The Color Accuracy Problem
Every modern iPhone display features a technology called “True Tone.” This system uses advanced ambient light sensors to analyze the color temperature of the room you are currently standing in. If you are sitting in a cozy room lit by warm, yellow incandescent bulbs, True Tone automatically shifts the entire iPhone display to a warmer, yellowish tint to match the environment. While this makes reading text much easier on the eyes, it completely destroys color accuracy. If you are editing a photograph in Lightroom or trying to color-correct a video for Instagram, the yellow tint applied by True Tone will cause you to overcompensate by making your edits artificially blue. When you finally post the photo, it will look terrible on everyone else’s screen. For any color-sensitive work, you must disable this feature.
How to Turn Off True Tone
You can quickly disable the feature directly from the Control Center before you begin editing.
- Wake up your iPhone.
- Swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen (or swipe up from the bottom edge on older iPhones with a Home button) to open the Control Center.
- Locate the vertical Brightness slider (the bar with the sun icon).
- Press and firmly hold your finger on the Brightness slider until it expands to fill the screen.
- Look at the bottom right corner of the expanded screen. You will see an icon labeled True Tone.
- Tap the True Tone icon so the button turns grey and says “Off.”
The Editing Environment
The moment you disable True Tone, your screen might suddenly look incredibly cold and blue compared to the room you are standing in. This is normal; you are now looking at the raw, mathematically accurate color profile of the display panel. You can now edit your photographs with confidence, knowing the whites are truly white and the colors are perfectly balanced.