The rectangle behind you

The right colour profile might save your slides

Projectors suck. Many of them will absolutely kill your dark slides, others will make your light slides look like ass. Some will do both. The best conference drinking game? Take a sip any time you hear a presenter say “You can’t see it very well…” about their own slides.

Proper presentation on the left, a simulation of a shitty projector on the right.

How to prevent this from happening? You can avoid very dark and very bright slides — but that’s hard. You can, and should, test the slides on the actual projector, and make necessary changes — but that might take a lot of effort.

An easier way might be just to change the colour profile for your Mac’s display. It affects everything on the screen, so you won’t need to tweak individual slides.

I prepared a few profiles that I use often, so you can just grab them and test yourself. The instructions below look intimidating, but it’s pretty straightforward — and trust me, it’ll be worth it.

Downloading projector-friendly colour profiles (sorry, Macs only)

1. Download projector profiles from my site.
2. Unzip the download. You will see a couple of files with names starting with Projector.
3. Open another Finder window.
4. Press ⌘+Shift+G.
5. Type in ~/Library/ColorSync/Profiles and press Enter.
6. You will see a directory, most likely empty.
7. Drop the three files you unpacked in step 2 here.
8. Go to System Preferences.
9. Go to Displays. Click on the Color tab.
10. Uncheck Show profiles for this display only at the bottom.
11. Find the Projector… entries.
12. Click through them, and pick the one that helps.

Let me know if that works! Also, if you know how to do it for a Windows computer — sorry, I have no idea.

And, if you do have to use a colour profile, tell the conference organizers. A good profile can make the slides look better, but you’ll always lose some of the quality. The conference organizers should invest in a better projector next time, or calibrate the one they already have.

How do set up a profile yourself

If you’re adventurous, you can create a custom profile yourself.

Go to System Preferences, click on Displays, switch the tab to Color.

While you’re here, uncheck Show profiles for this display only below.

Click on Calibrate…

In the new window, click Expert Mode, then Continue.

Follow the instructions. Usually, dragging only the left slider makes sense.

Use native gamma (or not?), use native white point, uncheck the sharing option (it will only mean typing admin password more often).

Name your profile something like Projector.

That’s it!

The rectangle behind you, a series of articles about interactive presentations.

By Marcin Wichary (@mwichary)