Is editing with a wide gamut monitor necessary?

[Heterodim]

Hi, I recently tried to edit my photos with a wide gamut monitor (the cheap one dell 2716d). This was my first time using a wide gamut monitor.

The edited photos look unsaturated in a normal monitor as I expected although I converted them to sRGB. Is necessary for me to edit photos with a wide gamut monitor if I mainly share my photos on the internet?

What a wide gamut monitor can provide if I do not usually print?

Thank you!

[Czornyj]

Wide gamut can provide confusion if you don't understand the idea.

In the near future the whole TV/AV industry will switch to wide gamut (Rec.2020), and as a results all the displays will become wide gamut too. But it's not necessary to worry about it yet.

Hi, I recently tried to edit my photos with a wide gamut monitor (the cheap one dell 2716d). This was my first time using a wide gamut monitor.

The edited photos look unsaturated in a normal monitor as I expected although I converted them to sRGB. Is necessary for me to edit photos with a wide gamut monitor if I mainly share my photos on the internet?

What a wide gamut monitor can provide if I do not usually print?

Thank you!

[torger]

A wide gamut monitor requires color management, or else you'll get confusion with stuff looking under-saturated or over-saturated depending on context.

Unfortunately Microsoft Windows doesn't have that good color management, meaning that everything that's not specifically managed will be stretched to the full wide gamut, and there's been some chaos (still is?) around web browsers being color managed or not and how they display untagged graphics. On OS X everything not specifically managed will be converted to sRGB (as it should), but you still need a valid monitor profile of course.

Photos shared on the internet is still best done in sRGB, so if you only do that I recommend an sRGB monitor, it's easier especially if you think color management is difficult.

If you do prints wide gamut can be useful as the printer can generally display more saturated colors than sRGB. Even if you only export to sRGB wide gamut can be useful as you can see "what you give up" and possibly adjust your post-processing based on that extra knowledge.

[D Fosse]

A wide gamut monitor requires color management

That sums it up perfectly.

Unfortunately Microsoft Windows doesn't have that good color management

Side note (the OP can ignore this...):

Windows doesn't have any color management at all, it's strictly hands-off - as opposed to Mac OS where ColorSync gets involved on every level. In Windows, everything is left to the application itself, the OS just makes the profiles available for the apps.

IMO that's a blessing. It makes troubleshooting much easier, and it removes a whole level of bug-potential. A recent example is the infamous black clipping in Lightroom and some other applications, which went on unresolved for almost a year. That kind of thing doesn't happen in Windows.

The flip side is that most "native" apps in Windows are not color managed, and that can be a bother with a wide gamut display. You just have to ignore it. The only app that does proper color management is the Photo Viewer, and even that seems a lost cause now that the new "Photos" again dropped color management. And then of course there's Internet Explorer. The less said about that the better.

[Simon Garrett]

Unfortunately Microsoft Windows doesn't have that good color management

Windows provides a fairly rich set of colour management capabilities (Windows Color System - WCS), but it's the application (not the operating system) that does the colour management, using the WCS capabilities. 

As D Fosse says, that's nearly always a good thing.  Generally it's the application - not Windows itself - that knows what colour management is needed.  Often Windows doesn't know the colour space of the image data, and won't know what rendering intent is appropriate. 

Back to the OP's issue:

Most software and most devices (monitors, printers) sort of default to roughly sRGB.  That means that a normal gamut monitor (which will approximate very roughly to sRGB colour space) will look OK even without colour management.

But the moment ANYTHING in the system is not sRGB (wide-gamut monitor, images in Adobe RGB etc), then you must use colour management or colours will almost certainly be wrong.  That means colour managed software (most photo software is), a calibrated and profiled monitor (using a hardware tool - i1, Spyder, ColorMunki...) and all images must have embedded profiles. 

With a wide-gamut monitor, even if it's calibrated and profiled, remember that most non-photo software is not colour managed, and will result in over-saturated colour.  The only browser that is fully colour managed for all images and all graphic data is Firefox (and then only if you set option gfx.color_management.mode to 1 - Google for how to do it).  Safari is colour managed for images that contain embedded profiles but not other graphic elements, Chrome was similar to Safari, but last time I looked earlier this year they'd broken it again, and both IE and Edge are a total waste of space and useless on wide-gamut monitors. 

As Czornyj says, soon there will be many more wide-gamut consumer devices, and both MS and Apple will have to make colour management much more seemless and automatic, but at present, the moment you stray from sRGB you need to know something about colour management. 

If you don't want to get into colour management, put that wide-gamut monitor down and walk away!

[torger]

The principle with OS X is to let sRGB be default, any app that is not color managed will be displayed as sRGB. All color managed apps displays the same regardless of Windows, OS X or Linux (like I'm myself using). It's not like OS X overruns the color management of the app if it has it, but the API is different so yes there can be a bug in the OS X version of some particular software that's not in the Windows version, but the problem is not that the OS has a default color space. With Linux and Windows there's no default color space, meaning that non-managed apps are stretched to the full gamut on the monitor whatever that is. I can't say that's a good thing.

In any case you must have a profile installed for the monitor of course.

If you have that OS X is pretty seamless already today, while Windows and Linux is a bit more quirky, over-saturated icons on the desktop and things like that.

[Heterodim]

A wide gamut monitor requires color management, or else you'll get confusion with stuff looking under-saturated or over-saturated depending on context.

Unfortunately Microsoft Windows doesn't have that good color management, meaning that everything that's not specifically managed will be stretched to the full wide gamut, and there's been some chaos (still is?) around web browsers being color managed or not and how they display untagged graphics. On OS X everything not specifically managed will be converted to sRGB (as it should), but you still need a valid monitor profile of course.

