MacBook Pro Display too yellow compared to Studio Display

Really wish I could help you more. Presets mean nothing to me. Per one of my earlier statements, and duplicated by X-Rite's help desk, two entirely different panel designs will not look the same even when using the same supposed presets. Different hardware and RGB colorants, different results.

Without one of these displays with Apple's new color system on hand, I can't test how to calibrate and profile them correctly. If I had one, I know I could figure out how to do it and pass the steps on.

On top of that, Apple may be intentionally hiding the old expert mode for this new system because it can't really work. Per previously mentioned, these new panels save the calibration data in the monitor's firmware so it can be full 16 bit, or 32 bit 3-D for smooth gradients. Meaning, there is no LUT stored to the video hardware.

Why does that matter? EIZO monitors do the same thing. So when I calibrate this monitor with their ColorNavigator software, no LUT data is saved with the final profile. No LUT, no calibration curve that loads to video hardware. All three channels are flat.

This matters because Expert Mode expects the monitor to be at 6500K, 2.2 gamma and a fixed, predetermined brightness after it clears the LUT ahead of doing a new calibration, even though it can't know if that's what an external third party monitor actually looks like.

Since the calibration is in the monitor and there's no LUT data to clear, the monitor's appearance doesn't change at all when I go into Expert Mode. Which really throws off what you think you're doing in Expert Mode. When I get to the temperature slider, it assumes I'm looking at 6500K as the starting point.

Which I'm not since the monitor is holding it at D50 (5000K) and a 1.8 gamma.

This makes the entire, original built-in calibration function useless. And given the new presets system on both of your new panels do essentially the same thing as the EIZO monitors, this older function is just as useless for Apple's new display controls for the same reason.

And after all that, I'm still only speculating for Apple's new system. Does regular or expert mode actually work as expected? If so, how would it do that? Logically, it would first have to tell the monitor to load a 6500K preset calibration from its firmware so your manual adjustments at least make some type of sense.

Okay, that made me look. As I suspected, Apple made this as unintuitive as possible. And much more difficult than necessary.

You can't get anywhere because Fine-Tune Calibration is grayed out. In order to activate it, you need to choose a different reference mode. These are the modes you can select from:

• Apple Display (P3-600 nits)
• HDTV Video (BT.709-BT.1886)
• NTSC Video (BT.601 SMPTE-C)
• PAL and SECAM Video (BT.601 EBU)
• Digital Cinema (P3-DCI)
• Digital Cinema (P3-D65)
• Design and Print (P3-D50)
• Photography (P3-D65)
• Internet and Web (sRGB)

Since you're doing professional color work, the only logical choice is Design and Print (P3-D50). But that is going to be a preset that you're eyeballing color on. Not measuring with an instrument. And as noted earlier, useless as the monitor ages since it WILL drift away from neutral.

Apple provides their own profiling software for the Studio Display, which I presume behaves similarly to the software that comes with the X-Rite and DataColor products. But you then still need to go out and purchase a spectro device to measure the screen. Apple's software supports these models:

• Photo Research SpectraScan PR-740, PR-745 or PR-788
• Colorimetry Research CR-300

And to say these are overkill isn't even a close description. Check out the eye watering price on the CR-300. I haven't found a price on the SpectraScan units, but you probably don't want to know what they are.

If the Studio Display were my monitor, I'd set it to the P3-D50 reference, then calibrate and profile it from there with the X-Rite device.

Or, quite honestly, return it and get an EIZO monitor. And while I can use my i1 Pro 3 spectro along with i1 Profiler to calibrate and profile my CG279x, the EIZO ColorEdge monitors come with a built-in colorimeter and their own profiling software. It's all there, ready to use without purchasing anything separate from the monitor.

Yes. That's part of the entire point of using them.

The X-Rite systems are typically more advanced. Such as, you can profile one monitor, then save a reference file. Bring that file to all of the other displays in your business and have the software match each monitor (as closely as possible), to the reference data.

Or, just calibrate and profile each display using the exact same settings. They should be at least nearly indistinguishable from each other.

If you're in the printing industry, or will do any CMYK work for them at all, then a properly calibrated monitor goes past important to extremely important. The CMYK black color balance in Photoshop is based on your monitor's settings. Using a D50 color balance for the monitor, you get a perfect CMYK gray balance in Photoshop.

