Color matched a new 4K monitor with my MacBook Air M1

OtinG · 05-26-2022, 02:25 PM

I just bought a nice, but affordable, Samsung S27A800U 27 inch 4K monitor and connected it my MacBook Air M1. I had been using a 7 year old Dell monitor which didn't cover much outside of the sRGB color profile. The Macs, iPhones, and iPads all have a wide gamut color profile based on the Display P3 color profile, so the old Dell, although a very nice monitor, was never going to be very color accurate. Since I do a lot of photography and video processing, I really needed a monitor with more color accuracy.

Anyway, the Samsung fit the bill right out of the box without having to calibrate. And at $400 it was a bargain. The attached iPhone photo shows both the Samsung monitor and the MacBook Air M1 display with the same color spectrum wallpaper I created. They both look nearly identical.

The monitor is attached via HDMI cable to my Anker 555 USB-C hub which is then attached to my MacBook Air M1. The monitor works well with HDMI. It can also be connected via DisplayPort or USB-C, but I chose the HDMI method because it was easier and in this case works just as well as the other two options.

And in case you don't have a 4K monitor, be prepared for Apple's scaling and downsizing routines. You can use the monitor in 3840 x 2160 mode, but the text and UI elements will be too tiny to read without binoculars! So I set it up to use 2560 x 1440, which Apple then scales 2x to 5K (5120 x 2880), but since that is larger than the number of pixels the monitor has it is then downsized to 4K (3840 x 2160). Confused? You should be if you never encountered Apple's somewhat confusing world of Retina displays! But in an abbreviated explanation, the science folks claim that the best resolution size for the average person with 2020 correctable vision is not 4K but QHD (2560 x 1440) on a 27 inch monitor. That keeps the text and UI readable and gives a pleasant sized screen image. Apple takes that science and scales the output image up to 5K then downsizes it back to 4K and you wind up with a readable interface with 1.78x sharper image than if you viewed it on a 27 inch QHD (2560 x 1440 monitor). Okay that pisses off a lot of folks, but it actually works. BTW, that expensive Apple 5K monitor isn't using a 5K image, it is scaled up to 5K and you get a QHD (2560 x 1440) image with 2x more sharpness than a 27 inch QHD monitor, and that is true Retina without downscaling.

......

OtinG · 05-26-2022, 06:45 PM

BTW, if you want the wallpaper I created it is easy to make. I put the HTML code in a quote box below. The wallpaper is created by using a small amount of Canvas and Javascript code inside of an HTML file.

Copy the text in the quote box, paste it into a text editor, and save it as something.html.
Open something.html in the Chrome browser, wait for the drawing to finish, place the cursor over the image and right-click, select Save as PNG.

Safari won't allow you to save a Canvas drawing as an image file. The Chrome browser will, so use it instead.

BTW, Each time you load this file and save it as an image, it will be unique because the lengths of the 3,840 color filaments are randomly generated.

Quote:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
<script>
var hue;
var sat;
var lum;
var hueAdjusted;
var satAdjusted;
var lumAdjusted;
</script>
</head>

<body>

<h1>HSL Color Models Created using Canvas</h1>

<p> </p>




<table class="HSLchart" style="width: 3840px;">

<tr>
<td class="HSLchartCell1">
<canvas id="FullSpectrumChart" width="3840" height="2160"></canvas>
<script>
var canvas = document.getElementById('FullSpectrumChart');
sat = 100;

//Create the Black background
var context = canvas.getContext("2d");
context.rect(0, 0, 3841, 2161);
context.fillStyle = 'black';
context.fill();
context.beginPath();

for (horzPixel = 0; horzPixel < 3841; horzPixel++) {
hue = horzPixel * 0.09375;
vertStart = 1060 - Math.floor(Math.random() * 981);
vertEnd = 1100 + Math.floor(Math.random() * 981);
for (vertPixel = vertStart; vertPixel < vertEnd; vertPixel++) {
lum = vertPixel * 0.04629;
if (canvas.getContext)
{
//var context = canvas.getContext("2d");
context.beginPath();
context.rect(horzPixel, vertPixel, 1, 1);
context.fillStyle = 'hsl(' + hue + ',' + sat + '%,' + 50 + '%)';
context.fill();
context.beginPath();
}
}
}
</script>
</td>
</tr>

</table>




<p> </p>

</body>
</html>

05-26-2022, 02:25 PM	#1
OtinG Old Gadget Guy Posts: 1,906 Karma: 6854865 Join Date: Jun 2018 Device: Oasis 3, iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPad mini 6, iPad Air 2020, Alexa Devices	Color matched a new 4K monitor to my MacBook Air M1 I just bought a nice, but affordable, Samsung S27A800U 27 inch 4K monitor and connected it my MacBook Air M1. I had been using a 7 year old Dell monitor which didn't cover much outside of the sRGB color profile. The Macs, iPhones, and iPads all have a wide gamut color profile based on the Display P3 color profile, so the old Dell, although a very nice monitor, was never going to be very color accurate. Since I do a lot of photography and video processing, I really needed a monitor with more color accuracy. Anyway, the Samsung fit the bill right out of the box without having to calibrate. And at $400 it was a bargain. The attached iPhone photo shows both the Samsung monitor and the MacBook Air M1 display with the same color spectrum wallpaper I created. They both look nearly identical. The monitor is attached via HDMI cable to my Anker 555 USB-C hub which is then attached to my MacBook Air M1. The monitor works well with HDMI. It can also be connected via DisplayPort or USB-C, but I chose the HDMI method because it was easier and in this case works just as well as the other two options. And in case you don't have a 4K monitor, be prepared for Apple's scaling and downsizing routines. You can use the monitor in 3840 x 2160 mode, but the text and UI elements will be too tiny to read without binoculars! So I set it up to use 2560 x 1440, which Apple then scales 2x to 5K (5120 x 2880), but since that is larger than the number of pixels the monitor has it is then downsized to 4K (3840 x 2160). Confused? You should be if you never encountered Apple's somewhat confusing world of Retina displays! But in an abbreviated explanation, the science folks claim that the best resolution size for the average person with 2020 correctable vision is not 4K but QHD (2560 x 1440) on a 27 inch monitor. That keeps the text and UI readable and gives a pleasant sized screen image. Apple takes that science and scales the output image up to 5K then downsizes it back to 4K and you wind up with a readable interface with 1.78x sharper image than if you viewed it on a 27 inch QHD (2560 x 1440 monitor). Okay that pisses off a lot of folks, but it actually works. BTW, that expensive Apple 5K monitor isn't using a 5K image, it is scaled up to 5K and you get a QHD (2560 x 1440) image with 2x more sharpness than a 27 inch QHD monitor, and that is true Retina without downscaling. ...... Attached Thumbnails Last edited by OtinG; 05-26-2022 at 02:32 PM.

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