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Difference between revisions of "Colour Profiles"
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The above mention is extremely important as you do not have an out of box, simplified experience of accurate colour display even if you invested in costly or high specification equipment. You still need to adjust it to more accurately represent its capabilities. Keep in mind that this is the only way to achieve very good results and what matters is that you have a product that can reach the desired specifications instead of a cheaper one that will never be able to and offer more frustration when expected to behave accurately. | The above mention is extremely important as you do not have an out of box, simplified experience of accurate colour display even if you invested in costly or high specification equipment. You still need to adjust it to more accurately represent its capabilities. Keep in mind that this is the only way to achieve very good results and what matters is that you have a product that can reach the desired specifications instead of a cheaper one that will never be able to and offer more frustration when expected to behave accurately. | ||
HDR | |||
There is no such colour profile as HDR or High Dynamic Range. There are, however, colour profiles that are suited to achieve the desired results of HDR, such as the BT.2020 standard. All HDR capable devices such as cameras and displays, must be able to conform to specific requirements to be able to generate and display accurately the high dynamic range required for such images. As you will clearly note, however, cameras do not conform to specific colour profiles which means that only displays have to abide such rules. | |||
Working and displaying HDR pictures does have some specific requirements. If most images nowadays have 24 bit colours, or may be presented as 32 bit if they include an Alpha or transparency channel, HDR requires at least 10 bits per colour channel or as much as 16-bit. Modern OLED screens can display images with 10 bit colours but the majority of economy LCD screens are not able to do so, or they are not as accurate when displaying in these conditions. This means that, at least for a while, reaching consistent results with HDR images is the most difficult limitation rather than having images or displays that can have the minimum capability exposed. | |||
An important note is that HDR display conditions are, unfortunately, at least in Microsoft Windows operating systems handled poorly but neither Apple MacOS or Alphabet's Android handle the situation as required. An HDR colour profile should not be activated unless the image has such particular requirements and only for the area that is the cause of such requirement. This may mean that the rest of the screen should still display images in the standard colour profile. As colour profiles are, unfortunately, always applied for the entire display output, results are compromised. | |||
Images that have no HDR information may look slightly exaggerated in contrast and brightness or the same can be said about standard images being muted when viewed while an HDR colour profile. The end result is that we hardly have a reasonable grasp on how HDR images should look and most pictures that may seem to be conforming to the HDR moniker may just be standard ones, edited to achieve a certain look. | |||
The best approach is to try and maintain most of the initial image characteristics and drop the colour information to the 24/32bit or 8 bit per colour system only at the last stage of editing. | |||
<code>''For most intents and purposes, HDR does not act as a standard but more as a marketing desire to promote better technology. As there are no strict requirements to follow, HDR images are frequently above or below expectations, depending on creativity and products performance. No camera conforms to a specific display to produce consistent results.''</code> | |||
Colour profile use | Colour profile use | ||