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Archive 2014 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:

  
 
melcat
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


John Wheeler wrote:

- I do all of the above with an understanding of the 3D gamut map of the target device (This can be seen in ColorSync on a Mac yet I use Color Think Pro for a 3D view). Some hues/luminosities support more saturation than others in a given target medium.


I have a pretty good idea of my targets' gamuts by now, since I only print to a small number of papers and always on the one printer. And yes, the solid gamut diagrams from ColorSync were helpful in gaining that knowledge.

Color Think Pro can scatter-plot all the pixel values in an image on top of a gamut so you can see how much is out and where. Do you find that useful? It also has a reputation for bugs - how's it been for you?



Apr 27, 2014 at 08:26 AM
John Wheeler
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


melcat wrote:
I have a pretty good idea of my targets' gamuts by now, since I only print to a small number of papers and always on the one printer. And yes, the solid gamut diagrams from ColorSync were helpful in gaining that knowledge.

Color Think Pro can scatter-plot all the pixel values in an image on top of a gamut so you can see how much is out and where. Do you find that useful? It also has a reputation for bugs - how's it been for you?


I do not use Color Think Pro as part of my primary workflow. The tools within LR and PS are quite sufficient. For me, Color Think Pro is a great learning/educational/teaching tool (though quite pricey IMHO for what you get).

IMHO the product is closer to what businesses call a "cash cow." Minimal investment in improvements and just bring in revenue/profits as it sits pretty much as is. I have seen no updates for the product in 2 1/2 years. When I reported a bug many years ago it was logged and ignored (bug in gamut volume calculations). It runs on my Mac with 10.8.5 and I do not see it crash. It does have problems closing. It closes the windows yet still has something running in the background. I have to force quit the program.

This is not a volume sale product so I can understand why the business does not put much R&D investment into it anymore.

As an example, below the 3D plot of the Adobe RGB color space in wireframe with Skibum's first image included as a scattergram plot. As can be seen there is a substantial amount of pixels outside the Adobe RGB gamut along the Lab "a" axis (magenta) with an interesting swoop of pixels. Did such a picture add much value in bringing in gamut - doubful yet it makes for a nice gamut shot

http://jkwphoto.smugmug.com/photos/i-PXbjW9N/0/L/i-PXbjW9N-L.png



Apr 27, 2014 at 09:27 AM
Eyeball
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


I had tweaked the hue on the previous sRGB rose image (don't ask me why) and that contributed to some of the "orangey" appearance. Here is another conversion to sRGB that only has a plain adjustment to saturation to preserve virtually all detail on the bright end.

http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12145446/Rose2.jpg

Also, echoing John - there isn't much difference between sRGB and AdobeRGB gamuts in this red rose zone. I suspect that the ProPhotoRGB version of the red rose is clipping, even on skibum's UP2414Q, although I can't be certain without the custom UP2414Q profile. Here is the plot of the red rose against sRGB (solid) and AdobeRGB (wireframe).

http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12145446/rose%20gamut.jpg



Apr 27, 2014 at 09:58 AM
Alan321
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


Eyeball, what software are you using to display the colour and image gamuts ?

One observation about the wide gamut monitors is that they (NEC, Eizo) tend to display more reds and blues than fit into the Adobe RGB gamut. They lose a little of the green - hence the 99% rating of Adobe RGB gamut - but pick up a lot more elsewhere.

- Alan



Apr 27, 2014 at 10:22 AM
Eyeball
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


I'm using the cheap version of Colorthink.

And, yes, as I mentioned in the previous post, I realize that the native gamut of a wide-gamut monitor might have a little more headroom in some areas but I couldn't find a native profile for the UP2414Q.

I still doubt that the UP2414Q represents all those reds without clipping though. Here, for example, is a plot over at TFT Central of the UP3214Q that shows native gamut running very close to sRGB in the red and orange zone. Most of the extra headroom is in the greens and cyans.

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/content/dell_up3214q.htm#hw_results

By the way, I'm not trying to rain on skibum's parade. I'm sure it is a very nice monitor. I am just always trying to improve my understanding of color management and confirm my understanding with others.



Apr 27, 2014 at 10:36 AM
skibum5
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


melcat wrote:
Thank you for posting this skibum5. I despaired that anyone else cared about this.


Yeah, me too.

Especially with the way a few guys on some other forums have been going around the last year telling everyone that wide gamut is rip-off made up by some marketers trying to get people to get stuck on the upgrade cycle while receiving LESS than nothing in return (they actually go on about how wide gamut monitors not only don't do anything useful but how they are actually the worst type to look at images!) and that you are a sucker if you fall for the trap. One even keeps insisting that 10bits are required for wide gamut too, even though that is nonsense. He says that wide gamut = AdobeRGB = 10 bits and that wide gamut can't even been seen without using an expensive pro graphics card. None of which is remotely true.

