Wide Gamut Monitor and the path to Sanity

The it is simple: you have a double fake. Two mistakes or faults cancelling each other out. That's fine for the situation you started with, but you must expect the consequences of the errors to make everything else wildly unpredictable. The correct profile for a correctly set up monitor; accurate colour and tagging in the image; use only colour managed apps; export with correct settings. Your fault might lie in the monitor profile in fact, I've heard of bad ones giving an incorrect cast in Photoshop.

That's another useful approach (throw out all your non-colour managed apps) but does a web designer have a choice?

I know this topic hasn't been updated for quite some time now, but I would like to continue asking more questions and share my experiences. Since I've learned that editing in WG only benefits printing or people with WG monitor and viewed with color-managed apps... I resort my monitor preset, calibration and editing (PS and Lightroom) within the sRGB space.

However, I have noticed even in the sRGB space, the image viewed from Windows 10 "Photos" are off against the Windows Photo Viewer. From my research, Windows Photo Viewer is color-managed but "Photos" is not, this confuses me. Since Windows Photo Viewer's full-screen-slideshow-mode switches to "Photos" app automatically.... if I need to give works to my client, they will see two different colors and don't know which is correct.

Below is a screenshot of an example image. Windows Photo Viewer's color matches that of my Lightroom, but "Photos" app is much more saturated. My monitor is Dell Ultrasharp u2410, sRGB mode.

This confuses me as to what should I edit to as my baseline... as I don't want my clients to think I oversaturate everything lol.

Just took the time to read your first post again - yeah, I know...

Since sRGB is your target anyway, maybe you'd be better off just setting the monitor to sRGB - in the OSD - and calibrate/profile it as that. This will turn your wide gamut monitor into a perfectly ordinary standard gamut one.

The point above still stands: the profile has to describe the actual, current behavior. You can't just switch profile, it has to be the right one. And if you for any reason change any monitor setting, you must reprofile it.

The oversaturation you see without color management is not how others will see it, unless they too have a WG unit. That's why I said above to just ignore it.

All monitors are different and will display differently, unless corrected by proper color management. It's just that wide gamut monitors are more different. Small differences are usually tolerated, larger differences not.

It's really simple! You're either viewing the data (image, video etc) in a color managed app or you're not.

1. IF you are, then they all appear the same on your system. From 1 app to the other.
2. IF not, non color managed app's have zero idea about the display profile or the data you're viewing. Even if it's sRGB, such app's don't know what sRGB is. But sRGB, on an sRGB-like display looks less worse than using something else.

This has been discussed recently here (cut to the chase, here's one post that covers the issues):

Re: Best answer: It's real simple!: Retouching Forum: Digital Photography Review

I always assumed the photo was converted to sRGB at some point, and therefor the color values, while remaining the same numerically, are shown in a different frame of reference.

The values are the same (in the same color space). But not all software treats them that way. So here's the analogy. You ask me: How far do you live from my home? I answer: 124. Is that 124 miles, inches, feet, meters, kilometers etc? If I have a pixel value of red 124, it's equally meaningless! 124 what? IF I say Red 124 in sRGB (versus 124 in Adobe RGB (1998)), we have a scale and a meaning for that number.

In non color managed app's, the product has no idea what sRGB is. Or Adobe RGB (1998). It has no idea what a display profile is, it can't properly preview that value. It simply sends the number to the display.

In a color managed browser, or any color managed app, the product knows the scale of the number (124 in sRGB) AND it knows the behavior of your display via an ICC Profile. So the previews are correct, as well as you've calibrated and profiled that display.

So if you and everyone on the planet used a color managed browser, you could use any RGB working space! It would know the scale of the numbers and the conditions of your display using that profile. Just like Photoshop or Elements or Lightroom or Capture 1 to name a few ICC aware products. But lots of people don't use software, browsers, that behave this way. We could 'suggest' these products alwaus 'assume' sRGB. So if you use sRGB, it looks pretty good on that sRGB-like display. But that doesn't mean it will match what other's see because again, no color management.

Color management is supposed to allow differing people to see the same RGB values the same way. The idea is to mange the Color. color management is number management. It answers the question, 124 in miles (or kilometers) so all the numbers are defined.

Bottom line is, don't use a non color managed browser. Hope (suggest) other's do not either. That helps with sRGB and all other color spaces.

1. IF 100% of your work is going to the web and mobile devices, best to use sRGB. Today! That can change, it's likely it will, then you can ask yourself if painting yourself into an sRGB corner is a good idea. Example later.
2. IF 100% of your work is B&W, sRGB is fine but so are other RGB working spaces.
3. The only reason for sRGB was to aim to the lowest common denominator (back in 1996). Using sRGB for the web will not ensure a match other's see of your work to what you see! That's super critical to understand. It's the best, least worst working space to post to the slew of people who don't have color managed browsers, who don't calibrate and profile their displays, work with displays where they've mucked around with the OSD controls etc.
4. The only way to get what you see and other's to match is to use color management! And if so, ANY RGB working space will work, as it does in Photoshop!
5. IF your goal is to output your images to a print, sRGB is suboptimal. It will not produce a bad print, it will not produce the best possible print! I've never seen an output device's gamut that doesn't exceed sRGB somewhere in color space. Sometimes hugely. I've been looking at such devices for over 20 years.
6. The video on the benefits of wide gamut working space on a print shows this. It provides a way for anyone with the time and two pieces of paper to test for themselves. The other video on color gamut is based on science; colorimetry. The facts are, many images fit fully into sRGB gamut and many do not. IF you clip all your images to sRGB, you've given some of them a sex change operation! Can't go backwards. Of course, with Adobe RGB (1998) or wider gamut, no issue going to sRGB for one iteration for the web.

Now, in terms of sRGB for the web, today it makes sense. It might not in the future if/when the majority of users now have wide gamut displays that are not anything like sRGB! Here's an example of what sRGB looks like, without color management on a wide gamut display, it's ugly as Adobe RGB would be if handled the same way; without color management!