Photos shared on the internet is still best done in sRGB, so if you only do that I recommend an sRGB monitor, it's easier especially if you think color management is difficult.

If you do prints wide gamut can be useful as the printer can generally display more saturated colors than sRGB. Even if you only export to sRGB wide gamut can be useful as you can see "what you give up" and possibly adjust your post-processing based on that extra knowledge.

Thank you for the answer. What bothers me is that how can I make a photo edited using a wide gamut look the same on a normal monitor?
Basically, I process a photo on a wide gamut monitor in photoshop with ProPhoto RGB and export it with convertring it to sRGB.  Then I copy this photo to a mac and it still looks less saturated than what it looks in the wide gamut monitor before.
I always think that if I convert a photo from Prophoto RGB to sRGB, then it will look nearly the same on different monitors.
This happens because the preview software doesn't support color management? Or, the photo viewing softwares do support color management, but my exported JPG files do not contain color management profile?

Thanks.

[hjulenissen]

A wide gamut monitor requires color management, or else you'll get confusion with stuff looking under-saturated or over-saturated depending on context.

Wide gamut monitors generally offer a sRGB mode that offers similar (perhaps slightly better?) behaviour compared to regular-gamut displays.

Of course, this negates much of the reason for owning such a display.

I have an inexpensive Dell wide-gamut display and I am using Lightroom on Windows. One annoying thing is that for general computer usage, I need to switch the display mode manually to sRGB in order for videos, images on websites etc to appear as expected. It would be a lot more ergonomic if the OS/apps/... did this automatically.

-h

[D Fosse]

I need to switch the display mode manually to sRGB in order for videos, images on websites etc to appear as expected. It would be a lot more ergonomic if the OS/apps/... did this automatically.

For web, all you need to do is use Firefox, set to color management mode 1. This will honor embedded profiles, but more importantly also assign sRGB to any and all untagged material, including graphic page elements. Everything gets converted into the monitor profile and displays as it should, with the monitor still at native (wide) gamut.

Two important exceptions are video and Flash-based content. These are apparently un-color-manageable. I don't know how OS X deals with this.

[D Fosse]

it still looks less saturated than what it looks in the wide gamut monitor before.

Then you're either viewing it in an application that isn't color managed, or the monitor isn't calibrated/profiled properly so that an sRGB-like monitor profile is used for it. Both will cause oversaturation.

Remember, color management is required. This must be done correctly.

[sankos]

Two important exceptions are video and Flash-based content. These are apparently un-color-manageable.

If you want colour-managed video on Windows you can switch that option on in the MPC-HC program. Unfortunately I haven't found a way to view flash-based video in Firefox so that it's colour-managed, so on a wide-gamut monitor you have to learn to live with the oversaturation or use a desaturated "sRGB" profile if your monitor has such an option (I don't use it on my old Eizo).

[Simon Garrett]

Thank you for the answer. What bothers me is that how can I make a photo edited using a wide gamut look the same on a normal monitor?
Basically, I process a photo on a wide gamut monitor in photoshop with ProPhoto RGB and export it with convertring it to sRGB. 

If you want to end up always by converting to sRGB then you might be better off not having a wide-gamut monitor.  Get a monitor with a gamut as close as possible to sRGB.  Or use colour management (which is what I would do). 

Then I copy this photo to a mac and it still looks less saturated than what it looks in the wide gamut monitor before.
I always think that if I convert a photo from Prophoto RGB to sRGB, then it will look nearly the same on different monitors.

It will do that (look the same) if you are using colour management, or if everything is sRGB and both monitors (on the PC and Mac) have identical gamuts very close to sRGB.  If there's a difference, then the monitors have different gamut.

The best solution is to use colour management: colour-managed software, properly calibrated and profiled monitors (calibrated to the same white point and brightness), images always converted (not assigned) to a colour space if conversion is used, and images always with embedded profiles. 

This happens because the preview software doesn't support color management? Or, the photo viewing softwares do support color management, but my exported JPG files do not contain color management profile?

Thanks.

Could be any of those. 

At the risk of repeating what others say, if at any point the image is not sRGB, or if the monitors do not have a gamut close to sRGB with 2.2 gamma, identical brightness and white point, then colour management is pretty much essential to get accurate, consistent colour. 

In fact, forget the conditions: IMHO colour management is pretty much essential to get accurate, consistent colour.  End of. 

Without colour management, you can never know if your colour is accurate, or whether you have introduced erroneous corrections in post processing to compensate for errors in the monitor (for example), or whether your eyes have adapted to a slightly false colour.  With the problems you describe, ensuring proper colour management is the most likely solution. 

[digitaldog]

ALL monitors require color management!
Outside of a non color managed app, the app doesn't have a clue what sRGB is. Or a display profile. sRGB may look less crappy, or it might look worse on a wide gamut display, but that's simply due to a lack of color management. So sRGB isn't a solution, color management and profiling the display is.

[Czornyj]

ALL monitors require color management!
Outside of a non color managed app, the app doesn't have a clue what sRGB is. Or a display profile. sRGB may look less crappy, or it might look worse on a wide gamut display, but that's simply due to a lack of color management. So sRGB isn't a solution, color management and profiling the display is.

Unless it's 3DLUT monitor (like NEC PA series) with hardware 1:1 sRGB simulation used for internet based workflow exclusively.

[D Fosse]

ALL monitors require color management!

Yes, we know that, Andrew 

We're just trying to explain to the OP why he sees oversaturation. If wasn't aware of color management before, he'll have to come to grips with it now.

All of which basically underlines Simon's point: if you don't know what any of this means, better stay away from these WG units.

[digitaldog]

Yes, we know that, Andrew 
We're just trying to explain to the OP why he sees oversaturation.

As was I...