Terrible color consistency across Apple Pro devices - from Mac Studio to iPad Pro

Lots of varying questions.

What is going on with Apple’s so-called "factory calibration"? It is completely inconsistent across devices. I own five different Apple devices, and every single display shows a different color tone.

What's "going on" is you have five different devices. Each has its own display panel, graphics hardware, version of Apple's OS, even different versions of ColorSync (and whatever iOS devices use under the hood). They simply aren't going to match out of the box.

And like literally any display panel (stand-alone monitor, all-in-one computer, tablet, etc.), they all come with one supplied profile based on one device someone created a profile for. That profile is then embedded in every single device that is the same model. Doesn't matter that it isn't all that accurate, or even the gray balance you want. It's a relatively decent starting point, and nothing else.

My Mac Studio Display came with a noticeable tint - luckily, I managed to somewhat fix it at the macOS level using my Calibrite Display Plus-HL.

Good, which is the very first thing any color professional should do - create real profiles made from a hardware calibration package.

My iPhone 15 Pro now looks closer to the Studio Display … More importantly, ColorSync does absolutely nothing for the iPad Pro M5.

When it comes to on-screen color, Pro means nothing in iOS, which is an entirely locked down system. You cannot in any way create your own display profiles for iPads or iPhones. That would require access to the system, which is 100% off limits. Not the Pro means nothing. The Pro iOS devices have far, far better color rendering for both stills and video than the non-pro versions. As long as you're always using ProRAW for stills, and Apple ProRes for video, that is. If you're not, color isn't very good.

As an example, I first upgraded from an iPhone 6s to a 14. The color, sharpness and overall quality was terrible. Going from a Nikon D800 to that was a serious letdown, since my goal was to sell all of my pro gear and just use a good phone. I'd seen enough sample images and videos though to have a good idea what was wrong. And that was simply the small cost difference between the 14 and 14 Pro. Sent the regular 14 back and got the Pro. HUGE difference in image and video quality.

But the main point is, with iPads and iPhones, no matter what model or how much you spent on them, the screen color is out of your control. You can only set brightness and an overall tone between yellow and blue. I set my 14 Pro so it closely matches the gray of an EIZO monitor calibrated and profiled to D50. Then I just leave it there. It isn't perfect, but it's decent.

But my MacBook Pro 16 M1 has a completely different color cast.

Same as above. Different display panel, graphics hardware, etc. It's not going to match your Studio Display until you properly profile and calibrate it with your Calibrite Display Plus-HL to the same settings. And even then, while you should be able to match the gray balance from one to the other, they still won't look exactly the same. Different panels, different appearance.

I calibrated the Studio Display using the built-in macOS display calibration tool.

Calibrating any display by eye is an utter waste of time. The OS does not know what you're looking at, so the resulting profile means nothing to ColorSync. And besides, this is the opposite of, I managed to somewhat fix it at the macOS level using my Calibrite Display Plus-HL. Sooooo, did you eyeball the color on the Studio Display, or did you properly calibrate/profile it with the Plus-HL?

And this isn't just an Apple thing. There's no image or video capture device (including multi-thousand dollar studio cameras) that don't need to be color managed. Every single device that displays, captures or prints color requires its own profile since each one is its own little island of color rendering specific hardware and software.

I understand the frustration of iPads and iPhones, but they just aren't meant to be color accurate displays. Mainly because you cannot profile them. You get them looking as close to a natural gray balance as you can, and correct the images and video you shoot with them as necessary afterwards.

Who said anything about doing it by eye?

You did, when you said, I calibrated the Studio Display using the built-in macOS display calibration tool. I've never had the opportunity to use one of Apple's new 10 bit panels, so I had to guess what your comment meant. But okay, the OS has its own calibration/profiling software for these displays. You just need to supply your own colorimeter or spectrophotometer. Good to know.

The iPad actually DOES have a calibration option where you can manually enter measured x, y coordinates and luminance.

That is a very, VERY long ways away from an actual calibration (white point color, black point color, gamma, gain and gray ramp). And if you're manually entering coordinates, what are you measuring for the values? It sure isn't the screen, which is the only source that would mean anything. My comment still stands. You cannot calibrate or profile an iOS device.

the absolute least Apple could do is calibrate each device properly at the factory instead of forcing us to deal with completely inconsistent tints across their entire "Pro" lineup.

The least you could have done before purchasing an iPad Pro was investigate what it could and could not do for your needs. An iPad Pro is a tablet, not a laptop. You don't have anywhere near as much user control with a locked down tablet as you do with a laptop.

And no company is going to individually calibrate and profile every single individual device before it goes out the door. How are they supposed to know how you're going to use it? There are all kinds of photo and video standards. Do you need D50? Rec. 709? sRGB? DCI-P3? And that's only a few.

