Damien Symonds

How do you score on this?

Great. Ok, go ahead and do your raw processing on the photo as normal (white balance, exposure, etc, etc) then show me the photo again.

There are two tricks in making Camera Raw keep a new default. You must only have ONE photo open in Camera Raw at the time you change the setting. After changing the setting, you MUST open that photo into Photoshop.

Then work in 16-bit for these ones, but change straight back to 8 for the next job.

16-bit is necessary in two situations: 1. When you're working in stupid ProPhoto RGB from stupid Lightroom. I'm very pleased to say this no longer applies to you. 2. When you're working on a very hazy photo, eg strongly backlit at golden hour or whatever. This might apply to you from time to time. But most of the time, 8-bit is completely perfect, and 16-bit is unnecessary overkill. And don't forget that you foolishly bought a very small Mac (hard drive size I mean) so you're going to be constantly struggling with space and performance issues. And as 16-bit files are twice as large as 8-bit files, you definitely need to stick to 8-bit as much as you can.

Why do you think you need to be in 16-bit?

Get CleanMyMac and run it right away, and every month hereafter. And clear some space off your hard drive. Aim for 90GB free at all times if you can.

Yes you are. SHUT DOWN EVERY DAY.

Ok, wow. There's a lot going on here. First, can you please do this for me.

Hi @Cailynn, you have a much bigger problem than a bit of flatness. Please follow this troubleshooter to fix your colour space.

Yep, I'd say any of those will be fine.

Just fixed Brian's typo

Looks fine from here!

May I see a screenshot?

I'm not sure what you've been told. Yes, of course calibrators are like all electronics - they don't live forever. But as long as you treat it right you'll get quite a few good years out of it.