A system and method for compensating for average brightness dependency (ABD) differences between displays with and without average brightness dependency (ABD) includes color correcting source picture content on a reference display to output color corrected picture content. In addition, an ABD simulation process uses the color corrected picture content to simulate the display of content on the reference display. Subsequently, a compensation process receives the color corrected picture content and information from the simulation process and applies an ABD compensation characteristic to the color corrected picture content for correctly displaying the source picture content on a display with different ABD characteristics than the reference display.