What Apple’s Wide Color means for the color reproduction of screens

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What Apple’s Wide Color means for the color reproduction of screens

What is Wide Color and why does Apple use it on the latest screens? In this guide we explain the difference in color reproduction between Wide Color (DCI-P3) and sRGB.

Since the iPhone 7 from 2016, Apple has added support for Wide Color (also known as ‘wide gamut’ or ‘wide color reproduction’ in Dutch). This offers a wider color gamut than usual sRGB screens. In this guide you can read more about Wide Color and how it affects color reproduction on the screens of iPhones, iPads and Macs.

  • More and more beautiful screens
  • Wide Color = DCI-P3
  • Does your screen work with wide color reproduction?
  • Is Wide Color much better than sRGB?
  • Commonly used terms

More and more beautiful screens: from Retina to Wide Color

In 2010, Apple introduced Retina displays, with such a high pixel density that you can see much more detail. Super Retina has now become the norm when it comes to a high pixel density. But Apple has also continuously tinkered with the color reproduction. Wide Color allows screens to show more colors, especially shades of red and green. Wide Color support has been added since the very first iPad Pro and the iPhone 7. Macs are often referred to simply as P3.

In this article you can read useful information about the color reproduction on Retina iMacs that have been on the market since late 2015.

Wide Color on the iMac

On a normal screen, a photo will look a bit flat and lifeless, while the colors are much more striking with Wide Color.

Wide Color is Apple’s name for DCI-P3

Wide Color is really just a marketing term for the standard known as DCI-P3 or P3 for short. This offers a wider color gamut and was developed as a standard for digital films by the American film industry. TV set manufacturers usually refer to it as High Dynamic Range.

A screen that supports DCI-P3 is not enough, the footage must also be suitable for it. That means the photo or video must have been shot with a camera that also supports a wider color gamut. Many digital cameras are already capable of capturing the DCI-P3 color gamut. You just didn’t see much of it in the beginning, because conventional screens couldn’t display it yet. That has changed since Apple supports it in more and more devices.

Apple not only had to adjust the screens for this, but also expanded software support for advanced color management. This happened in iOS 10 and newer. In addition, Apple has enabled developers to use Wide Color in their apps, such as photography apps. At the same time, Apple has ensured that the color reproduction on older iPhones remains beautiful. Devices before the iPhone 7 and the 9.7-inch iPad Pro can only handle sRGB color reproduction.

Does your screen work with Wide Color?

To check whether your screen is suitable for Wide Color, Apple has created a bright red image that consists of two shades of red. On an sRGB screen you only see a red square, while on the newer screens you see a logo in the red area.

If your iDevice or Mac does not yet support wide color reproduction, it may be more difficult to imagine what you are missing. That’s why we explain it using this photo. Wide Color ensures that the orange shoes and green grass get brighter colors, without losing details.

Shoes sRGB

If you were to replace every pixel that cannot properly display sRGB with light blue, you would get the image below. With this you can see exactly where Wide Color improves the colors, namely with the shoes and the grass:

Shoes: color difference

Is Wide Color really better than sRBG?

Does it really make that much of a difference to have Wide Color? If you’re using an sRGB display, it will try to replace out-of-gamut colors with colors that are visible, while a display with Wide Color support will show the actual colors. If you’re not used to it, you don’t know what you’re missing. As with Retina screens, you won’t notice the difference until you go back to an older screen.

Below you can see the difference in color range. The colored area shows all colors of sRGB, while the white triangle shows which colors fall outside. The difference is about 25%. Especially with saturated colors of red, yellow, pair
s and green there is a difference. The black line is also important because it shows what colors the human eye can see.

sRGB comparison with P3

Commonly used terms

Color spaces, color gamuts, what do they actually mean? Below you will find the meaning of the most commonly used terms when it comes to color reproduction on screens.

  • Color space: A color space is a way of describing colors. With shades of gray you only need one value to describe a certain shade. RGB uses the shades of red, yellow and blue to define the color on a screen, for example, while CYMK is often used in printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. For printing, this is more accurate than RGB.

  • Color profile: In 1993, a number of companies formed the International Color Consortium (ICC) to set standards for color spaces. An example of such a standard is sRGB, officially known as IEC 61966-2-1. Including color profiles in an image or file allows a computer to interpret which color values ​​are intended.

  • Color gamut: A color gamut is the number of colors that a color space can define or that a screen can display. For a computer monitor, the color gamut corresponds to the number of colors it can display correctly. An sRGB screen will try to translate colors that fall outside the color gamut into a color that can be displayed.

  • Wide color gamut: Wide color gamut is an unofficial term for color spaces larger than sRGB.

  • Wide Color: Apple’s marketing name for DCI-P3, the standard of the American film industry. In the Netherlands, the term ‘wide color reproduction’ is used.

  • Color depth: The accuracy with which a computer screen can display a given color. This is different from the color gamut, which describes a range of colors. The color depth indicates how many bits are used to encode the color of a pixel. The higher the color depth, the more different colors can be encoded. For example, a 1-bit color depth is used on monochrome screens. With an 8-bit color screen, there are 8 possible values ​​for the R and G components and 4 possible values ​​for B, so a total of 256 different colors. Because the human eye is less sensitive to the blue component, it is allocated fewer bits. With RGB, 16 million colors are possible.

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