Color Calibration Profile changes when Mac resumes from Screen Saver

Me too! I spent the whole weekend colour-correcting photographs in Lightroom only to discover on Sunday night (late) that at some point the calibration had shifted and that I had to start all over again.
It has happened to me twice already this evening: I'm behind in my work and very unhappy. I though Macs were supposed to be stable and well adapted to graphics people like me. This problem is stopping me being able to work.

This is an old know problem, starting back in Tiger, that Apple either hasn't been able to find a solution for, or haven't considered it dire enough to fix. It's been reported many times, but still no fix. Just the workaround of opening the System Preferences and selecting your monitor profile again.

Folks, I have been using Macbooks with external monitors for some years - with great difficulty. It is common for the computer to wake up from sleep and apply the laptop profile to the external screen. So I am in the habit of going to the monitor pref EVERY TIME I sit down to work and reset the external to the real profile.

ALSO, laptops are normally set to adjust to ambient conditions, which will distort your view constantly. Make SURE your pref is set not to do this.

These issues have caused me to spend thousands of dollars on color management consultants, and have been SO aggravating they have made me consider using PCs.

I just finished a two-hour session with a color management consultant. My conclusion is that you CAN NOT reliably use a Mac laptop with an external monitor for quality color. It might be the graphics card or the software, but there are color matching problems that can't be solved.

I am giving up on laptop color and buying a tower machine for all critical color work.

I have the same problem, for over a year HEY APPLE, come on, already, this is really annoying. it happens EVERY time my monitor goes to sleep.

Its something they could fix in 5 minutes, so do it already Steve.

Here is a copy of a mail I sent to Apple (on the 20th of September) about this issue. No reply yet.


Question #1:

I have a Macbook Pro connected to an Apple Cinema Display.

Both monitors have been calibrated with a Spyder 3 Pro device from Datacolor.

The custom profiles have been set as defaults for each monitor.

Regularly the computer "loses" these profiles, reverting to the manufacturer's defaults. The only way to resolve the problem is to open System Preferences > Monitors . The calibration then reverts to the correct custom profiles.

This is a MAJOR inconvenience. I'm a professional photographer / video maker and I need to know that my monitors are calibrated correctly and that this calibration is STABLE. I lost a whole weekend's work recently because the profile had changed while I was working and all my color corrections were wrong. My client was not pleased that I couldn't respect my delivery date and I was not pleased that this was due to a problem with my Apple computer.

I believe I am not the only person to have this problem ( I have found similar cases on the web but no remedies). Please could you tell me if there is a solution or if I have to think about reverting to a PC for my next purchase?

Question #2:

Could you tell me what gamma my monitor needs to be set to to work with Final Cut Pro 7 and Snow Leopard?

Under Leopard I had to switch to a 1.8 gamma profile when working with Final Cut Pro 6 but I don't know if this has changed now that Snow Leopard uses a default gamma of 2.2.

I'm having a similar problem with my 2009 Intel Mac Mini running Snow Leopard.

I have 2 identical Dell 22" Monitors - one running from the Mini DVI port and one from the Mini Display port. After waking the screens from screen saver/sleep - the MiniDVI connected monitor is very bright and washed out. I have to go into the Display settings to correct it.

This is only occuring since I added the 2nd monitor via the MiniDisplay port and upgraded to Snow Leopard.

I am having the same problem. Since upgrading to Snow Leopard, my color calibration is incorrect at least some of the time after waking from sleep. I don't believe I've noticed this unless my late '08 unibody MBP is plugged into an external display.

I have had this problem for years - since my Mac Core Duo (not core2). As mentioned before it seems to only occur when an external monitor is connected.

My quick workaround it to simply force the screensaver to kick in again, then wake the system again. Usually this fixes the problem on the first go, but once in a while it needs to be done a couple of times. Much easier the going into any SysPrefs.

I was hoping Snow Leopard would resolve this. Thanks Apple 😝

I agree the quick workaround is to kick in the screensaver a second time. You can change your security settings to give you the "1 minute" grace period before your password is needed. (if that's how you work, I do!)

The better workaround is for apple to fix it.

Another "me too here". My unibody 13" Macbook (with Acer X233H display) does this nearly every time it returns from the screen saver.

I don't have any firm evidence to back this up, but it feels like the problem is more frequent since the Snow Leopard upgrade than before -- it's now rare that I don't have to reset it when I wake the machine from sleep or the screen saver.

It's not consistent either -- it's sometimes just the internal screen, just the external or sometimes both.

Very un-Apple 😟

I have this problem on anything that changes the colour profile. This means the computer does not change the profile back after something has finished. So if you force quit a game the colour is not going to change back to normal. Sometimes screen savers change the colour profile. When you move your mouse sometimes it would not change back the colour. Coming back from sleep also has this error.

I am thinking this problem exist if you have a additional monitor connected or you have changed the colour profile.

Has someone invented a apple script to fix this when it happens in one click?

after 10 mins I invented an apple script that you can use until the error is fixed

tell application "System Preferences"
activate
reveal anchor "displaysColorTab" of pane "com.apple.preference.displays"
quit
end tell

and then save the script as an application and read only it and when you have this error again, open that saved application via spotlight!

You should be able to build a new Service in Automator that runs Someone12345's AppleScript; you could associate this with a keyboard shortcut of your choice to make this annoyance a little bit easier to bear.

Another thread here http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2130615&start=0&tstart=50