Tag Archive for: settings

MacBookPro M4 Pro Display performance nano texture

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The new MacBookPro M4 Pro: It’s gorgeous

I was 100% happy with my MacbookPro M1 Pro. (see my review here) 
It was lighting fast and even when screencapturing Photoshop I didn’t see any hiccups.
But when Apple showed the new screens I was already looking for my laptop to order a new one.
The biggest frustration with the MacbookPro for me was the very annoying  glare on the screen, it could drive me nuts when travelling, if you need a mirror…..

The nice thing about Apple is that you often don’t have to wait too long and indeed today I got the new MacBookPro M4 Pro with Nano Texture  14″, 1 TB, and wanted to share the first experiences with it, mainly focussing on the screen.

And the screen is indeed absolutely gorgeous and kills the reflections better than expected. It’s something you have to see to believe case 😀
I also opted for the space black color and also here I can say I’m glad I did, I love the normal color of the MacBookPro but the space black is my new favourite.

Ok till now it’s been more like an unboxing, and as you know I’m not really the person for that kind of posts 😀
So let’s dive into the interesting stuff.

Shine a light on me

Let’s do a quick test

the MacBookPro M4 Pro

Left is the….really?
As you can see there is a huge difference. On the previous screen you can clearly see the reflection of our led lights, on the new screen there is nothing visible. And remember the reflection of the previous screen was even worse in some older generations. I’m really glad with this outcome because the screen was my main reason to upgrade.

Now when you see this we want to see something more extreme of course.
So we used the flashlight of the iPhone on full power.

On the previous screen you can clearly see the light and its a pretty large circle and you can see the light actually breaking down in RGB.

Now on the new screen it might seem that the circle is also large but thats probably not what you’re seeing.
This is an extreme example, shining a very bright flashlight right on the screen from 20cm distance.
The little circle in the middle is what you also see in the image above but a lot smaller and much less intens.
The “glow” around the circle is probably the Nano texture doing it’s anti light reflective work, when the lightsource is less extreme this would mean it totally takes out the reflections, as you can see in the first example.

In other words, wow.

Performance of the MacBookPro M4 Pro with Nano Texture

As creators we of course demand the absolute best from our screens.
Of course it’s always better to use a dedicated monitor. For example the BenQ monitors I use have a hardware calibration option and are tracking very close to the AdobeRGB colorspace. (and they have a great anti glare coating :D) but does that mean that you can’t use your laptop screen for editing ?

Well decide for yourself, I will post the validation of the screen in a moment.
It really depends on how color critical your work is, but in all honesty when I look at the results I would not hesitate to edit my work on the MacBookPro, as long as I’m able to check it on the BenQ before it goes to the client.

the MacBookPro M4 Pro

Calibration

The first thing I do when I get a new laptop is make a 1:1 copy from my old laptop (I love the way the Mac does this).
This mostly takes an hour or slightly longer, in that time I keep my screen on at my preference light output.
When my whole system is up and running, this often means the screen has been on for a few hours.
Now it’s a good time to do the first calibration (and repeat this after a few days).

Do make sure you use the proper analyser for the XRD screens.
We highly recommend the Calibrite HL series due to the high luminance output of the screens.
On the photo you still see an older analyser which was handy for the moment, calibration should be done with the HL series by preference.

With MacOs you do have to make sure that you check your display settings and disable the two settings you can see in this image, these settings can really mess up your calibrations.

the MacBookPro M4 Pro

After the calibration is done it’s possible to run a validation of your screen.
I’ve setup the screen to the brightness I normally use in a bright room, this is brighter than my BenQ which is in a controlled environment.
I highly recommend calibrating at the brightness you use the most. You can always go up or down 1 click.

 

As you can see the performance of the screen is actually pretty good 😀
I’ve been working on the MBP for a few hours now and coming from the M1 Pro I can say that especially plugins like Luminar Neo and BorisFX are running a lot faster. That doesn’t mean that the M1 Pro was slow. But the M4 Pro is clearly a lot faster.

