Color Calibration in OS X
September 22nd, 2008
Many people don’t know that OS X has a built-in Color Calibration tool that works quite well. I’ve calibrated my Macbook Pro’s LED LCD screen and my Viewsonic monitor with it and it is a major improvement over Apple’s default color setting.
To calibrate your screen, open up System Preferences and go to the display pane. Click on the Color Tab and then click Calibrate.
In the Calibrate Assistant, select Expert Mode to get the best color.
Next you will need to move the slider’s until the Apple appears to be neutral compared to the background. Squinting and sitting far back can help. While the screencap below may not look to be remotely calibrated, that is how different LCD panels can be.
You will do a few of these curves, once you are done, it will ask you to select gamma you would like to use. I left it at the Mac Standard of 1.80, you can play around with it if you prefer more or less gamma.
Now you can change the white point. I left it using the native white point since it seemed to be the optimal setting.
Once you are done, it will show you all the technical details of the calibration.
Congratulations! You have just calibrated your monitor, and it probably looks a lot better than before. I suggest running through the calibration assistant a few times, renaming the profiles and then choosing which one you think looks the best, mess around with both sliders.
Also, if you are calibrating an external monitor, there is one other step at the beginning of the assistant which asks you to set the contrast and brightness on the monitor itself.
