Even the entire PESs including the barriers in the excited states by DTCAM-AEE are in excellent agreement within ∼ 0.3 eV. As the conventional LR-TDDFT is incapable of describing the conical intersections between S 1 and S 0 , these excellent agreements by MRSF-TDDFT with DTCAM-AEE are quite promising as an alternative to more costly multiconfiguration wavefunction methods, setting a significant milestone toward the understanding of retinal photoisomerizations. As compared to the values by BH&HLYP, those of newly developed DTCAM-AEE and DTCAM-VEE generally produce lower S 1 and S 0 energies, making the overall values closer to those of XMS-CASPT2.