I was mostly just trying to counter such posts.

And especially with the way the owners of Smugmug and Zenfolio still insist on banning wide gamut images. I mean wow, the two sites that should be at the forefront of helping to slowly get wide gamut out there, are the most backwards, anti-progress sites in existence. Smugmug tends to be particularly obnoxious about wide gamut talk.


Approximately 2/3 of the petals on your rose (#3) is outside the gamut of my wide-gamut monitor.


Yeah the simple red rose is actually remarkably hard to see realistically other than in real life. Wide gamut monitors at least begin to get you there, but even then, a real rose is yet more darkly intense.



Do you have any links for such software? I fear my own free time is not copious enough to write it myself...


No. I have some books that discuss what you'd need to do to code such software and there are some links with some code fragements and pseudo-code but I haven't seen the actual software in full put out there. It's possible there are some links somewhere. If not, you have to code it yourself. It seems like mostly color scientists and maybe some advanced commercial labs have some stuff in house.


John Wheeler wrote:
Mostly, I try to get colors back into gamut by reducing saturation until the gamut preview shows me clipping I can live with. Frequently the colours in the resulting image are too tame to retain what was interesting about the image to start with. Aside from reducing saturation, what methods do you suggest?


Yeah mostly messing with saturation various ways, sliding tint around a bit, sometimes changing brightness a bit (sometimes the saturated colors exist in either brighter or darker tones). Sometimes it looks decent enough. Sometimes you lose a lot and it's kinda painful.
Basically I've largely stopped bothering at this point. I'm so behind on my photos as it is, spending all that time trying to fit things into sRGB is just too much added time, so if someone has wide gamut and they see the full image in it's best light great, if not and maybe I could have tweaked it a little better, well what can I say, it's a shame, but I'm no longer going to spend what would add up to hours and hours of time over many photos making sure that lowest denominator sees the images a touch better, maybe just here and there where a careful retuning seems to be particularly necessary and it's a really important image.

Although I have though about trying to write a gamut mapper that uses some of the fancy algorithms in the various books and papers. Then I could just fire images through that and try a few different methods really quickly. although even with that it's starting to become tedious to uploaded two different versions of everything, again I'm almost hopelessly far behind getting things online as it is. But it might even be useful for wde gamut monitors too, as you note even the rose still doesn't really fit on most wide gamut montiors, so a little advanced automatic mapping might help even for this stuff.

On Zenfolio I've been uploaded all prophotorgb and letting it convert them to sRGB (granted it would be better to convert them before they got turned into 8bits) so that is not really ideal. But I don't want the mess and time of uploaded two different sets of everything. I hope one day they allow the original wide gamut to be seen if the viewer selects that options. It's more than time they got around to not forcing all images to be seen as sRGB.

For now I'm stuck using Flickr to host my images as wide gamut viewable. Which is a bit ironic if anything, since Flickr is the photo site that probably has more beginners (although with even IE remapping all images to sRGB and the other big three properly handling all gamut types it's not a likely worry now; if someone is still using IE8 on XP, well oh well, that isn;t even a safe or smart thing to do virus and attack-wise at this point anyway either), less wide gamut monitors used to view the site and the most tablet viewer (this is the one place where wide gamut images go to pieces) usage.



Apr 27, 2014 at 12:53 PM
skibum5
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


Eyeball wrote:
I'm using the cheap version of Colorthink.

And, yes, as I mentioned in the previous post, I realize that the native gamut of a wide-gamut monitor might have a little more headroom in some areas but I couldn't find a native profile for the UP2414Q.

I still doubt that the UP2414Q represents all those reds without clipping though. Here, for example, is a plot over at TFT Central of the UP3214Q that shows native gamut running very close to sRGB in the red and orange zone. Most of the extra headroom is in the greens and cyans.

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/content/dell_up3214q.htm#hw_results

By the way, I'm not trying
...Show more

One thing to keep in mind is that those single slice gamut plots tend to be very misleading. Even for just comparing AdobeRGB vs sRGB it makes it seem like the only place AdobeRGB does better is in greens and yet you can get a lot more in the red/orange zone out of AdobeRGB too, it's just at different layers in the 3D gamut where it has extras for those colors.

Also, if they measured the primaries well (and TFT once upon a time did not at all since they use to use non-wide gamut capable probes to measure all screens , pretty sure they have gone to better probes now days though), then the 3214Q using that new technology type seems to offer up a lot less extra reds than the old wide gamut CCFL LCD monitors did and less so to an even greater degree compared to the new BG LED LCD monitors (such as the NEC PAxx2W series and Dell UP2414Q).




