Which colour GAMUT?

[TejK]

I'm upgrading my computer to a mac mini M4 and now looking for a 4k 60hz monitor to go with it. My interests are photography and videography. No interest in printing.

Is there any opinion on suitable choices for the colour gamut capabilities of a modern monitor?

sRGB is old but compatible and cheap. AdobeRGB is better for photos. Apple's DisplayP3 is generally very nice but expensive. Rec2020 is better still and great for video. And there's HDR10 to consider as well, whatever that means.

Since our cameras can all shoot RAW and have more bit depth than displays can handle, what format should we be processing towards when finalising an image for display? Which gamut and dynamic range?

Has anyone given this topic any thought and come to any conclusions?

Thanks,

Tej

[IanT]

Hi Tej,

I would recommend that you stick with sRGB, in that the majority of folk who might view your image(s) if not printed will be using that screen gamut, and consequently will see the colour range you, as the producer, will see. Personally, I think you might have difficulty discerning the colour difference between gamuts. The wider gamuts (AdobeRGB, Profoto, etc.) encompass sRGB unchanged and simply 'add' a range of colours beyond that gamut's range. Unless you have specific scientific reason to bother about this, stick with the simplest. Printing cannot match the gamut of any screen and most projectors struggle to match sRGB. Despite this, capture your images in AdobeRGB or similar and you will be future-proof. Your sRGB screen driver with map any out-of-gamut colours to the nearest in-gamut. All this demands that your screen is properly calibrated, of course, and I am told (not being a Mac-ite) that this is not absolutely simple with a Mac screen, which always seems to offer over-saturated colours as standard.

I hope this helps, but by all means get back in touch for a deeper dive!

[IanS]

Tej, what Ian says makes a lot of sense. You'll pay quite a bit more for a wider gamut, and as Ian said other people's monitors will not match what you are able to see on your own. If you just want to see your photos in private a wider gamut will make a difference only to the most saturated colours (such as aurora); few natural objects fall outside sRGB, but if your interest is in bright plastic bricks, you'll see more with a wider gamut. Also, wider gamut displays will generally be brighter.
The other issue you might want to consider is future proofing. Wide gamut displays, mainly based on q-dot technologies are likely to become more widespread and affordable, so more people will be able to see what you do. But projectors don't have the same path to improvement and will likely lag behind.

[TejK]

Thanks IanT and IanS for your excellent replies. That all makes good sense.

An important thing to mention/admit is that any photo/video of mine should stand up by virtue of its meaningful content/story/feeling rather than its colour gamut. After all, I like to make obscure, blurry, dark images, and so gamut has to be relatively unimportant!!!

That being said, I'm still interested in what I might be losing if I buy an sRGB display. And the unease behind this is that my old iMac display has always looked gorgeous. My son is a PC gamer and his monitors are very fast and expensive and sRGB, and I don't like how they render images. I also have a linux box with an sRGB monitor. Images look poor there as well. Yet my iPhone looks gorgeous, so what is going on??? Is it just that Apple devices have pimped colours?

After scouring the internet, I found something interesting that I'd like to share with you - for you to view on your computer screens and your phones, please. I think your phones will fare well, but that's a guess. On the following link you'll find an image of coloured squares representing colours outside of the sRGB gamut but inside P3. Inside each coloured square is a circle with that colour clamped to sRGB. So... if your display is sRGB you won't see any inner circles as the whole of the square will get clamped by your display. If your display gamut is wider, however, you will see the circles. I can switch my iMac display from sRGB to P3 and sure enough the circles appear when in P3; when switched to sRGB they disappear!

Please visit this retro web page and take a look. I'd be very interested in finding out how it works for you.
http://endavid.com/index.php?entry=80

Thanks, Tej

[IanT]

I'll give that a try Tej, but ... honestly ... none of this really matters for photographic art because if you are 'style' editing your pics, you will make them look like what you want to see. Therefore, you would like anyone else viewing them to see the same, or very nearly so. In other words, stick to sRGB. I have a technical design background and I always strive to achieve the best technical solution that I can get to. But I am also a pragmatist, which principle mitigates the absolute technical quest into a practical reality.

