# new iMac color profile question



## Tom75 (Jan 6, 2013)

Hi all,

I put this question here because it was the best place I found to ask it.

I got recently my new 27 " imac and I am still setting up everything there etc. In the display preferences of the imac is an option to choose a color profile (I guess this is the same on mac books too) and originally this is set to a profile called iMac.

I do not have any hardware calibration device etc so now my question is which color profile I should? there is also a ProPhoto RGB profile and since I am using pro photo RGB in LR and photoshop I would guess this is the best option?

How are you handling color profile and calibration issues?

Thanks and regards,
tom


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## clee01l (Jan 6, 2013)

In OSX System preferences, there is a Display applet. One of the tabs listed on the Display is Color.  You have... found this panel already. On the right side is a button labeled {Calibrate...}. Pressing it will take you through a series of visual tests. When you complete the tests, your monitor will be adjusted to a new calibration which you can name and this calibration will appear  as a choice on the color profile list.  

If you should purchase a Color Calibration tool, it too will perform a series of tests and instead of your eye measuring the light coming from the monitor, the Color Calibration tool will determine how to adjust the monitor so a true red is sent to the screen when the monitor is asked to display a true red and the same for every other color available. The results of the Calibration tool tests will be stored in a unique color profile and this file will be used by OSX to display true colors on your monitor.


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## Tom75 (Jan 6, 2013)

Thanks, have done the calibration and I cannot make out any difference to the default imac profile however the ProPhoto RGB profile is significantly darker.

I just thought it might be good to choose ProPhoto RGB because that is also what I am using in LR and Photoshop.

Regards,
Tom


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## clee01l (Jan 6, 2013)

The ProPhoto profile is not hardware specific  You need to use a profile that renders colors that appear true to your eye. Calibration matches a profile to your device. The iMac profile that ships with OSX is close for all Mac monitors but not specific to a particular screen. Also as the hardware ages, the colors and most importantly brightness levels drop officer time. This is why it is a good idea to re calibrate periodically.


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## Tom75 (Jan 6, 2013)

Thanks for the information.

Regards,
Tom


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## HowardF (May 29, 2013)

Major problem in this discussion!  Missing the important distinction between COLOR SPACE and DISPLAY PROFILE.

*Color spaces* (sRGB, AdobeRGB, PRoPhotoRGB) and *monitor/display profiles* (e.g. iMac profile) are different.  They are as different as apples and tomatoes.  One is a fruit, and the other is, well, also a fruit, but a very different fruit.  The color space describes the potential range of colors in the file, and is fixed, while the monitor profile varies depending on the hardware characteristics of a particular monitor.  It tells the computer how to display the file on your monitor, just as a printer profile tells the computer how to adjust the output to print accurately on a particular printer.  If you send your file to someone else, they will use THEIR display profile to view your ProPhoto file, and theoretically see something very similar to what you see.  So, using an iMac monitor profile as a color space is a problem.  So is using ProPhoto as a display profile.  Unfortunately, they are all called "profiles" which confuses the issue; software should not allow a monitor profile to be embedded in a file as a color space.

So, you can use ProPhoto as the file's Color Space, and use the stock iMac display profile (or a more accurate custom display profile) to accurately view the ProPhoto-embedded picture.

BTW if you send your photo to a lab to be printed on a Noritsu or Fuji Frontier or Agfa D-Lab, be aware that they are not colorspace-aware; they think everything is sRGB and print accordingly.  Files delivered in other spaces will not print right.  Be sure to Convert to sRGB (not Assign Profile).


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## Victoria Bampton (May 31, 2013)

Hi Howard, welcome to the forum!  Thanks for clarifying that!


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## HowardF (Jun 1, 2013)

Thanks for your welcome note, Victoria, and for hosting this discussion.  

I stumbled upon this forum while researching an answer for a lab owner colleague who was lamenting the difficulties experienced when a client brought in a number of photos they had manipulated, and which had the iMac profile embedded as the color space. That client was very unhappy with the resulting prints.  When I read this thread I feared that Tom75 was headed for a similar problem! 

