MacBook Pro Display too yellow compared to Studio Display

Expert mode is still there. You have to hold down the Option key while clicking the + button to start a new calibration.

And why do you think a monitor profiling system would fail? They've been around for decades, and work very well. The last step the software does is save the completed profile (which also contains the LUT to set the matching calibration) and automatically sets it as that monitor's default profile.

X-Rite has put together a pretty nice video of how to profile a Studio Display with their colorimeter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_EIy60UBTU

Yes, it's far more complicated that it should be because of Apple's insistence of using reference modes with this monitor. But at least it can be done.

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.

I wanted to add that this tool https://github.com/supercurio/xdr-tuner has been incredibly useful as a custom calibration tool/stop gap. Here is the updated Python3 script to allow it work post OS Monteray: https://github.com/supercurio/xdr-tuner/issues/1#issuecomment-1574869077

You may have to `pip install pyobjc` to resolve some of the error.

Additionally, in my case, since I work with a monitor attached with my monitor set up as my 'main' screen, and want to change my laptop screen to match the stuido display monitor, I had to to change L57 to

` display_id = online_display_list_result[1][-1] # if laptop attached to monitor, this will choose laptop` so that it wasn't the monitor which was affected

You're welcome.

To add: Once you have a device, turn anything and everything off that can change the monitor's settings. TrueTone off. Automatic brightness off. Go into Settings and disable the keys that reduce or increase brightness.

The software that comes with the hardware sets everything. White point color, black point color, gain and brightness. That's the calibration step. Once calibration is done, it then reads a series of color patches to create a monitor profile based on the current calibration.

That means you can't change or touch anything that would change the calibration. Any change to those settings also alters how any given color appears, which means the profile is then useless as the Lab values the panel is emitting no longer matches the calibration. Or as how X-Rite likes to say it, it invalidates the profile.

To add: Since you have an Apple Studio display, I would suggest the top X-Rite model. The SL can only handle 1,000 nits. The Pro HL is decent at 3,000 nits. But the Plus HL jumps the accuracy up to 10,000 nits. Then you know for sure it will be able to handle the physical color and brightness response of the monitor. $339 (only $60 more than the Pro HL) isn't that bad, and then you'll have a very capable model for years.

I can't really comment on it other than I know about DataColor's devices. I had one a long time ago, but wasn't happy with the accompanying software. It didn't have a choice for D50, which is more important than it sounds.

X-Rite did a worldwide test some years ago. They recorded the color temperature of light at noon with a clear sky. The average was 5200K. But it isn't a straight 5200K. This is where D50 comes in.

If you look into it, you'll see 5200K is often presented as a photographer's monitor settings. But it also isn't correct. That makes everything 5200K, including the white and black points, even thought the true natural measurement is much closer to 5000K.

This is why using a 5000K setting also doesn't work, which is all the DataColor software I had (from at least 10 years ago) offered. Using that setting makes the entire gray balance 5000K and results in noticeably yellowish gray balance.

D50 uses a 5000K white/black point balance, but also builds a slightly cooler - yes, you guessed it - 5200K mid point gray balance. This is as close to a natural light gray color balance as you can get.

Unfortunately, even looking at the user manual PDF for the Spyder, you can't tell what choices you get. It only (repeatedly) insists the user choose 6500K as the recommended setting. Any true color professional will tell you to never use that setting. It even states this is the color of daylight at noon. This is wrong. Very, very wrong. That number comes from an old test where they measured daylight in a far northern area on a cloudy day. Yeah, of course it's going to be a cold, bluish color.

But literally anyone can disprove that claim by setting their monitor to 6500K. Follow that by taking a shot of you home or front yard on a sunny day and then display it on your computer. You will never - truly, never - see anything out your window as blue as it will look on your monitor. And you can't even adjust that blue color out since the white and black points are fixed at 6500K. Anything on that monitor will be heavily blue. Always.

Well, that's at least something of a start.

But just like my EIZO monitor, expensive as they are, they cannot hold a perfect preset forever any more than Apple's displays can.

At some point, you may find it more than necessary to figure out how to properly calibrate and profile your panels.

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.

Expert Mode isn't on my MacBook Pro either. :(

That's weird. I can't explain that one.

If I understand your explanation regarding D50 correctly, I should use it even if my intentions are for screen purposes only (I'm not printing my photos, just publishing them on the Web).

