New Imac Apple Retina Displays P3 colours

[elolaugesen]

What is P3 Colour Gamut?  .....  Apple says new monitors on iMac have  P3 colour gamut 25 % more than sRGB?

[D Fosse]

It appears to be a cinema standard for digital projectors. It's covered here:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/content/pointers_gamut.htm#_Toc379132061

The gamut is slightly larger than AdobeRGB or conventional wide gamut, but with the primaries shifted quite a bit, so not entirely comparable. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

[Josh-H]

It appears to be a cinema standard for digital projectors. It's covered here:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/content/pointers_gamut.htm#_Toc379132061

The gamut is slightly larger than AdobeRGB or conventional wide gamut, but with the primaries shifted quite a bit, so not entirely comparable. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

The gamut is only marginally larger overall in DCI-P3 (The Adobe RGB Color space covers approximately 86.98% of the DCI P3 color space. DCI-P3 covers approximately 93.6% of the Adobe RGB color space.). DCI-P3 can reproduce greater saturation in the reds, Adobe RGB greater saturation in the greens. Red and Green primaries are shifted in DCI-P3, but blue remains the same.

I am not sure I follow Apples logic in moving to DCI-P3 - A standard designed for digital cinema and not displays. It will certainly be interesting to see how these new displays perform in photographers workflows and what impact the DCI-P3 color space has on these workflows.

This excerpt taken from the new iMac reviewers guide seems to indicate that the new iMac is capable of greater than 99% of the DCI-P3 color space. If confirmed, this is remarkable performance in a monitor of this price point.

[ThirstyDursty]

I wonder how P3 aligns with color gamut available in current professional photo printers

Be interesting to me to see a plot between P3 and the Epson P800 with say exhibition fiber or similar high gamut paper.

[Josh-H]

I wonder how P3 aligns with color gamut available in current professional photo printers

Be interesting to me to see a plot between P3 and the Epson P800 with say exhibition fiber or similar high gamut paper.

I think thats a very good question. In fact, unless I am mistaken (someone please correct me if I am), photographers working with rendered files in Adobe RGB, SRGB, Pro Photo RGB (the most common color spaces photographers use) are likely to experience colour shift in their images with these new iMac screens because of the different Red and Green primaries of the DCI-P3 color space. Wether that color shift is going to be visible I don't know. That would be very interesting to test.

[D Fosse]

In a fully color managed pipeline it'll work as well as anything. But video, for one thing, seems still not burdened with too much color management.

They must have jumped on some new panels made for the TV industry. With what looks like a marginal real-world advantage over standard wide gamut - but some potential misalignment given the shifted primaries - it is indeed hard to see what they're thinking.

I smell marketing gimmick here. And history shows the fan base will no doubt lap it up. To a lot of people, Apple can do no wrong 

[ThirstyDursty]

In a fully color managed pipeline it'll work as well as anything. But video, for one thing, seems still not burdened with too much color management.

They must have jumped on some new panels made for the TV industry. With what looks like a marginal real-world advantage over standard wide gamut - but some potential misalignment given the shifted primaries - it is indeed hard to see what they're thinking.

I smell marketing gimmick here. And history shows the fan base will no doubt lap it up. To a lot of people, Apple can do no wrong 

Or could it be better? Why was P3 made in the first place? Is it newer then sRGB or A98. The people that conceptualised the space might have had something in mind...and that could be meaningful to someone (maybe not photographers)

Say what you will about Apple, but they are rarely about a bargain over thoughtful design and rarely stupid. But you might disagree, but they aren't designing for you specifically.

Edit: created 2007 and is standard for Digital Movie Theaters/Projection.

[D Fosse]

Sorry, couldn't resist  I've never been particularly impressed by the Apple hype. Nice to look at, though, I'll give them that.

P3 could well be "better", certainly no worse, than traditional wide gamut. The point is that the difference is very marginal, so why move away from accepted standards?

To be sure, in a color managed environment none of this matters much. One will display as correctly as the other. I doubt a very small gamut extension here or there makes much of a difference.

[mlewis]

In a fully color managed pipeline it'll work as well as anything. But video, for one thing, seems still not burdened with too much color management.

They must have jumped on some new panels made for the TV industry. With what looks like a marginal real-world advantage over standard wide gamut - but some potential misalignment given the shifted primaries - it is indeed hard to see what they're thinking.

Or Apple are saying that the new iMacs are great for video/film editing because the screens conform to the DCI standard colour space.

[D Fosse]

But video is rarely color managed and so it'll certainly turn out wrong anyway. Most of it is made to the Rec. 709 broadcast standard, which is basically sRGB with a higher gamma.