Apr 27, 2014 at 01:03 PM
skibum5
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p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


In all honesty I think I put the rose up a bit too hot as it is clipped a lot even on wide gamut screens. A good -6 on saturation in photoshop might have been a nice balance, still keeping a decent bit of the intensity without looking quite so color blown.

Here are some are gamut warning shots of the original rose version in various gamuts:

And then the -6 versions in various gamuts:

Side note: In some cases some of the darkest shadow stuff goes out of gamut much quicker with the 8bit jpg than with the original 16bit PNG so for some of the monitor profiles and printer profiles the colors are probably only just barely out in the 8bit jpg and just a quantization error away from making it. Which brings me to an interesting point, it would be cool if Adobe made the gamut warning able to be set to different shades, maybe a grayscale telling you how far out or maybe a simple 3-4 tone: just BARELY out doesn't even matter, barely out, moderately out, way out.

EDIT: i will get around to posting them later



Apr 27, 2014 at 01:21 PM
John Wheeler
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p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


Hi Skibum

I agree that Adobe RGB color space is larger than sRGB on he Red Magenta side. The 2D plots show the max gamut at all values of Luminosity (or the third variable missing on the 2D graph).

That said, you images are well outside the Adobe RGB gamut and pretty confident outside your monitor which is close to Adobe RGB. Following are three 2D plots the first in Lab mode, the second in Yxy mode (common 2D gamut map), and the thrid is the Luv mode (not common to see this one). Each has the pixels from your first image mapped into the plot.

So the pixels outside these boundaries are mapped back into your monitor gamut one way or another (whether manual or though CMS). I don't think it changes one of your original points that there are subjects that can be very wide gamut outside of sRGB -- its jsut that they can be outside of Adobe RGB as well. Hope this is of value:

Lab mapping:

http://jkwphoto.smugmug.com/photos/i-LLrSvVL/0/L/i-LLrSvVL-L.png

Yxy mapping:

http://jkwphoto.smugmug.com/photos/i-KW6qnwc/0/L/i-KW6qnwc-L.png

Luv mapping:

http://jkwphoto.smugmug.com/photos/i-T6DKCNG/0/L/i-T6DKCNG-L.png




Apr 27, 2014 at 01:48 PM
skibum5
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p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


Here is a 2D max slice (255 value or 255 pair for each primary and secondary) gamut measurement made with HCFR3 and i1D3 and BG LED file (the reference gamut shown is sRGB) of my Dell UP2414Q BG LED LCD monitor:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s5/v130/p99479239-4.jpg
and in uv instead:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s9/v97/p352550321-4.jpg

here are plots from wide gamut CCFL LCD NEC PA241W:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s1/v54/p1143971988.jpg
and in uv:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s2/v58/p1143971764.jpg

Edited on Apr 27, 2014 at 05:58 PM · View previous versions



Apr 27, 2014 at 05:41 PM
skibum5
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p.2 #11 · p.2 #11 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


For kicks here are plots from calibrating an sRGB with Gamma 2.2 emulation mode on it (suing HCFR 3 with i1D3 with BG LED file):
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v138/p262097183-5.jpg
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s12/v178/p359503875-5.jpg
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s12/v183/p42626683-5.jpg
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v135/p415899736-5.jpg
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v156/p62308240-5.jpg
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v135/p113459468-5.jpg
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v163/p219892425-5.jpg
primary luminance tracking:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v157/p284600089-5.jpg
primary/secondary saturation and tone shift tracking:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v158/p329271530-5.jpg




Apr 27, 2014 at 05:47 PM
skibum5
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p.2 #12 · p.2 #12 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


In all honesty I think I put the rose up a bit too hot as it is clipped a lot even on wide gamut screens. A good -6 on saturation in photoshop might have been a nice balance, still keeping a decent bit of the intensity without looking quite so color blown.

Here are some are gamut warning shots of the fall leaves lit by golden evening sun:
sRGB:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v165/p908955698-5.jpg
AdobeRGB:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v149/p1029253153-5.jpg
Dell UP2414Q NG:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s5/v117/p1068896442-5.jpg
ProphotoRGB:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v168/p1011524630-5.jpg

And the same for the original rose photo:
ProphotoRGB:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v157/p758674341-4.jpg
Dell UP2414Q NG:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s8/v81/p783720228-4.jpg
NEC PA241W NG:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s12/v187/p576486423-4.jpg
AdobeRGB:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s11/v29/p808860825-4.jpg
sRGB:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v151/p791283644-4.jpg
Epson R3000 on Epson Ultra Premium Lustre Paper:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s8/v85/p898376635-4.jpg
Epson R3000 on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Baryta:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s8/v85/p884850669-4.jpg
Canon 9500MarkII on Hahn PR Baryta:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s5/v131/p896871919-4.jpg
Canon 9500II on Hahn PR Pearl:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v140/p676893760-4.jpg
Canon 9000II on Hahn PR Pearl:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s8/v74/p620050187-4.jpg

They can potentially bit a bit misleading since the warning doesn't tell you whether things are out by the barest bit or by tons so even when the gamut warnings look similar in some cases the visual difference is major since one warning might mean just barely out of gamut and another might mean radically out of gamut.