Conclusion, should you buy the MacBookPro M4 Pro with Nano Texture screen?

There will be a lot of reviews about the speed of the new MacBooks, for me it was already clear I would get more speed than I would probably ever really need. However the screen is one of the most important things on a laptop for me. We travel a lot and having a screen that functions like a mirror is insanely annoying. To be honest the screen alone was worth the upgrade. But a good screen should also be able to show proper shadow detail, don’t clip the whites and have a proper performance for color “critical” work. So in this short review I focussed on the screen and wanted to share the validation of the new MacBookPro 14″ Nano structure screen.

 

If you are in the market for a great monitor, make sure to check out the BenQ series.
I’ve been using them for years and they always deliver a great price/performance.
For the European customers we have a few 10% discount coupons we are allowed to give away.(Email)

 

 

Check out my YouTube video about retouching on the iPad 

That setting that drives you nuts during the calibration process on Mac (and windows)

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Calibration is important

I think most of us will agree on this. If you want proper colors and happy customers (depending on the assignment of course) it’s very smart to calibrate your monitor at least once a month, but preferably before every important retouching job. But what are the important settings during calibration?

Calibrating your monitor is super easy.

I’ve been using Calibrite (X-rite) products for years. They are easy to use and compatible with the hardware calibration options inside my BenQ monitor. This is a big plus because although the software from Calibrite is great, hardware solutions are always better, of course. Most professional and semi-professional monitors support hardware calibration.

By the way, if you are in the market for a new monitor and you live in the EU drop me an email, I have a few 10% discount codes from BenQ
They have been supporting my work with Digital Classroom for years and love to give you guys a nice discount.

Anyway back to the story.
Even with easy software, it’s sometimes easy to get an error that… well you can’t fix.
You checked everything, and although you know your brand new monitor should really be perfect, it’s far from.
Or maybe you don’t know how to read the rapports and just wonder why there is so much fuzz about professional monitors.

Step 1

This one is for all systems.
When you are using the HDMI connection make sure your monitor is set for 0-255 or FULL RGB.
If it’s set up for 16-235 (video) you will get all kinds of weird behaviors, very noticeable in the dark and bright areas, but in essence, your whole image looks way off.

When you are using USBc, TB, or Display port you don’t have to check this.
Those connections automatically select the right output.

So is HDMI bad… absolutely not, it’s just as perfect for what we do as USBc and Displayport, you just have to check that one setting.

Step 2

And that’s the nasty one.
In the Mac, there is one setting that will almost certainly have you scratching your head and probably a little bit in panic mode.

If whatever you do, you can’t pass the final certification from your calibration and the errors are constantly changing per calibration, there is probably one setting you forgot the turn off. You can find it under “Displays” in Mac OS.

important setting during calibration

This one will give you A LOT of issues when you want a stable and trusted display.
So turn it OFF.
This goes for all settings with labels like “auto”, “Enhancement”, “Super”, “Real”, “natural” etc.

Just turn everything off and run the calibration software.
You will see that you will pass the certification without any problems now 😀

Don’t forget this important setting during calibration!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave them below, or reach out via our social media.

Read more about colors in this blog about Working with Colors 

 

Calibrating a monitor and getting a corrupt profile and more…..

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As you all know I’ve been a BenQ ambassador for some years now and somehow that also means that people from all over the world mail me with questions about their monitors and although I’m not working for BenQ or know anything about repairing a monitor some things I can answer, in todays blogpost some of the most asked questions and the answers.

Let me start by stating that calibrating your monitor is of vital importance for a good representation of your images, this will prevent a lot of surprises when you deliver your work to clients or print services, you don’t want to know how many people complain about the quality of a print service but never took the time to calibrate their monitor, do remember that with calibrating your monitor you’re not only calibrating the colors but also the gamma curves and of course the blacks and whites (brightness and contrast) meaning if you don’t you might end up seeing more or less shadow/highlight detail than there is in reality.

