Correct display calibration of late 2013 27- in Imac to run Photoshop 2021

I set my display color profile to the sRGB IE61966-2.1 profile.

Sorry, but that's a very poor choice. sRGB, just like nearly all of the other profiles on the system, are generic color spaces that have - literally - nothing at all to do with the color response of the monitor. All you're doing is forcing the much larger color gamut of your monitor into a tiny color space. If calibrated and profiled properly, 255,0,0 would not look like the same red your monitor would produce as sRGB. The latter would be much duller. Which is correct since sRGB is a smaller, less saturated color space.

No, there's nothing wrong with using Adobe RGB for print. It's also an RGB profile, not CMYK. And by "for print", I mean if Adobe RGB is what you're using as your working RGB color space in Photoshop or other image editing app. It should never, ever be used as a printer profile since it isn't one.

I'm not sure what you're doing to get anything off your printer that looks anything like your monitor, but it has to be sheer luck you're even close.

A correct monitor setup is using the profile of a properly calibrated and profiled monitor per one of the devices mentioned above by myself and dialabrain. The built in Calibrate function in the OS is truly, 100% useless. It's purely a guess by the system what you're doing. With a monitor profiling device, the OS is directly reading the color output of the monitor, and building a mathematical representation of it in your completed profile. In other words, the OS knows exactly what the color response of your monitor is. No guessing or interpretation involved.

Next, pick whatever color space you want as your working RGB color in Photoshop. I use my monitor profile. It's larger than Adobe RGB, so I wouldn't want to use that. Why clip color you could be using? I could use something larger, like WideGamut RGB, but what would be the point of that? Then it would be possible to adjust color (more saturated in particular) on an image beyond what your monitor can even display.

Lastly, use an actual printer profile for the printer. These would be the ones the manufacturer supplies (if they do) for the model printer you're using. And when they say luster paper, using Epson as an example, they mean Epson luster paper. Not Canon, Brother or anything else. Printer profiles are very printer/ink and paper specific. Because they aren't made to the same specifications, if you take three different types of luster paper and print the same image with no change in the settings on each type, you will get three entirely different results.

Photoshop and the OS do this when you print. Photoshop sends the image out in whatever color space you're using as your working RGB space. ColorSync converts that to the monitor profile, as the entire idea is to try and produce a print that's as close to the monitor as possible. Lastly that color is converted to the printer profile's color space and is finally passed on to the printer for output.

The only correct monitor profile is one you create with the appropriate software/hardware solutions out there. All but one supplied with the OS have nothing to do with your monitor. And the supplied monitor profile was only somewhat good when the iMac was new. After that, color drifting makes the profile inaccurate.

And let's mention that the default 6500K color is one of the worst defaults ever dropped on the computing world. Natural daylight only looks that blue in the winter, before the sun breaks the horizon.

There's a reason professional print shops use D50 color throughout the entire shop for color viewing. That's the closest setting to neutral gray you can get.

Get a good colorimeter and properly calibrate and profile your monitor to D50. It's at the same time, one of the least expensive, and most important pieces of color management equipment you should own.

Bear in mind, this will only serve to properly calibrate and profile YOUR monitor. You can't do anything about the literally millions of monitors out there that color is far out of whack on they won't see color anything like you will. All you can do is make sure your end is accurate.

Personally I use the Datacolor Spyder X calibrator.

https://www.datacolor.com/spyder/

It's up to you, but I've had both. While the Spyder hardware is just as good as X-Rite's, I've always found the results from X-Rite's software to be more accurate. That based on having a GraphicLite D50 color viewing booth next to my computer. I have the desktop set to a medium light gray, at roughly the same luminance as the viewing booth. The X-Rite software produces a truer D50 gray to match the viewing booth than the Spyder software. BUT! It's also been years since I last used a Spyder, and it's very likely the software has improved since then.

The free color checker chart is nice as they're actually kind of expensive on their own. You can use it to visually verify the color accuracy of the profile you create with it. Though you do need a D50 light source to illuminate the chart.

What you do after calibrating and profiling the monitor is create a new file in Photoshop in the Lab color space. Printed on the back of chart are the Lab values for each color patch. Create your file in Photoshop to have the same colors in the same order. Fill each square with the Lab values on the chart.

Then, with the actual chart under a neutral light source, compare how closely your chart in Photoshop matches it. Don't expect perfect. You're comparing illuminated color (the monitor) to a reflective source (the target). But they should be pretty close.

I set my display color profile to the sRGB IE61966-2.1 profile. It's very close to the camera profile of my iPhone and my other digital cameras.

I also make sure my photos have the same profile or one very, very similar to it. The profile to avoid, both in image files and display is the Adobe RGB (1968). Photos with that profile print with inkjet printers are very muddy looking. That profile is designed more for CMYK printer and not RGB printers.

FWIW, like Kurt I've owned both. The reason I bought the Spyder was just to see the difference between the two. I never did do a close comparison. However, either will be loads better than using the built-in macOS calibration.

I am wondering where the good old apple monitor calibration assistant is? The one where you move the sliders around until you can't see the apple. R, G, B, Brightness, etc. It worked pretty good! Now I have basically no way to calibrate my iMac, the presets are not right.

+1 I blanked out on the word Colorimeter. 🤣

😃 Good one!

Kurt Lang wrote:

😃 Good one!

Thank you, thank you. I bought it myself. 🤣

Corrected link for the X-Rite monitor device that includes the free Color Checker chart.