sRGB, Wide Gamut Colors, Display P3

what is wide gamut colors

wide gamut colors

truly learned something new today about colors.

the typical RGB of 256 level of each color, called Standard RGB (sRGB), only allows some 36% of colors we can see.

Basically all computer displays cannot show colors outside of sRGB before 2016.

Starting about 2016, Apple began to make phone display that is capable of showing color outside of sRGB, followed by others.

you can see colors that's outside the sRGB, easily today in any big screen TV. You see vivid colors, that is not possible in older displays. (it's not mere cranked up color saturation)

Those support wider colors are said wide color, wide gamut, or “Display P3” or DCI-P3.

For example, ipad 9th gen (2021) does not support wide gamut.

the following support wide gamut:

• Apple MacBook Air M1, 2020.
• Apple iPhone 13 (2021)

image formats that supports wider gamuts are:

• HEIF (.heic) (Apple)
• AVIF
• JPEG XL (.jxl)

The following also support display p3 but via icc profile: jpg, png, webp. Meaning, if you remove meta data, it's gone. Also, image readers may ignore icc profile.

also jpg and webp are both 8 bits per channel.

png supports more than 8 bits per channel but is not common.