm used to I had to hope for the best. Brightness and contrast were set to minimum for the profiling and adjusted accordingly - in the end contrast remained at its default value and brightness was set to three steps from maximum.

This is the calibration test against the Colour LCD profile that ships with the Mac:

[Target] Gamma: 2.0 | Kelvin: 6500 | cm/m2: 140

[Actual] Gamma: 1.9 | Kelvin: 6693 | cm/m2: 172

As you'll see, not very good. In fact I'd go so far as to say that the default 'Colour LCD' profile is way off and not even close to acceptable. Admittedly I'd assume that anyone with a need for colour accuracy would own a calibration tool of some sort, but that's not really the point, is it?

After running it through the Blue Eye Pro calibration software, this is what I managed to get out of it after one evening's work:

[Target] Gamma: 2.2 | Kelvin: 6500 | cm/m2: 140

[Actual] Gamma: 2.2 | Kelvin: 6496 | cm/m2: 140

All-in-all quite impressive stuff and the display is close enough to that of my usual screen that I can happily take the MBP to a client's premises safe in the knowledge that I'll be seeing almost exactly the same image as I would at home.

chronicfathead · 21 Jul 2009 at 22:09

I used to use a Gretag Macbeth Eye-One at work to calibrate copiers sometimes. It cost over £1000, and could bring the machines more inline with what should be produced. We no longer sell machines with the Fiery rips, so I haven't done it for years.

I used to have arguments with design studio customers, who had bought £5000 copiers with a Fiery RIP, and complained that the output wasn't the same as on their screen. I would then point out that the two screens they had up, were not calibrated and were both displaying different colours.

Of cause it was our fault.

Had one customer who had different profiles set for different Adobe apps, and nobody in the design studio was using the same RGB standard (euroscale?). I understand Adobe Bridge helps with keeping everything the same.

I used to think my old HP laptop screen was good, till I got my Macbook Pro.

Colour, i hate the stuff.