Tag: apple

Optimally Calibaring Apple Liquid Retina XDR Displays for Photography

Posted in Workshops and ExpeditionsLeave a comment

Those who know me know I always advocate for the highest quality photographic display you can afford. It should be the first purchase you make after a digital camera. A wide-gamut, high-quality, calibrated photographic monitor is the difference between optimally processing your RAW files and standing blindfolded, throwing darts at a board. But what do you do while in the field on a laptop? Or, how do you otherwise make do if you have an Apple Liquid Retina XDR display and have neither the budget nor space for an external display? I should footnote this: If you can afford an Apple Liquid Retina XDR display, you have no excuse not to own a significantly better photographic display such as those from BenQ (Read our Recent review on the new BenQ 4K display).

Jeremy Daalder over at Image Science recently published the best piece I have read to date on optimally calibrating an Apple Liquid Retina XDR Display. If you own an Apple laptop with a Liquid Retina XDR display or one of Apple’s hugely over-priced external displays then you owe it to yourself to take five minutes out of your day, and read his article. This is the first piece I have read on the internet that accurately documents the process for a successful calibration of these displays.

INTRODUCTION

Apple’s newest XDR Liquid Retina displays, such as is seen inside the new 14” and 16” MacBook Pro (and the XDR Pro Display) are a completely different ball game when it comes to calibration. The new XDR Liquid Retina displays (hereafter referred to as XDR displays) are different than their predecessors in that they employ a full array local dimming miniLED backlight. The issues at play here are essentially two-fold. Because of Apple’s decision to implement:

  1. A miniLED backlight (which older calibrators just weren’t designed to calibrate), and
  2. the forced usage of Reference Modes (both their clunky implementation of them and specifically the inability to NOT use them)…

…both the required calibration technologies and the process for calibrating them is completely different to ALL older Apple displays (including all older external displays, any iMacs, any Intel-based Laptops, any Macbook Air’s, and even the newer Apple Silicon based 13” and 15” MacBook Pros).

READ ON HERE