Some examples that show why a wide gamut monitor matters:

[bronxbombers4]

(I mean I've even seen posts where people try actively scare people away from wide gamut monitors, even really, really great displays, which makes no sense at all today considering that any even remotely decent wide gamut monitor these days has a pretty solid, at worst sRGB emulation mode for use with non-color managed software, and most actually can be set to simulate sRGB better than 95% of sRGB onitors since most sRGB monitors actually don't quite match sRGB and can't be made to exactly match sRGB).

I wouldn't want to "scare" folks but I am guilty of having discouraging a few folks from going wide gamut. It is a fact that:

1. Many people have a limited budget and really don't need to spend more on "new" features.

well you certainly shouldn't starve to get one (but you shouldn't be afraid to either if it's anywhere near your budget at all), it's not critical but it's certainly nicer if you can very reasonably manage one

2. Most people don't fully understand color management.

perhaps, but the very basics of it to get it going isn't really THAT tricky and if they don't they aren't gonna really see things properly even with a regular gamut monitor either unless it's a more expensive one that is perfectly sRGB tuned (in which case they could probably afford wide gamut anyway)

3. Most applications software programs are not fully color managed and don't play well with wide-gamut displays.

which used to be a very major problem no matter what wide gamut monitor you got and then it used to be a problem unless you got a really high end one, but these days almost all the wide gamut displays have decent to essentially perfect sRGB emulation modes (often delivering a more true, all internally, sRGB than many a regular gamut monitor), although there might be one here or there that might still have that issue, not sure

I certainly think that will change over time and I view that as a positive change. But for unsophisticated user looking to buy a "decent" monitor today on a ~$300 budget, I would steer them away from wide-gamut.

 

[naththo]

Excellent reply, these explains pretty much clear to me. *Thumbs up*

 

[BG454]

just trying to counter all off the posts that try to toss off wide gamut as a bunch of marketing hogwash meant to sucker people into getting something useless that doesn't matter at all

and all the talk about how there is no reason to bother to try to move things more towards a wide gamut/color-managed standard

(I mean I've even seen posts where people try actively scare people away from wide gamut monitors, even really, really great displays, which makes no sense at all today considering that any even remotely decent wide gamut monitor these days has a pretty solid, at worst sRGB emulation mode for use with non-color managed software, and most actually can be set to simulate sRGB better than 95% of sRGB onitors since most sRGB monitors actually don't quite match sRGB and can't be made to exactly match sRGB).

We will eventually have wide gamut monitors readily available and then they will be the only available but we need to go through the tiny incremental changes to allow the suppliers and manufacturers to reap the greatest profits.

I assume these are to match all the affordable wide gamut printers which will be flooding the market soon?

What is the point in a wide gamut display when your final output is limited to sRGB?

 

[Mentor2]

--
May the light be with you
Stupid should hurt
Stop global whining
Keep your business in town to keep your town in business

I wouldn't be surprised if this one would have some more colors than sRGB. It still translates pretty well, but I bet on wide gamut there would be even more to it.

You would be correct with that but until better monitors are available to all it will be this way and no one will know the difference until then. When I print this it does look better in print as I use prophoto rgb but convert for the internet. The prophoto only makes a difference for me in print and I would add not so much on my printer as the big units in London Photo.

--
May the light be with you
Stupid should hurt
Stop global whining
Keep your business in town to keep your town in business

 

[Mentor2]

just trying to counter all off the posts that try to toss off wide gamut as a bunch of marketing hogwash meant to sucker people into getting something useless that doesn't matter at all

and all the talk about how there is no reason to bother to try to move things more towards a wide gamut/color-managed standard

(I mean I've even seen posts where people try actively scare people away from wide gamut monitors, even really, really great displays, which makes no sense at all today considering that any even remotely decent wide gamut monitor these days has a pretty solid, at worst sRGB emulation mode for use with non-color managed software, and most actually can be set to simulate sRGB better than 95% of sRGB onitors since most sRGB monitors actually don't quite match sRGB and can't be made to exactly match sRGB).

We will eventually have wide gamut monitors readily available and then they will be the only available but we need to go through the tiny incremental changes to allow the suppliers and manufacturers to reap the greatest profits.

I assume these are to match all the affordable wide gamut printers which will be flooding the market soon?

What is the point in a wide gamut display when your final output is limited to sRGB?

Exactly, unless you go to London Drugs Photo dept where they have some serious machines it is pointless.

 

[Mentor2]

--
May the light be with you
Stupid should hurt
Stop global whining
Keep your business in town to keep your town in business

Yeah not bad, but what about purple petunia or a red rose?