Side note: In some cases some of the darkest shadow stuff goes out of gamut much quicker with the 8bit jpg than with the original 16bit PNG so for some of the monitor profiles and printer profiles the colors are probably only just barely out in the 8bit jpg and just a quantization error away from making it. Which brings me to an interesting point, it would be cool if Adobe made the gamut warning able to be set to different shades, maybe a grayscale telling you how far out or maybe a simple 3-4 tone: just BARELY out doesn't even matter, barely out, moderately out, way out.





Apr 27, 2014 at 06:20 PM
skibum5
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p.2 #13 · p.2 #13 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


And for the rose with -6 saturation applied to as how I had originally posted it:
ProphotoRGB:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s2/v53/p10350715-4.jpg
Dell UP2414Q NG:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s3/v26/p67047844-4.jpg
NEC PA241W NG:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s12/v172/p215845099-4.jpg
AdobeRGB:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s11/v27/p430438200-4.jpg
sRGB:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s5/v118/p332072019-4.jpg
Epson R3000 Hahn PR Pearl:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v142/p372414602-4.jpg
Canon 9500II Hahn PR Pearl:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s8/v13/p225243729-4.jpg
Epson R3000 Hahn PR Baryta:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s5/v119/p376758732-4.jpg
Canon 9500II Hahn PR Baryta:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s5/v116/p209111317-4.jpg
Epson R1800 Hahn PR Baryta:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s8/v13/p285220447-4.jpg
Epson R3000 Premium Lustre:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s9/v87/p276488518-4.jpg
Epson R800 Ultra Glossy:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v165/p457983904-4.jpg
PAL/SECAM:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s2/v51/p244327200-4.jpg
Panavision Something Something Tungsten:
http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v149/p510322287-4.jpg

Again it can be misleading because the gray may mean wayyyyy out of gamut in some cases and barely in others (even across any single gamut test).



Apr 27, 2014 at 06:36 PM
John Wheeler
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p.2 #14 · p.2 #14 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


Again it can be misleading because the gray may mean wayyyyy out of gamut in some cases and barely in others (even across any single gamut test).

Hi Skibum - I agree the existing PS out of gamut flag could be way better. Just for grins I created an example of what that might look like if an out of gamut grayscale was overlaid on the original rose image for the out of gamut flag. The grayscale is scaled such that in ProPhoto HSB eyedropper measurements a 10% amount of B (brightness) represents 1% out of gamut. The image shown is the difference from your ProPhoto image and sRGB showing an out of gamut range of up to about 5% (5% shift of ProPhoto RGB numbers going to sRGB with the delta RGB value measures as Square Root of (dR^2 + dG^2 + dB^2) or at least a reasonable approximation. I shut off the flag for anything under 0.5% of of gamut to show the underlying image.

You can get a feel for this by duplicating the original, make it a Smart Object, Open Smart Ojbect and Convert to Profile to sRGB, Save, go back to original document, send blend to difference and then read the RGB values. All my image did was take the additional steps to convert to grayscale image based on 3D RGB delta distances (approximately)

http://jkwphoto.smugmug.com/photos/i-stGJkrh/0/L/i-stGJkrh-L.png



Apr 28, 2014 at 10:54 AM
woos
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p.2 #15 · p.2 #15 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


John Wheeler wrote:
Hi Skibum - Thanks for sharing the images. A wide gamut monitor has always been on my list for the next monitor upgrade. Your images/posts have also helped emphasize several other factors with me even more strongly than before:

- Using soft-proofing to identify and bring colors into gamut of the target device yields better results than the rendering intent algorithms in a Color Managed System (CMS) especially when the color gamuts are widely different.

- Wide gamut monitors can be subject to the same issues. Case in point your first image has a significant percent of ProPhoto Colors that are
...Show more

Use firefox aurora, change to use version 4 color management. Problem solved. =p



Apr 28, 2014 at 10:59 AM
skibum5
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p.2 #16 · p.2 #16 · A few good examples of why wide gamut monitors matter:


Although I have to say that as cool as wide gamut can be at times, UHD monitors.... whoa. And they make just about ANY image look WAY better, while wide gamut monitors only make some images looks better and a few vastly better.

I have to say that the Dell UP2414Q I got it about the best photographic purchase I've made in years (wide gamut and UHD).



Apr 28, 2014 at 04:20 PM
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