Also ignore those documents that are delivered with your monitor.
YES they did calibrate your monitor in the factory, but NO that does not mean it’s calibrated for your system.

Also take into account that you have to re calibrate your monitor every week or two (depending on your precision), but also that you first have to warm up the monitor for half an hour. I actually advise to just calibrate it every single time you have an important job.

Ok let’s take a look at what can/will go wrong and how to solve it.

Always check input
This is a source of a lot of problems.
When you connect a monitor there is signal going through the cable to the monitor that is something everyone knows and understands, however what a lot of people don’t know is that this signal can be two different systems.

First we have the video signal which is coded from 16-235
Secondly we have the PC/Mac signal that is coded from 0-254 (255)

Please make 100% sure that when you connect a monitor to a PC or Mac you have the monitor HDMI setup for 0-255. Sometimes this is also called Full range RGB and the 16-235 is called limited RGB.

When this is setup wrongly the result will be :
Blocked up blacks or no blacks at all
White is crunched (no detail), or too dark
There will be a horrible color cast over the top part of the grayscale (white areas)

Set your calibration method
On some software solutions you have the option to set a colorspace.
In most cases this will work just fine but in some cases you have to be really careful.
If you get a broken or incorrect colorprofile in your software make sure to calibrate the monitor to the NATIVE colorspace and don’t select sRGB or Adobe RGB.

Set your calibration profile to V2
Most people will immediatly go for V4, sounds newer so that must be better right?
Wrong. When you switch from Lightroom to Photoshop there can be huge difference in how an image looks, make 100% sure that you select V2 in your calibration software, this solves 99.9% of the problems.

Now there are many more things that can go wrong, but these are the most important ones.
A few notes that are also important, but will not immediately show problems.

Coloranalyzer age
Although now a days color analyzers are much better do take note to keep them out of direct or indirect sunlight, just store them in a drawer. I would still advise to replace them every 2-3 years, I don’t care what other people say but after 2-3 years there is some degradation in the analyzer, it depends on you if you find that important, but for me I change analyzers every year, or I send them in for recalibration (the expensive ones)

Hardware calibration
If your monitor supports it make sure to use the delivered software.
Don’t use the software supplied with your analyzer (unless it supports hardware calibration of that monitor), hardware calibration is something completely different from the calibration in the OS, and in my opinion for a serious monitor hardware calibration is vital, it gives you better gradients and better/more accurate colors. Some people will claim that the Xrite software for example has more options… do always remember that there are often more options for the simple reason it’s not tailor made for one monitor.

Available light
This is an option you find on some analyzers and I highly recommend NOT using that.
Color temperature of available light changes per second and per season and time of the day. Taking this into account will never work perfectly, just make sure there is no light hitting your screen (work area) and don’t place a critical color correction station in front of a window, yes there is no light hitting the screen but the outside colors change and this will influence the way you tint or correct your images. Light control is not only important in photography/video but also in your work area. Heck it’s vital.

Settings
Don’t go for the over the top settings brightness wise but keep it to the recommended values.
For most workstations the following settings are perfect.

Colortemp should always be D65 unless you’re working in a specific design envirement, but for 99% of the readers it will be D65, let me put it this way if you work in that specific area of design you probably already know where to set colortemp, but if you read it online stick to D65 for your work. D65 is often also called 6500, 6500K 65K.

Gamma is best at 2.2 or 2.4 if you do a lot of video, this is also depending on your room. A lot of ambient light or less ambient. Go for 2.2 in a lighter room, TRY 2.4 in a really dark room. I personally would stick to 2.2 for photography.

Black point I would leave at absolute, unless you’re working in a proofing situation.
This is what BenQ says.
“•   Absolute: using ‘0’ as the black point measurement, so it gives you the best contrast out of the monitor. (It basically sets the black of the panel as black point.)
•   Relative: using the gamma curve to calculate the suitable brightness of the black point. The black is not necessary the darkest brightness level of the panel, but will give a better fit to the target gamma curve. This is often used in soft proofing application.
Also, the black point options will be recorded in the ICC Profile generated after calibration. It will also affect the method of ICC profile conversion in Photoshop or other software application.”

Light output I would leave anywhere between 120-150cdm depending on the room and your delivery system. If you mostly use your work in digital billboards and social media I would go for 150, if you do a lot of prints 120 could be better. It all depends on what you want to see. 120cdm will be less bright than 150cdm but when you edit on a monitor that’s too dim you might bump the contrast too high, on the other hand if the monitor is too bright you might lower it too much. So always make sure you can judge your work the correct way.

Calibrating twice
In the past there were some combinations that gave problems with profiles.
If you see a really bad colorcast in your monitor after calibration, don’t worry, start again immediately and the second calibration will probably be perfect. In most cases this is something from the past and shouldn’t be a problem anymore.

Overall
A lot of things can go wrong with software or hardware. With these guidelines I hope you can solve most of them. Do feel free to just email me questions, for BenQ we have a direct line to their tech support and they respond incredibly fast, they’ve solved problems for my followers often within a day so I would really like to give them a headsup for that, I don’t know a lot of companies that have that kind of support.

Do always remember with calibrations that it’s not always as easy as people tell you. It is easy, but you do have to take care of some things yourself.
Did this article help you out?
Check out how you can help us out via www.frankdoorhof.com/support

A little bit of side information.
In 2001 I got my ISF (Imaging Science Foundation), Sencore (high-end calibration) and HAA (Home Acoustics Allience) certification. Besides my photography we run a successful Home Theater business for which I do high-end calibrations on projectors, TV’s, video walls etc. We started our Home Theater business in 1997

New instructional video “A guide to Capture One 9 Pro”

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We just released a brand new instructional video, and this is a LONG one.
With over 190 minutes of information it’s actually one of the longest we ever released, and the best thing… for a limited time only it’s priced at only 10.00 euros.

 

Often people forget the importance of the RAW developer and how much of a difference it can make on your final images, let alone what you can do in the RAW convertor as retouching. As soon as you open up Photoshop you are not working in the RAW convertor anymore so it’s vital to do as much as possible before that.

For years Capture One has been on the top of the list of best RAW convertors and not without a reason (of course), Capture One has many retouching and developing options that for some people will even make it possible to do the complete workflow within Capture One. 
 But that’s not all, in studio or location setups many photographers love to shoot tethered, and this is were Capture One in my opinion really shines as being rock solid and incredibly versatile.

When you first open up Capture One everything can look a bit…. frightening, especially when you are used to the industry standard Lightroom, but in all honestly the layout and options are actually very easy to learn if you get a little bit of help, and that’s where this video comes in.

In over 3 hours (190 minutes) I walk you through the way that I use Capture One.
You will find chapters on the tools, tethered shooting, retouching samples and workflow.
All videos are kept as short as possible and are very easy to understand.

Topics include :

BW modes, integration with Lightroom/Photoshop and plugins, exporting recipes, styles/looks, synchronizing, using local adjustments and layers, advanced color adjustments, advanced and simple skin retouching, masking possibilities, folder structures, overlays, watermarks, customizing the look and layout, HDR from one image, making images pop, using processing in batch, all the tools you need to know explained, auto masking tips, skin tone smoothing, tricks with the skin tone smoothing for skies, removing spots and dust, using healing for removing hair and blemishes, using capture pilot in a tethered workflow, RAW developing explained, lens correction, adding grain for a great look and evening out retouches, noise reduction, stacking effects in layers and styles, sorting and rating in the browser, creating your personal layout and much much more….

If you want to get the best out of Capture One in your workflow and setup a great integration with Lightroom this is without a doubt the best way to start. All videos are high resolution captures and the standard video is 4K so you can see all the settings and details the best way possible. The video is available now via www.frankdoorhof.com/videos

I’m 100% sure you are gonna love this one.