It’s probably accurate to state that setting up equipment for picture processing is easier for Mac users because they have fewer knobs and dials to adjust. But compared to Windows settings, Apple’s defaults for newer versions have far more implications. Therefore, it is imperative that you comprehend the implications of these settings.
Actual Tone
Apple skews the color temperature to more nearly match ambient lighting conditions using data from the ambient light sensors included into its laptops and displays. Envision yourself using your MacBook in the brilliant, cool-colored sunlight before scuttling indoors to a room filled with warm incandescent lightbulbs. Your perception of the color of your image will be drastically altered if your display is warping the white point to correspond with these two situations.
Though it is a fantastic quality-of-life feature, color-sensitive tasks cannot be done with True Tone. Thankfully, switching it on and off is simple. Navigate to System Preferences, then choose Display from the Apple Menu. Choose your screen, then move the True Tone slider. (This setting is really called System Preferences rather than System Settings on previous MacOS versions.)
A related note: if you’re working on color correct projects, ensure sure Night Shift is turned off. If you’ve already set it, it will continue to appear on the schedule even if it doesn’t default to on. It’s so subtle that you might not realize it until after you’ve changed a number of photos.
Backlight Intensity
Keeping with the theme of Apple’s dynamic changes getting in the way, you may modify the brightness of your monitor significantly by adjusting the display brightness. Even while you don’t need to match a print media exactly at 120cd/m^2, maintaining a consistent brightness level is still crucial. This is located in the Apple Menu, System Preferences, Display, much as True Tone. After selecting your screen, turn off Automatically Adjust Brightness.
Options for Power
The next piece of advice is only applicable to owners of older computers that have discrete and integrated graphics cards, such as MacBook Pros from a few years ago. In some circumstances, you should make the computer utilize the discrete GPU for complicated editing operations rather than the integrated GPU.
Just to refresh your memory, integrated graphics is the GPU that is incorporated into your CPU that is less powerful but uses less electricity. Conversely, discrete graphics refers to a separate GPU that consumes significantly more power yet provides higher performance.
Although MacOS is designed to switch between these two GPUs automatically as necessary, there are situations in which you might prefer to always use the discrete GPU. You will only get higher performance if you’re connected in at your workstation, even if this will deplete your battery more quickly.
Click the Apple menu, select System Preferences, click Battery, select the Battery tab, and then toggle the automatic graphics switching tick to lock tasks to the discrete GPU. To preserve battery life when working while traveling, you should use the same option to re-enable GPU switching. The same item may be found in the System Preferences menu under Energy Saver Preferences on previous MacOS versions.
