Color profiles for MacBook Air display

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Level 3

795 points

Color profiles for MacBook Air display

I've profiled the MBA display using the x-rite color display2 hardware and the coloreyes pro software. Included in the zip are six profiles:

MBA D65 18.icc (6500K white point, 1.8 gamma)
MBA D65 22.icc (6500K white point, 2.2 gamma)
MBA D65 L.icc (6500K white point, L* gamma)
MBA Native 18.icc (Native white point, 1.8 gamma)
MBA Native 22.icc (Native white point, 2.2 gamma)
MBA Native .icc (Native white point, L* gamma)

Note L* is a gamma used by the coloreyes software that tries to retain the darker colors shown by the 1.8 gamma and the brighter colors shown by the 2.2 gamma. It works well at that but is overall less contrasty than the other gamma points.

My favorite and the one I'm using is the D65 1.8 gamma. But there should be something here for everyone. Note that there really isn't one right answer since what white point you use and gamma depends on your objective and the hardware profiled.

You can find the file at this link:

http://caslis.com/macprofiles/MBAProfiles.zip

MBP 15" 2.5GHz 4GB, 250GB HD, Mac OS X (10.5.2), MBA 1.8 64GB SSD; iPhone

Posted on Mar 11, 2008 12:08 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 26, 2008 8:59 PM in response to Brian Caslis

First, thanks for your efforts!
Second, do you know the color depth (#bits) for the MBA display? I see that the "millions" versus "thousands" of colors suit against apple for dithering on MacBooks (because of 6-bit depth) was settled quietly last year. Terms weren't announced but articles have suggested Apples language was changed in Leopard running on MacBooks.
Thanks again.

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Answer 2

Mar 27, 2008 7:15 AM in response to Brian Caslis

Have you had a chance to do any D50 and 5000K profiles yet? Anything print related needs that setup...

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Answer 3

Brian Caslis Author

Level 3

795 points

Mar 27, 2008 11:53 AM in response to CorwinRathe

Actually print related things don't require a D50 profile, most photographers I know use the D65 profile for this.

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Answer 4

Brian Caslis Author

Level 3

795 points

Mar 27, 2008 12:02 PM in response to dmccollam

dmccollam wrote:
First, thanks for your efforts!
Second, do you know the color depth (#bits) for the MBA display? I see that the "millions" versus "thousands" of colors suit against apple for dithering on MacBooks (because of 6-bit depth) was settled quietly last year. Terms weren't announced but articles have suggested Apples language was changed in Leopard running on MacBooks.
Thanks again.

I think the MBA display is like other notebooks, it's 6 bits each channel (18 bits total) so it displays 256K colors without dithering. But this still shows as millions in the software. It's only really noticable on a mostly solid color with subtle gradations in it.

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