--
May the light be with you
Stupid should hurt
Stop global whining
Keep your business in town to keep your town in business

 

[CAcreeks]

And this is exactly what this post was meant to counter, the nonsense about how extended gamuts are useless nonsense thought up by marketers to sucker people or something.

I enjoyed your post, don't get me wrong!

At this time I am primarily bothered by the lack of resolution for photos on websites and videos on YouTube. My cameras take at least 8 Mp photos, but I can never post them that way.

Secondarily I am bothered by highlight clipping especially in videos.

Extended gamut is way down the list.

 

[tom graham]

The 2nd, last, lily. Wherever the red looks flat red with no detail, the red is blown. That is, take image into Photoshop and eyedropper those red areas. Will read 252-254. That is why there are no details in those red areas. Maybe that is the look you are after? But not real life.

Tom

 

[CAcreeks]

1. Most people don't fully understand color management.

Ha ha! As Creedence Clearwater Revival sang

If I only had a dollar, for every color query,
And every post I've had to read
Where they explain color management,
You know I'd catch the next train back to where I live.

Anyhow, what wide gamut monitors do people recommend? Consumer Reports does not test them as far as I know.

 

[Pictus]

Anyhow, what wide gamut monitors do people recommend? Consumer Reports does not test them as far as I know.

The BEST reviews sites are:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews.htm
http://www.prad.de/new/monitore/testberichte.html

The best monitors are:

-Eizo CG/CX
-NEC PA/P
-Dell U

Nothing better than a first hand experience from someone who has knowledge...
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/53209204
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/53476887

 

[oldtimes]

One reason why popularity of wg monitors is very very low is because 99% of image usage, as in printing photos for home us, photo enlargements, professional offset printing, or tv... none of them can show wide gamut.. so your image ends up looking not like you see it on your personal wg monitor

 

[Pictus]

One reason why popularity of wg monitors is very very low is because 99% of image usage, as in printing photos for home us, photo enlargements, professional offset printing, or tv... none of them can show wide gamut.. so your image ends up looking not like you see it on your personal wg monitor

The gamut has getting bigger as time goes by... Today the dye-sublimation, photographic inkjets do have a gamut bigger than sRGB in some parts... Also to proper soft proofing to a modern CYMK, sRGB is also not enough.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/51935651
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/51981233

sRGB is sooo poor that does not even cover the cyan from a ColorCheker...

 

[Mentor2]

The 2nd, last, lily. Wherever the red looks flat red with no detail, the red is blown. That is, take image into Photoshop and eyedropper those red areas. Will read 252-254. That is why there are no details in those red areas. Maybe that is the look you are after? But not real life.

Tom

Those areas were actually blown out in the original OOC photo (near white) and I put some colour in but could not get any pattern up and what you see is all there is.

 

[bronxbombers4]

And this is exactly what this post was meant to counter, the nonsense about how extended gamuts are useless nonsense thought up by marketers to sucker people or something.

I enjoyed your post, don't get me wrong!

At this time I am primarily bothered by the lack of resolution for photos on websites and videos on YouTube. My cameras take at least 8 Mp photos, but I can never post them that way.

Secondarily I am bothered by highlight clipping especially in videos.

Extended gamut is way down the list.

Well having just moved to a 4k/UHD monitor I do have to say that is pretty impressive and 4k video is too as well as poor DR in videos. And I suppose I agree that such stuff might, overall, matter even more than wide gamut. But I sure do wish to see wide gamut posted around a lot more too. I can find some UHD images and/or original size here and there and it's cool to other's work at that resolution. As well as a few 4k videos that people have posted.

 

[bronxbombers4]

just trying to counter all off the posts that try to toss off wide gamut as a bunch of marketing hogwash meant to sucker people into getting something useless that doesn't matter at all

and all the talk about how there is no reason to bother to try to move things more towards a wide gamut/color-managed standard

(I mean I've even seen posts where people try actively scare people away from wide gamut monitors, even really, really great displays, which makes no sense at all today considering that any even remotely decent wide gamut monitor these days has a pretty solid, at worst sRGB emulation mode for use with non-color managed software, and most actually can be set to simulate sRGB better than 95% of sRGB onitors since most sRGB monitors actually don't quite match sRGB and can't be made to exactly match sRGB).

We will eventually have wide gamut monitors readily available and then they will be the only available but we need to go through the tiny incremental changes to allow the suppliers and manufacturers to reap the greatest profits.

I assume these are to match all the affordable wide gamut printers which will be flooding the market soon?