With a 6500K setup, the balance would be something more like 80, 79, 55, 95. Very blueish/purplish. Your clients will not be happy that everything that's supposed to be neutral gray, isn't.

This may be an issue with how Apple's Studio Display works with the OS. But I can only guess. However, I have no trouble bringing up Expert Mode.

System Settings > Displays. Nothing unusual here. I presume you see essentially the same thing.

Clicking on the double arrow next to the currently selected profile gets me the typical list of profiles you can choose. Most of which are not monitor profiles at all. Choose Customize at the bottom:

That brings you here:

Holding the Option key and clicking the + button brings up the Calibrator in Expert Mode as expected:

If this isn't working for you, I couldn't tell you why. Other than Apple possibly has some sort of non-standard way of doing things with the Studio Display.

Beyond all that, you complain this is driving you crazy, but won't spend a lousy $300 to get the hardware/software package to do this quickly, and more importantly, correctly. And yes, after spending $7,000 for what you have, $300 is nothing.

And why "correctly". Because you already have a visual mismatch. The only thing expert mode will do for you is allow you to move the Kelvin slider for each monitor so they visually match. But since they already don't match, you'll have to choose a different value for each monitor. The OS has no clue what you're looking at. It will only know you DON'T want the monitors to match.

I am having this exact same issue with my 16" MBP M3.

I have a Mac Studio Display which has what I would consider a standard white balance/tint for most apple products, as it looks similar to my old 2018 MBP and my MBP M1 work laptop.

When I use the display with my work MBP M1 laptop, images will look (as near as makes no differences) the same between my MBP m1 display and the Studio Display.

When I use my display with my new M3, the M3 has a strong yellow and slightly green cast to it. White balance is completely different than the display, and worse IMO. Whites on the MBP M3 clearly look yellow/warmer than whites on the Studio Display, and this difference in color balance/tint is visible across all images. The studio display in comparison shows what I would consider closer to a white color.

I want to note that I have tested this with all settings that might affect how the display looks turned off (True Tone, Night Shift, Auto Brightness Adjustment).

Similarly, comparing the new MBP M3 to my work MBP M1, the M3 looks overly warm and yellow compared to the M1, which shows whites much more cleanly.

I brought my MBP M3 to the apple store, and after doing side by side comparisons with other MBP M3s in the store and seeing the yellow tint, they agreed to replace the screen for me as well as re-image the laptop in case the issue was firmware based. Unfortunately, the new screen still has the same yellow cast to it, and still shows whites and colors completely differently than my MBP M1 and Studio Display.

Overall, I'm really annoyed. After spending $4700 on a computer of which the XDR screen was a huge selling point, I'm stuck with a machine that displays colors differently than most every other apple product I have. I'm not a professional colorist by any means and typically just use the default apple display profile as a baseline to color grade against, however the color tint on my laptop is so egregious that it will ultimately affect my ability to do any sort of color correction. If I end up being forced to use my studio display for all color correction, that defeats the purpose of a portable $4700 laptop and I should have just bought a Mac Studio.

Final thoughts: If I could return this laptop, I would (despite the machine itself working very well). Unfortunately, due to having having the screen replaced, my laptop is no longer eligible to be returned. The annoying thing is that this screen tint is one of those issues that once you see, it becomes an annoying itch that you can't ignore that will negatively impact everything I do (not just photo editing/Lightroom, but literally anything that involves looking at the screen).

Ultimately, I don't know if this is screen QC issue, a firm ware issue, or an OS Sonoma thing that results in this yellow screen. Regardless, I now have a $4700 machine that annoys me every time I use it.

Attached image: Uploading the image weirdly causes it to be rotated 180*, however the yellower screen on the left is my 16" MBP M3, and on the right is my 16" MBP M1. Both have True Tone, Night Shift, and Auto Brightness turned off, and are displaying the same image (https://www.ledr.com/colours/white.htm) in Chrome.

The likelihood of you getting the two monitors to look exactly alike is pretty small. Different makers and different screen color elements will vary somewhat even with duplicate monitors. Tolerances are never zero.

You may come close however.

The gold/yellow hue is likely from a setting increasing the warmth of the screen image.