Because D50 is the only setting that truly simulates the white, gray and black balance of daylight. It's the reason that setting is the default in the entire printing industry.

So why is the Photography preset using D65?

Because - believe it or not - 6500K/D65 was intentionally chosen as incorrect color. This goes all the way back to the advent of color TV in the 1950's. The color cameras of the time didn't reproduce warm colors very well. But they excelled at blue and other cool colors. So, the decision was made to intentionally broadcast this heavily blue color to get as much out of the equipment as possible. It was then up to the viewer to adjust the tint and color knobs/sliders on their TV to try and balance out the broadcast color to something that looked more natural.

Remember how on old tube TVs rich, bright reds would often look like static with lots of random dark pixels mixed in? That was the result of both ends. Both the cameras at the studio and your TV were clipping the reds because they weren't capable of capturing/displaying the actual color.

And then it didn't help when HP and Microsoft decided (who knows why) to make 6500K the "standard". Apple's default for years was neutral gray. Or at least much closer to D50 as Macs were almost exclusively used in the printing industry during the launch of desktop publishing. It wasn't until much later Apple changed the default to 6500K. For no reason other than to match what everyone else was doing on the PC/Windows side.

Another thing: when I use the Design & Print (P3-D50) preset, my displays get super dark and the brightness adjustment buttons are locked. I know I can adjust the presets and make them a bit brighter, but still... I don't understand the logic behind the brightness being locked.

I'm going to say I'm not liking this Studio Display more and more. Locking any monitor down to specific values can literally never work since the monitor's panel will drift away from optimal. Then what is the user supposed to do? Go out and buy another new one when it isn't really necessary?

However, are the X-Rite calibrations also going lock the brightness adjustment buttons?

The video shows you. You start with one of Apple's reference modes, then adjust the color balance and luminosity to whatever you want using the included software.

Ah! There it is. I was trying to find it earlier from my iPad, and trying to navigate the site from there was a pain in the butt. You can tell it won't be available for much longer, though. Or they wouldn't have it so steeply discounted.

Man... Everything is so counterintuitive and complicated for no reason.

Agreed. Apple's new color management system left almost no room for professionals to do their own monitor calibration/profiling. They very simply cannot do that as there is no monitor in the world that will hold its original output for its entire lifetime. And they cannot assume a user even wants to use any of the presets.

At least this only applies to Apple's own panels. You can still calibrate/profile any third party monitor however you want.

Yet more background reading. I hadn't looked into what other people thought of the Studio Display. Turns out, a good three fourths of the reviews I looked at under various tech websites and YouTube reviews think the monitor isn't very good.

https://markellisreviews.com/apple-studio-display-review-is-it-worth-it/

https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/smart-office/apple-studio-display-monitor-review/

https://www.theverge.com/22981744/apple-studio-display-5k-monitor-webcam-speakers-review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoigsHYc77s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw65SS3AveM

Reviews are, of course, someone's opinion. But they are also the opinions of people who work with and review lots of various hardware for a living. And there are also a number of reviews where they love this monitor. It's like going to Amazon. You can look up literally any item sold there, and no matter how good something is overall, it will have at least a couple of 1 star reviews.

What's the biggest advantage to the Studio Display? It's one of the few good 5K displays available. Video production folks love having a monitor that can display an entire 4K video, and still have room for your app's various palettes.

But honestly, if I were to determine what I should return, I would send the monitor back and get an LG 5K. Or if you didn't mind stepping down to a 4K panel, then the Alogic monitor mentioned earlier appears to be an excellent choice. Which, in an almost unheard of fashion, currently has no negative reviews on Amazon. But then, there's only 13 reviews so far. So give it time. At least one is bound to show up eventually.

Now how in the world did I miss you purchased an XDR model of the display? It's right there in your first post. All the while I thought it was the standard model.

Anyway, then yes, X-Rite is correct that only their latest monitor profiling hardware can handle that panel. It's not that the one you had wouldn't work at all, but the results wouldn't be very accurate.

Also agreed with the next statement. Which is essentially the same thing I said. Your displays would be very close after profiling each to the same target settings, but not necessarily dead-on perfect.

Since your Studio Display is new, it should hold decently accurate color for at least 3 months. 6 months is not out of the question. Newer monitors don't drift anywhere near as quickly as the early LCD and LED monitors did.

What I would suggest is to at least duplicate one of the presets and set it to a luminance of 80. The brighter a monitor (or TV) is, the sooner it will lose its original color range.