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Tony, these are all standard issues and concerns for any camera that does not automatically save into a desired colour space. Things have changed, you just need to decide how you are going to manage the change.
If you are happy with an sRGB workflow, continue to use it.
You should not need to convert from Display P3 to Adobe RGB.
You will need to convert to sRGB for web display and or printing as you always have. The question is do you convert on input into your workflow or only on output?
The clipping issue has always been there, just not as in your face. Most sRGB profiles will not offer a perceptual conversion table, so the clipping is going to happen anyway, whether on input or output. You could try one of the “special" v4 perceptual sRGB profiles that does offer a perceptual conversion profile, if you think that the gamut compression is preferable to gamut clipping. There are other less obvious approaches too, but at the end of the day if you are aiming for the lowest common denominator of sRGB then you can’t be too picky. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a colour space snob nor an sRGB hater.
You can set your colour settings to warn or not on profile mismatches, and default to your standard preference when opening:
Or you may do similar with conditional actions and the script events manager, which should be redundant if you setup your colour settings how you wish:
You could record an action to simply convert and run it in batch or save it as a droplet, then bulk process your images with a conversion into sRGB and leave them open or re-save as a PSD working file etc.
There are scripting routes that you could use. There are Mac OS level solutions… Perhaps there are too many solutions!
Again you just need to formulate a plan, test it and run with it. You may be able to find a 3rd party camera app that offers more control, or perhaps even ditch the newer iPhone and use an earlier model with sRGB or even use a camera that gives you sRGB or more control.
OK, then keep them with the P3 profile.
But as Stephen points out, gamut clipping is a fact of life, especially when the target is sRGB. It doesn't really matter much whether the source is Adobe RGB or P3 - the effect is pretty much the same.
What you absolutely need to do, is keep track of your profiles at all times. Just know what you're working with. The only efficient way to do that is to set the notification area (I have no idea why this isn't set up by default - it's by far the most useful of the listed options):
P3 should never leave your system.
The warning dialogs are just in the way and mostly irrelevant. I disable them. So what if it doesn't match the working space, that's not even remotely important. The only one you could keep is missing profile - that too will turn up in the info area, but the dialog also gives you the option to immediately assign the correct profile.
Do you have a wide gamut monitor? If you don't, none of what we're discussing here will be visible on screen. Everything you see is already clipped to sRGB. If you want to check the clipping, look at the histogram.
Thanks, D.
For some unknown reason (causing me more frustration), I'm not able to reply directly to your last advice, so I manually copied and pasted your advice below, for continuity.
What if I maintain the P3 profile so that the wider gamut applies when I print my prints on my Epson 9890 printer?
I do have a wide-gamut monitor – a 2015 Imac. I can see the difference when I convert a P3 TIFF to an sRGB TIFF; there's a significant subduing of the magenta.
Tony
"OK, then keep them with the P3 profile.
"But as Stephen points out, gamut clipping is a fact of life, especially when the target is sRGB. It doesn't really matter much whether the source is Adobe RGB or P3 - the effect is pretty much the same.
"What you absolutely need to do, is keep track of your profiles at all times. Just know what you're working with. The only efficient way to do that is to set the notification area (I have no idea why this isn't set up by default - it's by far the most useful of the listed options):
P3 should never leave your system.
"The warning dialogs are just in the way and mostly irrelevant. I disable them. So what if it doesn't match the working space, that's not even remotely important. The only one you could keep is missing profile - that too will turn up in the info area, but the dialog also gives you the option to immediately assign the correct profile.
"Do you have a wide gamut monitor? If you don't, none of what we're discussing here will be visible on screen. Everything you see is already clipped to sRGB. If you want to check the clipping, look at the histogram."
Thanks, Stephen.
Again, causing me more confusion and frustration, I'm not longer able to reply directly to your message; the message in the drop-down menu says, "No actions are available", so I manually copied and pasted your message below for continuity, and converted it to bold, italic text to differentiate your message from mine.
Your advice regarding scripting is out of my scope of ken. I'm not a code technician. I can barely figure out HTML, so I don't understand how to script as you suggest and I don't even know what program you used to demonstrate your example solution. (I assume that you used Terminal or Photoshop.)
I want to continue to use my Iphone 8 Plus (which I bought in December for almost $1,000) because I found out that it's camera monitor has brighter colors than any of my other cameras, so I can get better photos with my iPhone than with any of my other cameras.
I'll use your advice in the screen snapshot below to "Covert the document's colors to the working space."
Tony
"Tony, these are all standard issues and concerns for any camera that does not automatically save into a desired colour space. Things have changed, you just need to decide how you are going to manage the change.
"If you are happy with an sRGB workflow, continue to use it.
"You should not need to convert from Display P3 to Adobe RGB.
"You will need to convert to sRGB for web display and or printing as you always have. The question is do you convert on input into your workflow or only on output?
"The clipping issue has always been there, just not as in your face. Most sRGB profiles will not offer a perceptual conversion table, so the clipping is going to happen anyway, whether on input or output. You could try one of the “special" v4 perceptual sRGB profiles that does offer a perceptual conversion profile, if you think that the gamut compression is preferable to gamut clipping. There are other less obvious approaches too, but at the end of the day if you are aiming for the lowest common denominator of sRGB then you can’t be too picky. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a colour space snob nor an sRGB hater.
"You can set your colour settings to warn or not on profile mismatches, and default to your standard preference when opening:
"Or you may do similar with conditional actions and the script events manager, which should be redundant if you setup your colour settings how you wish:
"You could record an action to simply convert and run it in batch or save it as a droplet, then bulk process your images with a conversion into sRGB and leave them open or re-save as a PSD working file etc.
""There are scripting routes that you could use. There are Mac OS level solutions… Perhaps there are too many solutions!
"Again you just need to formulate a plan, test it and run with it. You may be able to find a 3rd party camera app that offers more control, or perhaps even ditch the newer iPhone and use an earlier model with sRGB or even use a camera that gives you sRGB or more control."
Looking at a 3D gamut plot of Display P3 vs. Adobe RGB (ghosted wireframe) I personally would just leave the images in Display P3.
That being said, gamut plots only show possibilities, whether the actual image content or the output conditions take advantage of the extra gamut is another story.
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