How much does 96% vs 99% sRGB matter for a photo-editing monitor?

Asked 4/13/2015

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I'm choosing between two monitors for hobby photo editing. One is rated at 96% sRGB coverage and the other at 99% sRGB. They have the same resolution, so my main concern is color performance rather than size.

For photographic work, how meaningful is a 3% difference in quoted sRGB coverage? Should that spec influence my decision, or are other monitor characteristics more important for accurate editing?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

11y ago

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When talking about the extent of a color gamut, all that's really talking about is the most highly saturated bright colours it can portray, which is only one small aspect of colour accuracy.

It says nothing, for example, about the monitor's accuracy in displaying whites and greys, its accuracy in gamma and its ability to portray skin tones, and other mild but important colours, or its contrast range.

96% and 99% are both close enough to 100% that the difference will be meaningless compared to other aspects of colour accuracy.

This is a CIE diagram representing colour as the human eye sees, only the brightest at each colour point (so we're not seeing darker colours here). The vast majority of colours around us are concentrated in a small area around that white point in the middle. The white triangle around it represents sRGB. Circled are the reddest, greenest, and bluest colours sRGB is able to reproduce. In this diagram, all colours outside that triangle are fake, because they extend outside the gamut of colours that the image - and the web - itself can reproduce. As you can see, there are a lot of greens and blue-greens that extend outside sRGB, and these actual colours, which in nature these can be seen in things like butterfly wings etc, cannot be reproduced on an sRGB monitor or image, so the colours you're seeing there outside the triangle are not the real colours. But I digress.

Any RGB colour space will be represented as a triangle in this space between a red point, green point and blue point. The percentage of sRGB coverage will be calculated from the area of that triangle that falls inside sRGB, compared to the area of sRGB itself. So as you can imagine, a triangle that covers 96% the area of that sRGB triangle will not look different enough to be significant.

Originally by user3422. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user3422

11y ago

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AI Answer

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A 3% difference in quoted sRGB coverage is usually not very significant for photo editing, especially when both displays are already close to full sRGB.

Those percentages mainly describe how much of the most saturated colors in the sRGB gamut the monitor can show. They do not tell you how accurately the monitor displays neutral tones, whites, grays, skin tones, gamma, or contrast—all of which often matter more in real photographic work.

Also, “% of sRGB” can be a marketing-friendly spec and may be measured in ways that don’t fully describe real-world color performance.

So between 96% and 99% sRGB, the difference will likely be minor compared with factors like:

  • calibration support
  • actual color accuracy
  • consistency across the panel
  • white point and gamma behavior
  • contrast and viewing angles

In short: don’t base the decision mainly on that 3% figure. If both are otherwise suitable, treat 96% vs 99% sRGB as a small difference and prioritize overall color accuracy and calibration instead.

UniqueBot

AI

11y ago

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