How should I manage color and bit depth for a wide-gamut 10-bit monitor and OLED TV when displaying photos?

Asked 5/6/2018

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I have a 4K OLED TV and a 4K monitor connected to an NVIDIA GPU. The monitor is a true 10-bit panel, and both displays support wide color and HDR10. I process Canon RAW files and 16-bit film scans in Capture One, and I want the best possible quality when showing still photos on these displays.

What is the best workflow for taking advantage of a wider gamut than sRGB and 10-bit output for still images? Should I edit and export in a larger color space, and what file format makes the most sense? I also have a color calibrator on the way and would like to know how calibration/profiling fits into this.

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

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

8y ago

2 Answers

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Those displays seem to cover (most of) the DCI-P3 colour space, which is wider than the sRGB colour space. So at the very least, your editing should be done in a colour space that covers all of DCI-P3, and preferably at 16 bits/channel.

Also, the final image should be in a colour space that is at least as large as DCI-P3, and that colour space should be in the metadata (most programs assume sRGB if no colour space information is present).

And the final image should have at least 10 bits/channel to get full profit from a 10-bit display. So that means you shouldn't export to JPG† ... But do test to make sure you do see a difference between 8-bit jpeg and say 16-bit png, and test it on a range of images with different colours and different saturations.

Calibration and profiling should have no impact on your editing workflow, which is ideally device-independent*.

Normally, calibration and profiling are done once every so often. Iirc, for LCD-type displays once per month is recommended, but I've also seen intervals of 2 or 3 months. But that depends also on how much time you want to spend on it and how precise you need/want your colours to be (some professionals need very accurate colour, I'd say most amateurs don't, but may of course want high accuracy).

Calibration consists of using the display's settings to get as close as possible to the wanted output without any display profile active. This minimises the corrections to be applied by that profile, and ensures you have the optimal colour resolution. It also sets the black and white points for the display. The profiling gives you a device profile that will be applied on display of the image (it should not be baked in the images). Ideally, it corrects for the remaining deviations in the display, so that the image as shown corresponds exactly to what the rgb values say it should be (given a defined colour space).
For a computer display, it should be enough to set the device profile in the operating system (it's even possible to use different profiles for each screen in a multiscreen setup); for a TV it might be less simple (unless the TV is seen as a display by a computer). In that case, you have to rely on the calibration only.

Oled and 10 bits/channel in themselves don't give you any larger colour space, by the way, that depends also on the rest of the display's hardware.


* In practice, you'll have to take into account whether the image is for screen display (additive colour, or light emission) or print (usually CMYK, and subtractive colour or light absorption).

† Standard jpeg only handles 8 bit/channel, newer versions like jpeg2000 or jpeg XR can handle larger bit depths, but are less common at the moment.

Originally by user72870. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user72870

8y ago

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Yes—if your displays cover roughly DCI-P3 or similar, using only sRGB can limit what they can show. A sensible workflow is:

  • Calibrate/profile each display so your software can display colors correctly.
  • Edit in a color-managed app using a working space at least as large as the display gamut; for these displays, DCI-P3 coverage is a reasonable target.
  • Keep your files at high bit depth during editing, ideally 16 bits/channel.
  • Export in a format that preserves high bit depth and embeds the ICC profile. PNG or TIFF are better choices than JPEG if you want to preserve more than 8 bits/channel.
  • Make sure the exported file includes its color profile; otherwise many viewers will assume sRGB.

HDR support on the displays does not automatically help for still photos unless the whole viewing pipeline supports HDR still-image handling. For normal photo viewing, calibration, correct profiling, a wide-gamut color-managed workflow, and high-bit-depth files are the main things that matter.

Also test your actual viewers/apps: some are fully color managed, some are not, and that can make more difference than the panel specs alone.

UniqueBot

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8y ago

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