Another lab owner lambasted the lab equipment manufacturers for their lack of implementation of a better color-management system capable of recognizing and honoring embedded profiles. The industry still has a long way to go, and for now there is a burden on the individual customer to be knowledgeable about these issues.  Especially the users who know just enough to get into trouble.  Those blessed with a complete ignorance of these issues have an advantage:  They shoot their photos at factory defaults (e.g. sRGB), their pictures good enough on-screen, and the few photos they send for printing are corrected at the lab in sRGB and are generally satisfactory.

Those who follow forums such as this one and who learn of different workflows, or about ProPhoto RGB, MelissaRGB, and the like, and who are doing their own image manipulations now have the responsibility to make sure they fully understand color management from monitor calibration to printer profiling.  Sadly, even the equipment manufacturers and some lab operators are not fully up to speed on this stuff!

So again, thanks for this forum and providing a place where photographers can learn not only the how-to's but also the limitations of the system and what to watch out for!


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## Victoria Bampton (Jun 1, 2013)

Yep, very well said.  It was fascinating having conversations with our local lab when they went digital a few years back - they didn't even know how to calibrate their monitors, let alone the difference between assign and converting profiles.  Scary!  So you're right, the whole industry still has a way to go.


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## LouieSherwin (Jun 2, 2013)

Hi Howard, 

Nice description of the difference a color space and a color profile.



HowardF said:


> Major problem in this discussion!  Missing the important distinction between COLOR SPACE and DISPLAY PROFILE.
> BTW if you send your photo to a lab to be printed on a Noritsu or Fuji Frontier or Agfa D-Lab, be aware that they are not colorspace-aware; they think everything is sRGB and print accordingly.  Files delivered in other spaces will not print right.  Be sure to Convert to sRGB (not Assign Profile).



Practically speaking this is good advice. Since you used Photoshop terms and this is primarily a Lightroom user audience I would like to add that in Lightroom you would want to export your image and select the sRGB color space in the export dialog. 

Technically speaking every output device, including the ones mentioned above, have their own output profile which is similar to but different from a display profile. With the explosion of digital cameras almost all of which  produce images in the sRGB color space, the photo printer manufactures by default have set all of their machines to accept images in the sRGB color space. Since sRGB is a color space and not a color profile as you correctly described, the printer will convert each image to its unique profile as part of the printing process much the same way as we do in Lightroom (or Photoshop) when we assign a print profile in the Print module. In this way the billions of digital snapshots sent to all the photo labs and printing kiosks around the world come out looking pretty much the same no mater which device is used to create the actual print. When you think about it this is a pretty amazing accomplishment considering the mind numbing complexity of color management theory and practice.

If you are interested more than average results out of a printing lab, some but not all these labs also offer custom output profiles for some or even all of their printers. Adorama, Mpix and believe it or not most Costco photo labs offer this option. To take advantage if this you need download the custom profile from the lab site and follow their instructions for how to use it. These instructions vary but commonly this means that you need to convert your image to their custom printer profile and send the resulting file to the lab with special instructions so that it is not run through the normal process. I have tried this with my local Costco and have been able to achieve noticeable improvements. You may not want to take the time to do this for family snaps but it can be worth while when making enlargements for display.

-louie


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## HowardF (Jun 3, 2013)

Thanks, Louis, for your helpful addition and insight.  

My use of the Photoshop Convert To... procedure was intended as a general reminder that, as a final step, a user makes sure that the files they deliver to a lab are in an appropriate space, in case they, like me, export in a larger-gamut space for multi-purposed files, for P'Shop tweaking.  All depends on one's workflow choices; no right or wrong here!

 And my main point was to make sure that the OP and others don't make the mistake that the original conversation was leading to (colorspace profiles used as display profiles)!


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## LouieSherwin (Jun 3, 2013)

Yes I agree completely. Color management is one of the most challenging aspects dealing with the digital darkroom. So sorting out these basics is helpful.

-louie


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