What is the point in a wide gamut display when your final output is limited to sRGB?

1. Who says the final output always has to be print. It's kind of a fact that these days 99% images taken never get printed. And even by the more serious, in all honesty, do you really print almost all of your images? That would cost so much money beyond even a 4k wide gamut display in no time at all and it takes a long time. I print as much as I can, but it's only a fraction of the shots I've taken that I like. Granted, until recently, you were stuck at around 2-3MP displays so the detail was always rather unsatistfactory compared to a print, but now with the 8MP UHD displays coming out you can keep things on screen and still get a fairly decent look (granted the detail still doesn't match a nice print from a 24-36MP camera, but it's not bad at least). And face it, how many people ever see your prints? Far less than would be able to see wide gamut images posted online on wide gamut monitors. So why is printing cool and not a hermit thing, but posting in wide gamut online is a hermit thing??

2. Who says that if you print you are limited to sRGB? Lots of printers can print all sorts of colors that sRGB can't handle, some even have a few shades that even wide gamut monitors can't show. OTOH printers have weird gamuts so it is also true that they can't print a lot of colors in sRGB, much less that wide gamut monitors can show. But using a wide gamut monitor lets you at least see most of what they can handle that is beyond sRGB. See my new post at the bottom where I show the rose under different printer (and image format and screen) gamuts.

 

[bronxbombers4]

Here is a 2D max slice (255 value or 255 pair for each primary and secondary) gamut measurement made with HCFR3 and i1D3 and BG LED file (the reference gamut shown is sRGB) of my Dell UP2414Q BG LED LCD monitor:

and in uv instead:

here are plots from wide gamut CCFL LCD NEC PA241W:

and in uv:

 

[bronxbombers4]

For kicks here are plots from calibrating an sRGB with Gamma 2.2 emulation mode on a Dell UP2414Q BG LED LCD wide gamut monitor (suing HCFR 3 with i1D3 with BG LED file):

primary luminance tracking:

primary/secondary saturation and tone shift tracking:

 

[bronxbombers4]

Here are some are gamut warning shots of the fall leaves lit by golden evening sun:
sRGB:

AdobeRGB:

Dell UP2414Q NG:

ProphotoRGB:

They can potentially bit a bit misleading since the warning doesn't tell you whether things are out by the barest bit or by tons so even when the gamut warnings look similar in some cases the visual difference is major since one warning might mean just barely out of gamut and another might mean radically out of gamut.

Side note: In some cases some of the darkest shadow stuff goes out of gamut much quicker with the 8bit jpg than with the original 16bit PNG so for some of the monitor profiles and printer profiles the colors are probably only just barely out in the 8bit jpg and just a quantization error away from making it. Which brings me to an interesting point, it would be cool if Adobe made the gamut warning able to be set to different shades, maybe a grayscale telling you how far out or maybe a simple 3-4 tone: just BARELY out doesn't even matter, barely out, moderately out, way out.

 

[bronxbombers4]

And for the rose with -6 saturation applied to as how I had originally posted it:
ProphotoRGB:

Dell UP2414Q NG:

NEC PA241W NG:

AdobeRGB:

sRGB:

Epson R3000 Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl:

Canon 9500II Hahn PR Pearl:

Epson R3000 Hahn PR Baryta:

Canon 9500II Hahn PR Baryta:

Epson R1800 Hahn PR Baryta:

Epson R3000 Premium Lustre:

Epson R800 Ultra Glossy:

PAL/SECAM:

Panavision Something Something Tungsten:

Again it can be misleading because the gray may mean wayyyyy out of gamut in some cases and barely in others (even across any single gamut test).

 

[bronxbombers4]

it is true that you can certainly fit many images into sRGB or nearly so just fine and that you can make many other still look nice. So it's not like you have to have it or every image you look at look horrible and nothing can be accomplished of course, not by any means.

But all the same, it certainly can be a nice thing to have and contrary to how some go on it's neither made up marketing nonsense, nor of no practical use to most people.

If you do a lot of flowers and fall foliage or people/cars in bright clothing/paint jobs it can be quite nice to have and it can definitely help for sunset/sunrise stuff a decent amount at times too, in most particular.

And it doesn't hurt shots taken during golden hour sunlight for a great many subjects. And same if you takes pics of gems and emeralds and such or tropical waters or are a real stickler to really see intense greens in a lush, wet forest under subdued lighting.

It probably could be of practical use to most people, unless you really do stay away from fall foliage, flowers, sunsets, intense colors. But again it's obviously not required or anything, people have gotten by with sRGB for years.