Is Apples True tone a good thing for editing?

dave_bass5 · 5 Jul 2017

Ive just upgraded my old iPad pro 12.9 to the latest version. One of the improvements is True tone. While i think i understand how and what its doing im wondering how reliable it is for colour editing. It seems to be one of those automatic things, and although i do see a difference between on and off, im wondering if its actually needed, especial as most people wont be using anything like that to view the resulting images anyway. Maybe im missing something though.

sk66 · 5 Jul 2017

I would say it's not a good thing for editing; it adjusts the display (color/brightness) for the lighting conditions, and what you *should* be doing is adjusting/controlling the lighting conditions... exactly the opposite...

dave_bass5 · 5 Jul 2017

Thats what i thought. I see it touted as a good thing for editing but just cant get my head around it as normally i calibrate my PC screen and leave it at that. With it changing all the time on the ipad id expect to get random results.

Sassafras · 5 Jul 2017

dave_bass5 said:
I see it touted as a good thing for editing but just cant get my head around it as normally i calibrate my PC screen

Where did you see that?

dave_bass5 · 5 Jul 2017

Dunnio, just in a few reviews of the various iPads that have it.

Sassafras · 5 Jul 2017

I haven't seen such claims. In fact, so far as I know, True Tone turns off when using Photos.

dave_bass5 · 5 Jul 2017

Well I'm not lying so shall we leave it there. I don't want to side track from my question. Thanks anyway.

I will add, there is a noticeable difference in Lightroom mobile between on and off so this takes me back to my original question.

Sassafras · 5 Jul 2017

I'm dealing with your original question. So far as I can tell, it turns off in Photos so it's not designed to be used for editing. Accordingly, I would turn it off when editing. Here is a long explanation of what it does: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10265/understanding-the-97-ipad-pros-true-tone-display

Note it says "utimately, True Tone is a success at what it attempts to do, but one shouldn't believe that they're going to be seeing greater color accuracy with it turned on than they do when it's off. Anyone using the iPad Pro for color critical work will disable True Tone while the average user will find keeping it on provides a display that is pleasing to the eyes in any ambient lighting."

dave_bass5 · 5 Jul 2017

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be awkward, I just read so many reviews over the past year that I really don't know which ones said this. It's certainly only been said in passing, that's why I wasn't really sure of how it stands. I knew about it wont working for the photos app, but I wouldn't edit using that anyway.

Thanks for the link though, that's really useful. It makes a lot of sense. I do like what I'm seeing with TT on, but think for now I'll keep it off when I use Lightroom.