Throw that at a wide gamut display and watch what happens. IOW to take advantage of this you really need to work with professional-level cinema footage. These people don't use iMacs. Well, maybe some of them do, I wouldn't know.

[ThirstyDursty]

But video is rarely color managed and so it'll certainly turn out wrong anyway. Most of it is made to the Rec. 709 broadcast standard, which is basically sRGB with a higher gamma.

Throw that at a wide gamut display and watch what happens. IOW to take advantage of this you really need to work with professional-level cinema footage. These people don't use iMacs. Well, maybe some of them do, I wouldn't know.

Democratization of publication. More indie stuff is floating to surface.

The message might be that to produce a film for high quality public consumption, you don't need to spend $20k on editing system. Just $3-4K.

This is much the same as m4/3rds. Sensor isn't the best, but good enough and because image circle is small a bag of good glass is cheap. And it is as good or better then last generation's best.

[GWGill]

P3 could well be "better", certainly no worse, than traditional wide gamut. The point is that the difference is very marginal, so why move away from accepted standards?

There were no accepted wide gamut Digital Cinema Projector primary standards prior to P3.

[Simon Garrett]

P3 could well be "better", certainly no worse, than traditional wide gamut. The point is that the difference is very marginal, so why move away from accepted standards?

What is "traditional wide gamut"?  Are there any "accepted standards" for wide gamut?  I can't think of any off hand.  I wouldn't think of Adobe RGB as a standard for wide gamut monitors. 

I've had several wide gamut monitors and the gamut has varied quite a bit.  The overall size of the gamuts of those I've tested was similar to Adobe RGB, but the actual positions of the primaries have varied - to about the same extent that P3 differs from Adobe RGB.   

[D Fosse]

What is "traditional wide gamut"?  Are there any "accepted standards" for wide gamut?  I can't think of any off hand.  I wouldn't think of Adobe RGB as a standard for wide gamut monitors.

That's correct, point taken. "Standards" is not the right concept here.

As I said, as long as you're in a color managed environment, gamut can be what it wants and primaries wherever they want. It'll be remapped and display correctly anyway.

So I withdraw that minor point.

But I still maintain that this will easily mislead people working with mainstream video, where there is today a de facto standard: Rec. 709 and no color management. That will not look right on a P3 display.

[Simon Garrett]

As I said, as long as you're in a color managed environment, gamut can be what it wants and primaries wherever they want. It'll be remapped and display correctly anyway.

Agreed. 

But I still maintain that this will easily mislead people working with mainstream video, where there is today a de facto standard: Rec. 709 and no color management. That will not look right on a P3 display.

I don't know enough about video usage to have a view on this. 

[Tim Lookingbill]

On a related note in my attempts to find out why certain UK produced movies played on Sony 4K projectors in my local theater displayed milky black points and dim highlights, I asked a manager of a competing theater who doesn't exhibit this if they calibrate their Sony projectors which he replied..."constantly and religiously".

Now to what standards that is I wouldn't know and neither did he. I still didn't get any answers for the cause of the terrible looking UK produced movies such as "The Woman In Black II" and "The Man From Uncle" playing at the other theater that often exhibited reds so intense (Coka-Cola commercials) it was hard to watch in a darkened theater.

[GWGill]

But I still maintain that this will easily mislead people working with mainstream video, where there is today a de facto standard: Rec. 709 and no color management. That will not look right on a P3 display.

Only if you do it wrong. Such film production displays will have a "standard" (i.e. Rec 709) mode and a "wide gamut" (i.e. P3) modes, amongst many others.

A computer monitor with P3 primaries will be no different to other wide gamut computer displays - an ICC profile should deal with it, even if the display itself doesn't have various emulation modes like sRGB, AdobeRGB etc.

If P3 was ever to make it's way to a consumer format (more likely that Rec 2020 encoding would be used though), then just like Rec 2020 the aim will be for it to be transparent - i.e. the Video stream will signal which encoding it is using, and the display will adjust accordingly.

[Josh-H]

I smell marketing gimmick here. And history shows the fan base will no doubt lap it up. To a lot of people, Apple can do no wrong 

I think 'marketing gimmick' might be a bit harsh - but there is defiantly marketing leverage being applied with the statements Apple are making about these new displays. Their use of superlatives to describe the displays capabilities in almost all their literature in lieu of hard empirical numbers is more about marketing than presenting actual facts. A key point not mentioned anywhere in their literature is what % of the Adobe RGB color space these new iMacs can display. And thats a major omission. High end monitors from Eizo and NEC can display not only better than 99% of the Adobe RGB color space, but also around 98% of the DCI-P3 color space in the same panel. Thats something to shout about and points to a clear difference between these types of panels.