An attempt at clearing up the wide gamut thing

Hi,

So, we now have a wide gamut working color space. It’s OK, just for the sake of accuracy, even if the final output color space is sRGB or Adobe RGB or whatever. I always said that the computations should be as accurate as possible until the image is physically realized (displayed or printed). And I often use a quality lab for printing anyway.

But I can no longer specify the profile of my display and DPL is now assuming by default that the display is sRGB. However, my display is wide gamut. So, how should I tell this to DPL ? This is an unusual approach but this is now done by activating soft proofing and specifying the display profile. Finally, this makes sense. I just made a copy of the DxO Standard preset (DxO Standard WG) with soft proofing enabled and the correct profile selected. Then I specified this preset as the default preset in the Preferences Display tab. I also made the background color and the soft proofing background color the same (with this approach the difference is rather disturbing). And that’s it.

If I need to soft proof another color space for printing or export, I can create a virtual copy for that purpose.

This approach is very different from what is done in Lightroom or other similar programs. Surprising but finally logical. Maybe DxO should explain this more clearly. The lack of accurate technical documentation is not a new issue at DxO. A user manual is one thing but having details about the internals is not only important but often indispensable.

Salut Patrick

No, now PhotoLab takes the current screen profile of the system.

Pascal

1 Like

Salut Pascal,

In this case, the following settings should produce the same histogram :

  • DxO Wide Gamut | Soft proofing disabled
  • DxO Wide Gamut | Soft proofing enabled | Display profile specified

It’s not the case for me. From far.

Je sais.
La gestion de ce rendu large semble problématique :frowning:

Pascal

Hi,

I have given up trying to understand all the confusion in DXO. Everyone here is trying to clarify things, DXO is silent and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.
When I read articles like Tutorials on Color Management & Printing & Monitor expertise: colour management workflow and calibration
I understand that and so I can understand the workflow also in LR.
And so I will maintain that in the future and work with the good mechanisms within DXO, and the rest in Affinity Photo and/or LR.
Headaches were yesterday :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Nice weekend to all

1 Like

Likewise @Guenterm. I am sticking with PL5 for production work until somebody from DxO deigns to clarify things. Or, even, to make the “paper and ink” button do something useful.

As I have mentioned before, up to PL5, everything works for me.

  • If I export to files for web sharing, emails, etc, I choose sRGB for sending to other folks
  • If I want to print, I export to TIFF files with ProPhotoRGB and then use either Preview or ColorSync to apply the appropriate profile for the paper and ink combination. Using either tool, I get the opportunity to soft proof but, in all the years I have been doing this, I have never needed to soft proof.

Now, it seems to have become a nightmare of complexity.

Im not sure if the stable version 5 will survive…because with the last update I’m not sure.
Today I’ve seen some statements for the new update on the windows version with some problems with color…but I must search for

Which is a good reason for keeping the install download for previous versions like @platypus taught me.

4 Likes

Actually, I think that the histograms are different because in one case, the histogram is based on the WG color space and in the other case (soft proofing), it is based on the target color space. I made a few comparisons of both images and I can’t see much differences.

So, I think I’m on the right track. We just need confirmation from DxO about how the histograms are built. That’s the kind of information I mentioned above.

2 Likes

Correct. I remember DxO confirming this, but possibly not in the public part of the forum. I can’t find it at dxo.com either, but it is very much implied in the soft proofing section of the user guide.

Hi Joanna,

I understand your concerns about the new WCS (you’ve detailed them often & well) … but, I’m curious; Why can’t you simply use PLv6 in its “Classic WCS” mode? - What else is not working well enuff for you ?

John

I don’t want to answer for Joanna but I understand her position. Clicking on a UI element and getting “Coming soon” as an answer gives a feeling of unfinished things. Ditto for the “Not available for this camera body” when trying to denoise X-Trans file in XD mode (not that I’m not confident in a future implementation but I had preferred “not available yet”).

As usual the marketing agenda is clashing with the development agenda. No surprise that some users feel uncertain.

1 Like

The following is, imo, the lesson to be learned is the following (excerpt from here). Note that I’ve structured the text for easier reading.

The decision about when to use each of these depends on image content and the intended purpose.

  1. Images with intense colors (such as bright sunsets or well-lit floral arrangements) will preserve more of their color gradation in extreme colors using perceptual intent. On the other hand, this may come at the expense of compressing or dulling more moderate colors.
  2. Images with more subtle tones (such as some portraits) often stand to benefit more from the increased accuracy of relative colorimetric (assuming no colors are placed within the gamut mismatch region).
  3. Perceptual intent is overall the safest bet for general and batch use, unless you know specifics about each image.

Comment to 3.: All of my test images are within the gamut of AdobeRGB according to DPL’s softproofing/gamut warning. They therefore fall within the second class mentioned above. YMMV.

1 Like