Display adjustment on MacBook Pro

[glitch]

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!

 

[glitch]

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.

 

[glitch]

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.

How are you testing profiles for accuracy?

With a LaCie Blue Eye Pro v4.

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.

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.

Rant over.

Don't stop on my account!

 

[glitch]

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.