Yes, Apple stuff is known to have 'pimped' colours, too bright and too saturated; yes, gaming software output can look weird, but what are you comparing it with? I'll bet that 99.9% of monitors in use for such are NOT properly calibrated. If occasionally you don't like what you see on a screen, it probably has more to do with the apathy/ignorance of the producer than the technical aspects of gamut consideration. Or maybe Apple screens have brainwashed you into thinking other stuff is dull and poor. Ultimately, this level of colour management is more applicable to industrial reproduction processes and bears little resemblance or effect on our real, amateur photographic pursuits. So - if I might make so bold: do as I have come to do: concentrate on making your images look good in sRGB, and the problem (if it can be called such) goes away!

Notwithstanding all of the above, I will admit to a wry smile when I see someone else interested enough to tread the same path as I have, over the years! Always happy to have a long, boring chat about this, by the way ;->

[IanT]

A final thought - what gamut will your eyes encompass? If you've not found out yet, try this test. It can be most revealing ... https://www.xrite.com/hue-test

[IanS]

Tej, the question is, what is your objective? Perhaps you like vivid, oversaturated colours? Many people do, as witnessed by those who use their phones on "vivid". Then you will want a wide gamut monitor.

Perhaps you should take some photos of your living room/study, and display the results on various monitors alongside the real scene. While you are there, adjust the raw file to match the scene. Which monitor gives the best perceived colour agreement between picture and reality? And, look away from the room, and adjust the picture so you like it best?

There is one other issue to bear in mind - two monitors, each of which displays an identical (say) sRGB colour space, may give quite different perceived colours in real life use. Typically and most simply, brighter, less reflective monitors in a darker working environment will give more saturated perceived colours. There will be other differences based on the backlight technology, various brightness enhancement technologies and so on.

Incidentally, your son's gaming monitor very likely uses a different LCD technology which provides faster response but less faithful and uniform colour.

[TejK]

Thank you both again. Yes, I did try the hue test. It was fun.

More importantly, I have just today found out an ugly truth. Outside my walled garden, colour management appears to be uncommon. I had imagined that it would be a standard built-in, system-wide process, part of the hardware almost, but apparently not so. Whatever photographic work you produce on your carefully calibrated screen, it's unlikely to be seen as intended by the vast majority of online viewers, whichever gamut you use or don't use. Also, environmental viewing conditions vary greatly, as does human vision, so it was never going to work out anyway.

So all this gamut business matters only if you are going to attempt print copy? Or if your movie is going to be shown in an actual cinema? I'm doing neither.

[IanS]

Definitely a question for IanT! But my understanding was, that provided you have the right colour profile installed for each of your devices, all should be well. However, to get it really right you need to calibrate your monitor, and if you are really obsessive, your camera too. Ian, is that anywhere close to right?

[IanT]

So, to summarise, create your images so that you like what you see in an sRGB environment and anyone else viewing them will like them too. Assuming that they are in a calibrated sRGB world as well! If they don't, it won't be your fault: spend your time enjoying yourself and working to your own satisfaction, ignore such arcane worries and .... relax ;->. Oh, and gamut hardly matters for printing, because no dots on paper will ever fully replicate your screen image. However. A good 12 colour inkjet printer will get mighty close.

[TejK]

ok, so i got a new monitor, and decided to pay a little bit of a premium for qdots and wide gamut. have set up the colours so that images look the same as they do on my other screens. of course they'll look different on most other people's screens, but that can't be helped.

it might be fun to play with the colour calibration spider thing to see how much of a difference that makes. i am imagining that the club has one somewhere? how do i get to borrow it? thanks.

[IanT]

Now you're talking! Yes, the club has a Datacolor Spyder .. pop along to the meeting this Thursday night .. we can say hello to each other and you can borrow the Spyder from Vicky Willis who administers the free one-week loan.

[TejK]

sounds good - see you there!