Hi John I agree with Rene's points. To some extent it depends what your area of work is. If you are sending out files to others and working towards print, your screen needs to be calibrated and profiled properly. Basically , I believe that your screen calibration needs to be set up to match an accurate proof print when displaying the same image. I think that's the only way to tell if its actually calibrated to the right targets for luminance and white point. I recollect the experience of a colourmanagement colleague who was asked to help sort things out in a prepress company producing a weekly product catalogue. He was told that the operators used a visual method of calibration, at the time, the "Adobe Gamma" utility, I think. Each was proud if how well he could calibrate his screen this way, each thought his calibration capabilities way better than any of the others. Of course that meant that, when stepping back and viewing these screens to compare them, there were some quite significant differences between them. The impact of that was that if each were given the same product image to colour correct (maybe a pack, so they were using the actual item as reference) - they all came up with different results. As you can imagine, in a company striving for accurate catalogues, this was unacceptable. But no one had thought that screen calibration might be the issue. Buying a colorimeter based system and using a proof as reference to optimise luminance and colour temperature targets sorted the issue entirely. Does that help you get it?There is no place for individual taste in screen appearance. Regards, Neil Barstow :: Apple Solutions Expert :: Colour Management Specialist www.colourmanagement.net/ On Thursday, 5 June 2014, John Robert Robinson <jrswebhome@yahoo.com> wrote:

I use a late 2009 27” iMac w 10.9.3 Mavericks.

Normally I use “iMac” color profile. I don’t bother with color profiles for my iMac, but today I opened up the Display System Preference. I chose to create a custom monitor profile using the expert mode.

Tell me if I am doing this wrong, but I squint my eyes to see the background and foreground apple match, adjusting the handles as I go. I do this for all apple calibration windows, then select slightly less of target gamma than 1.8, then use native white point. Save and assign.

But the screen seems to have too much contrast afterwards. I did just as the calibration windows asked by matching the apple and background. Using slightly less than target gamma and native white point.

My question is, why does a default “iMac” Profile appear to be better for viewing than a custom profile made w expert mode?

John R