Is iPhone still color accurate with True Tone turned off? (2024)

Hello All,
I was just wondering if True Tone turned off still made the display color accurate. They boast "most color accurate display", but does that mean TT is on or off, or does it matter?

Thanks!

Appleinapot said:

True tone is if you want really accurate colours displayed on the screen, hope this helped

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Not really. True Tone warms up the display to more closely match the ambient light, but that's counterproductive if you want truly accurate colors.

Appleinapot said:

True tone is if you want really accurate colours displayed on the screen, hope this helped

Click to expand...

As @macphoto861 said True Tone matches the screen temp to the ambient light which should strain your eyes less. OFF is when you get accurate colors.

macphoto861 said:

Not really. True Tone warms up the display to more closely match the ambient light, but that's counterproductive if you want truly accurate colors.

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Lol. BS.

You think being in different ambient lighting will keep the colors accurate? The way your eyes percieve color, contrast, color temperature and white point is adversely affected depending on the ambient lighting, color temperature of the ambient light and intensity of such light. If you're in a crisp white LED lighted office, reds, greens, blues, whites etc will look different to your eyes than if you were in warm incandescent lighting.

TrueTone mitigates this as best as it can with warming or cooling the display in tandem with auto-brightness bringing up the brightness.

Motionblurrr said:

Lol. BS.

You think being in different ambient lighting will keep the colors accurate? The way your eyes percieve color, contrast, color temperature and white point is adversely affected depending on the ambient lighting, color temperature of the ambient light and intensity of such light. If you're in a crisp white LED lighted office, reds, greens, blues, whites etc will look different to your eyes than if you were in warm incandescent lighting.

TrueTone mitigates this as best as it can with warming or cooling the display in tandem with auto-brightness bringing up the brightness.

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The OP didn’t ask how he can perceive truer colors on their device. The question was how he/she can get the display to show accurate colors. It feels like you just like to argue for the sake of arguing and make things more complicated than required.

OhMyMy said:

The OP didn’t ask how he can perceive truer colors on their device. The question was how he/she can get the display to show accurate colors. It feels like you just like to argue for the sake of arguing and make things more complicated than required.

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You can't just really reply to someone who was right with "Not really." and not get corrected. I'm sorry but them the breaks.

Motionblurrr said:

Lol. BS.

You think being in different ambient lighting will keep the colors accurate? The way your eyes percieve color, contrast, color temperature and white point is adversely affected depending on the ambient lighting, color temperature of the ambient light and intensity of such light. If you're in a crisp white LED lighted office, reds, greens, blues, whites etc will look different to your eyes than if you were in warm incandescent lighting.

TrueTone mitigates this as best as it can with warming or cooling the display in tandem with auto-brightness bringing up the brightness.

Click to expand...

While I agree that for casual content consumption True Tone is easier on the eyes and will look more natural, the last thing I want when editing is for the white point of my display to be fluctuating depending on the color temperature of the ambient light. I keep the lighting at a low and fairly consistent level in my office, though the temp does vary throughout the day depending on the amount of daylight that makes its way in around the blackout curtains vs. my desk lamp. The level of this light is not significant, but if my MBP sees more warm light in the evening (even if it's dim), it's going to artificially warm up my display, which would then cause me to edit my photos to be too blue when printed.

The basic problem is that we do not perceive colors accurately, and the color we perceive is affected by the surrounding context.
If you put a teal color next to a blue, it will appear greenish.
If you put the same teal color next to a green it will look bluish.

If you look at a 5000K white surrounded by a 3000K white, it will look blue.
If you look at the same 5000K white surrounded by a 6500K white, it will look amber.
All of these whites are white, just different temperatures. There is no "correct" temperature for white.

True Tone attempts to compensate for our inaccurate color perception as the surrounding color temperature changes.
If you set True Tone off, then the only way to perceive the displayed colors accurately is to ensure your ambient surrounding light is at the same color temperature for which the screen is calibrated.
I suspect the phone screen is calibrated to a moderately high color temperature like 6500K. You would then need to change all your light bulbs to 6500K bulbs (!) in order to perceive the colors accurately (or view it outside on a cloudy day).

I do a lot of photo editing, and have changed all my light bulbs to 5000K. I should really go higher, so it is a compromise for livability.