Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Colour Management => Topic started by: Simon J.A. Simpson on June 22, 2016, 03:05:22 pm
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Changes to Apple’s new operating system ‘Sierra’ gives better support for “wide color”. As reported on the Electic Light Company website here:
Behind the scenes: a summary of changes in macOS Sierra (https://eclecticlight.co/2016/06/17/behind-the-scenes-a-summary-of-changes-in-macos-sierra/comment-page-1/)
“Wide Colour
Previously, support for very wide colour gamuts has been patchy, and this has been reflected in varying degrees of support in apps. Sierra extends this through the entire graphics support software, so you can expect wide colour support to appear in all apps for which it is relevant, and its support should be far more consistent at last. Digital photographers should find this a significant improvement.”
My thanks to Howard Oakley for this.
Given Apple’s last débacle with colour management I hope this augurs a new era of better support for colour management in Mac OSX ?
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I'm not sure what "support for very wide color gamuts" means. If the operating system supports color management then it supports color profiles of all shapes and sizes. What is special about wide color gamuts that requires special support? I'm using a wide gamut monitor and don't notice any lack of support in the OS. The only thing I imagine this could mean is that the OS will use a wider color space as a default so the entire interface can take advantage of a larger gamut. That might be nice or might be gaudy - not sure - either way it's not especially important for me.
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I agree, I’m not sure what this means either. But it has relevance in respect of the colour management problems of several years ago where it proved impossible to print with colour management turned-off in later iterations of the Mac OSX. After a lot of discussion, and input from experts from Adobe, it appeared that in the absence of a profile the operating system was assuming sRGB profile and then colour managing the printer output (not good for printing targets for profiling). There were also other unwanted interventions from the OS which now largely seem to have been ironed out.
I guess we'll have to wait and see. But you heard it here first !
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It could mean 10 bit monitor colour support.
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I'm not sure what "support for very wide color gamuts" means.
The text on that site (is it reliable?) would make more sense to me if the report were discussing iOS due to the new iPad Pro that does have a wide gamut option and thus color management (to deal with it and sRGB).
High bit display support was said to be released in 10.11 or about's if memory serves me.
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High bit display support was said to be released in 10.11 or about's if memory serves me.
I am using 10.11 and if you do a System report on Graphics/Displays it says 32 bit colour which I take as 8 bit colour. So if I understand it correctly then not yet unless it is hardware related.
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Color/bpp/HDR may be more relevant with television sets/streaming video services now jumping to BT2020/10bpp/HDR. Tablets and computers are a part of that ecosystem.
For the consumer user and casual software developer, I am guessing that the OS embracing wide color and color management practices in a comprehensible way may make sense.
For the enthusiast/professional user and hard-core developer, this _could_ actually make it harder to get predictable results (i.e. understanding how a more complex OS behaves).
-h
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I am using 10.11 and if you do a System report on Graphics/Displays it says 32 bit colour which I take as 8 bit colour. So if I understand it correctly then not yet unless it is hardware related.
http://petapixel.com/2015/10/30/os-x-el-capitan-quietly-unlocked-10-bit-color-in-imacs-and-mac-pros/
Are they right? Not sure as I've heard nothing from Apple.
How would 32-bit color work out as 8-bits per color?
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http://petapixel.com/2015/10/30/os-x-el-capitan-quietly-unlocked-10-bit-color-in-imacs-and-mac-pros/
Are they right? Not sure as I've heard nothing from Apple.
How would 32-bit color work out as 8-bits per color?
Those quoting "32-bit" colour mean 8-bit RBG + alpha (transparency). 30-bit means 10-bit RGB (ignoring the alpha).
http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2015/20151105_2300-OSX_ElCapitan-10bit-dualNEC.html
also see here:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/releasenotes/MacOSX/WhatsNewInOSX/Articles/MacOSX10_11_2.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40016630-SW1
"30-Bit Color is now supported on the Mac Pro (Late 2013), iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014), and iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015). The frame buffer of these Macs has a depth of 10 bits per color component, allowing apps to display graphics and imagery with more than 256 color gradations per component. To take advantage of deep color output in your Metal or OpenGL graphics pipeline, assign a half-float pixel format to your displayable render target. In a Metal app, use the MTLPixelFormatRGBA16Float pixel format; in an OpenGL app, use the GL_RGB16 or GL_RGBA16 pixel format."
MS
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Thanks for that useful information guys.
A new Mac on the wish list, though a long way down and unlikely to rise soon.
So the original question is still not answered on what is "Wide Color"?
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According to one of the developer conference videos "wide color" is how apple deals with a display that has more gamut than sRGB. For all displays apples default is sRGB but some displays can display more...so they developed a scheme that allows one to specify color reference numbers greater than 1 and less than 0.
As an example one could specify pure red as (1,0,0) and that will work fine. On the newer systems you can specify a larger number than 1 and number less than zero say...(1.2, -.25,-.25). I did not watch the lecture all they way through to see what the limits are or how the developer would determine what the limits are for a given setup.
I hope that helps a bit...if I get more time perhaps I'll go through the lessons from wwdc further...
--Jeff
I should note that the presentation seems more iOS focused so there may be a slight difference for macOS.
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According to one of the developer conference videos "wide color" is how apple deals with a display that has more gamut than sRGB. For all displays apples default is sRGB but some displays can display more...so they developed a scheme that allows one to specify color reference numbers greater than 1 and less than 0.
So are they calling it "scRGB" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScRGB) ? :-)
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Anyone running the public beta of OS X Sierra? Have you tried printing from the latest versions of LR and PS on the new OS Beta?
https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram?&muid=8b107438-f2a5-4c4d-af14-788a308b0ad3&mtid=20925top39173&aosid=p238&cid=wwa-us-kwgo-mac-slid-I4dNESxj&mnid=s5iJKGqvs-dc_mtid_20925top39173_pcrid_100269263712_
Is it possible that the latest versions of LR and PS which no longer print correctly on 10.11.5 and early were written for the changes in OS X Sierra and print correctly with it?