Not to mention, all panels drift as they age. A brand new, perfectly calibrated and profiled display will not stay there. They all need to be periodically re-calibrated and profiled to bring them back into spec. My EIZO has, oh, I think eight presets for the standards used in various industries. But all of them would have to be updated (usually every few months) in order for them to maintain accuracy.

Addendum: Let's just say you can calibrate an iPad Pro. You enter your Lab coordinates for at least white/black point color and brightness. And, you can verify those values by taking readings with your colorimeter or spectrophotometer to another computer to see how close you are. Yay! It's calibrated.

Then what? A calibration without a hardware measured profile still isn't much use.

If it's anything like Apple's old built-in Calibrator, it set the Mac back to a D65 setup; 6500K, 2.2 gamma and a specific brightness. Which was totally meaningless with a separate monitor since that didn't at all mean that's what it was displaying. And there's always that pesky drift as the monitor ages. The "default" starting point is also meaningless, even on Mac with a built-in display since an old monitor will no longer display exactly that setting. Not to mention back then, you did indeed calibrate your display by eye. 100% worthless.

Either way, you have a calibration, and at least a decent one on the iPad Pro. But, just as with the old eyeballed setup, Apple's software then completely guesses on the profile. It takes the values of a default setting, then mathematically changes what the normally hardware read color patch Lab values would be. And voila, there's your new profile, based on nothing but a guess. Still much better with a calibration you could at least manually enter and verify with a device, but still not a measured profile.

I am of course interpolating, so if I'm missing something, please provide more details. While I did photo color and retouching for 45-ish years, I'm now retired and it doesn't take long to fall behind on what's out there, what's changed and what's new.

Okay, we're (I'm) getting somewhere. I finally looked up how you can calibrate an iPad Pro. Very straightforward and well explained steps here.

I don't have any iOS devices to test this with, but going through i1Profiler, I see I can do the same thing with that using my i1Pro 3 PLUS.

Problem is, you still can't actually get calibration or profile data directly onto an iPad Pro. It's all done from the initial white point reading to an interpolated white point. And is, apparently, limited to mimicking these color spaces:

But as in the video where he looked up the white point coordinates for sRGB, I could take a reading of a white patch on my EIZO's screen and use those coordinates.

And since it does all of that only from a white point reading, you have to assume it also interpolates a matching black point color, or your gray ramp would look really stupid. An iMac I worked on at one of the last places I worked for had that problem. It could not be calibrated. Didn't matter if you tried using the built-in calibrator, or a third party solution such as from X-Rite. You could go through all of the steps to calibrate the monitor to D50 (5000K white/black points), and when it was done, the black point LUT data wouldn't load to the graphics hardware. You'd end up with a 5000K white point, and a black point that snapped back to the 6500K default. And a white to black vignette would look just like that. Neutral white on one end, and gradually changing to blue on the black end.

Anyway, it's actually quite ingenious that Apple gives you at least some method to calibrate an iPad Pro. But it's still an interpolated calibration where you have control only over one end of the gray ramp and the brightness. But at least you could take a reading of a white patch on the iPad Pro afterwards and see how close it came to the coordinates you were targeting and make minor adjustments to that.

And there's still no measured profile values to go with that calibration. But overall, still better than nothing.

But as I mentioned above, the main problem is that this mode completely locks the brightness to 100 nits.

Yes, that is quite a problem, and something that isn't supposed to happen, given that Apple's own page says you can choose quite a range, up to 1,000 nits.

Could it be the iPad Pro is somehow misinterpreting your target x,y coordinates as an SD color space, such as NTSC? Then the 100 nit peak brightness limit would kick in. If it is doing that, I have no idea how you could make the iPad understand you want to use an HD range.

sRGB is a lowest common denominator color space (some folks rightly call it stupid RGB). If that's what you're entering for the white point coordinates, the iPad may be automatically considering that an SD color space and then cutting you off at 100 nits.

Plus, the moment you turn Reference Mode off to get a usable brightness level, the calibration stops working, and the measurements often just reset or disappear the next time you turn it back on. ;)

That is really annoying! You'd think it would remember the last settings you used, and continue to use them unless you choose to change them.

Semi unrelated, but the word Pro is thrown against anything and everything to make it sound more appealing. Often, there isn't even a normal or basic version to have a separate version with supposedly better, or Pro features. The App Store is loaded with them. If I simply put pro in a search, some of the nonsense that shows up makes you shake your head. Like this one. I give up. What's "pro" about a simulated flip clock?

And there's tons of them. Pro this, pro that. I've even seen sunglasses on the cheap broadcast channels where the ads are mostly hawking garbage products. One was called, HD sunglasses Pro. What makes sunglasses HD? Answer: nothing. What makes them pro: also nothing.

are you using ColorSync?

ColorSync Utility User Guide for Mac - Apple Support