Why the wrong color profile can ruin your image edits and how to fix it on MacOS

Anyone who’s ever worked on image or video editing on MacOS knows how good Apple displays can be. They are clean and crisp and rarely have issues, such as pixelation or screen tearing.

For the most part, the colors look fairly accurate. Or do they?

Also: I was a Final Cut Pro diehard until DaVinci Resolve won me over with these 3 features

To the untrained eye, the MacOS default display profile is brilliant. But to those who know what to look for, the default settings aren’t always the best to use.

Let me explain.

What are Color Profiles

Color is tricky, especially when dealing with images and video. What you see on your display may look good, but it might not be accurate. To make matters even more confusing, the color might look right on your Apple display, but what about if you use a different type of display? That’s where things get challenging. 

Color Profiles come in the form of International Color Consortium (ICC) files. Each file is created for a specific purpose. For example, most video content is rendered in Rec 709 color, one of the most widely used standards for video. My MacBook Pro includes a Rec 709 profile called Rec. ITUR BT.709-5. If I use that color profile and render my videos for the Rec 709 standard, what I see on my MacBook display should be fairly accurate. 

Also: The best laptops for video editing: Expert tested and reviewed

However, the default Color Profile for a MacBook Pro is Color LCD, which looks great for everyday laptop use. Yet when you view a Rec 709 video with a Color LCD profile, the colors aren’t an accurate representation of what others will see. If you don’t switch the color profile, you’ll have no way of knowing if the color in the video you’ve just created is accurate. This issue is especially true for skin tones, which are already hard enough to get accurate.

Therefore, I tend to switch color profiles depending on my focus. For everyday work, I’ll use the Color LCD profile. If I’m editing videos that will be rendered in Red 709, I’ll use the matching color profile. My iMac — the machine I do all of my video editing on — always uses the Rec 709 color profile (even though the iMac color profile is pretty accurate). 

Also: Adobe releases more AI magic for Creative Cloud users at Max 2024

I think that you should do anything you can do to make things easier. But with color profiles, it’s not just about making things easier but making colors more accurate. You don’t want to spend hours coloring a video only to find out the color profile you used isn’t right. If that happens, you’ll have to go back and re-color everything. The difference in results can be shocking.

How to change color profiles on MacOS

Now that you understand color profiles, how do you change them? This task is actually quite easy.

You should immediately see a change in the way your display looks. Although the new color profile might not look the best on your desktop, it’s tuned for the task at hand, and you can be certain it’ll display more accurate colors than the default.

Finding and adding new color profiles

You might find the included color profiles don’t have an option for your task. For example, maybe you’ve found the built-in Rec 709 isn’t quite as accurate as you need. 

You can download the official ICC Rec 709 color profile. Once you’ve downloaded the .icc file, move it (or copy it) to /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/. You’ll be prompted for your user password to add the file to the directory.

Once you’ve added the profile, go back to System Settings > Displays and select it from the “Color profile” dropdown, and you’re good to go.