Dual display setup

Corpus-photo · Nov 16, 2014

I am about to purchase a new computer (mac mini) and monitor(s) for photo editing. My question: is it possible/feasible to setup 2 displays, 1 profiled for web output and the other profiled for print output? If so what would be the system requirements (dual video cards?) and would this cause issues in photoshop or lightroom? My goal is to be able to edit photos for print and web without having to switch profiles and setups on a single display.

Designer · Nov 16, 2014

MacIntosh does that automatically. Just hook it up, and you're there. The problem with my second display is that it is a cheap-o Acer on which the color is terrible. Sometimes I'll slide a user's manual over onto that screen if I need to flip through the manual on something while manipulating something on the Mac.

Ideally, if you're planning to use two displays for photo editing, you would get two very similar displays and calibrate them both to match.

Corpus-photo · Nov 16, 2014

Designer said:
MacIntosh does that automatically. Just hook it up, and you're there. The problem with my second display is that it is a cheap-o Acer on which the color is terrible. Sometimes I'll slide a user's manual over onto that screen if I need to flip through the manual on something while manipulating something on the Mac.

Ideally, if you're planning to use two displays for photo editing, you would get two very similar displays and calibrate them both to match.

Good to hear. I am reading a book (Color Management & Quality Output by Tom Ashe) and it mentions that Windows stores the lookup table for a display profile on the video card at startup which causes a conflict if two displays have different profiles. The solution is to have 2 different video cards is using windows but it does not mention this as an issue for Macs.

However, it does mention that ICC compliant applications (i.e. Photoshop and Lightroom) use the default system profile to display colors regardless of operating system. I am curious if photoshop is able to handle 2 different profiles stored on the system to match each display? I am worried that only 1 profile can be set to default and that it will use that profile for both displays.

Many thanks for the help, I am new to Mac OS and profiling displays. Just want to make sure I don't drop a lot of $ on 2 displays and then discover that they cannot be set up the way I pictured.