Calibrating MacBook Air display for color accuracy

Yesterday, I decided to get a few photos printed at my local camera store. I shot everything in RAW, and had the ones I chose to print touch up in Lightroom, mostly to brighten them up and add some vignetting.

The results all looked good on my MacBook Air's display; however, when I had them printed, they looked a bit off — saturation was down, vignetting was not as dark and they were a bit overexposed.

The guys at the shop told me that it was probably due to my MacBook Air's display not being calibrated, and that anything displayed on my screen will look better than in real life due to the color profile.

Could any Mac users out there advise me on the best color profile or calibration method for calibrating my display to ensure the best color accuracy to a real life print?

Thank you very much,
CYF
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Photos are like memories that you give to a friend.

the Mac has a built-in software (and your eyes) based kinda-calibration which is accessed from the System Preferences -> Display -> Color -> Calibrate

But ultimately, the better/best way is via a hardware 'puck' such as the i1Display Pro (about $220+) (there are cheaper units but they have compromises in performance and speed and capabilities.

I rather like my x-rite i1 Display Pro, but others report great satisfaction with the Spyder product.

Understand that your images will still look better on screen than when printed.

Knoxis said:

Could any Mac users out there advise me on the best color profile or calibration method for calibrating my display to ensure the best color accuracy to a real life print?

Click to expand...

Start by reading this intro on the subject:


Move on to this next:


Look into the X-rite i1Display-Pro as a hardware/software solution.

You should always take a test image, with color chart and greyscale, to any new lab and have them run you a test print and see what the final will look like. Any reputable lab should do this for free or a very minimal fee. That way you can see what you need to adjust.

Some labs will have their own calibration .icc file that they can give you that should help.

And after doing what digidog suggested, you might want to look into soft-proofing.

I noticed my macbook pro display had a slight black crush (clipping of shadow detail) compared to post-calibration profile.

Hi all,

Thanks for your input on my question. I will definitely look into them.

CYF

C.A.S. said:

You should always take a test image, with color chart and greyscale, to any new lab and have them run you a test print and see what the final will look like.

Click to expand...

Yup, and here are two for anyone that needs such color reference images:


This is a wide gamut test file using many actual images rendered from raw into ProPhoto RGB and some very good synthetic 'images' built in Lab: