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I have a brand new Mac Book Pro (2015) with Bootcamp installed, so I am using the same calibrated monitor to view the images. However, the image looks more saturated when I boot up Windows than it does in El Capitan.

This is very concerning because I intended to have my photos look the way they do in Mac OS, but when I look at them on the Windows side, they are more saturated.........and that is not the look I am going for. I'm a professional photographer so this is really concerning how people view my work.

Here is a good example of what I am talking about

If you can check this for yourself, notice the green plants and skin tones are way more saturated in Windows than in El Capitan.

It would be amazing if someone has a solution or reason for why this is happening.

Thanks :)

4 Answers 4

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There is not a "calibrated monitor". What you calibrate is the "ecosystem" so you need to calibrate your computer + operating system + monitor (inclusive ambient light).

Take a look on a hardware to really calibrate them: http://www.colormunki.com/

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  • Amazing answers! Thank you so much for all the help. I guess I will have to play with the gamma settings on my Mac. Again, thanks to everyone for the help!!!
    – Mike Swiegot
    Nov 2, 2015 at 6:29
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Even if you are using the same monitor for different systems and that monitor is calibrated, each system can also have different monitor profiles. So that's one thing that can affect how your pictures look on OSX or Windows.

Another thing: the gamma of your system. By default, the gamma could be different on both system and it's possible the PC will always be darker than the default Mac one, it's usually the case. PC users usually have a 2.2 gamma and Mac 1.8. So if your goal is to look good ONLINE and 90% of your clients' computers are PC then you might want to adjust your gamma to 2.2 to have a better idea of what they see.

It's not uncommon for professionals to work with 2 monitor profiles; one for their print and one for web. In each profile you can adjust the gamma and white point (which should be D65.) This way if a picture needs to be re-calibrated for a specific audience online, you're more on target by using their monitor preferences than your "print" preferences. Since you are a photographer, that could be an option for you. That's what I do.

This link below gives more details and some tips about this. It should at least give you a starting point to research more on that topic:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/gamma_mac_pc.html


If you can check this for yourself, notice the green plants and skin tones are way more saturated in Windows than in El Capitan.

It's hard to verify this because we all see your website's pictures in a different way. The best would be to show 2 pictures of the same website on PC and Mac next to each others! Even the screenshots get corrected.

I'm on a Mac, the green plants do look saturated when I use my "pc monitor" profile so I guess this has something to do with your issue. There's more details, shadows and mid tones when viewing them on the Mac profile I use. That's why I don't think the software color profile is the culprit, but the gamma or monitor profile could be.

Just a note on this: Your pictures still look great to me, as an amateur and not a professional photographer! But it's totally understandable that you can see what's wrong with them and you're annoyed by this.

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  • Thanks for the link and the help! I will definitely be checking this out tomorrow. And thanks for the kind words as well! Cheers!
    – Mike Swiegot
    Nov 2, 2015 at 6:31
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I believe this is related to the problem concerning the "Ambient Light" correction embedded in El Capitan. This feature automatically adjusts the monitor's gamma levels based on ambient light - and well, at least for me the results are less than satisfactory.

.. in other words, it results in less-saturated images, washed out colors.

The fix: Disable "Automatic Brightness Adjustment" from the Mac Display options. This also disables automatic gamma correction.

Unfortunately, Apple hasn't released a "real" solution for this yet.

More information available here with comparison pictures

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Unfortunately there isn't much you can do about that. Each monitor has it's own hue an saturation settings. For example older macs vs the newer retina displays.

From a working perspective always use the same machine to do your tweaking and editing so you know how it looks then save it with the proper settings for where the image will be viewed.

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  • Maybe you are not understanding what I'm trying to say. I am using the same monitor. So whether it's my calibrated ASUS ProArt 27 or my Mac Book Retina Display, it is still on the same machine. It looks less saturated in Mac OS than it is when I have Windows loaded on the same machine.
    – Mike Swiegot
    Nov 2, 2015 at 1:55

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