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> We're largely past the days of just hoping that the image and the display happen to agree on roughly the same colors. <Heath Ledger Joker>Ah haa ha ha haaaa!

> We're largely past the days of just hoping that the image and the display happen to agree on roughly the same colors. <Heath Ledger Joker>Ah haa ha ha haaaa!</Heath Ledger Joker> We're nowhere near past that point, we haven't even begun to approach that point. That point is something I would like to reach before I die, but since that's maybe just a couple of decades away, it's not looking likely. In general, Windows and Linux does not color manage, or so badly that it is counter-productive. Most sub-$500 monitors do not report their native gamut! By default, operating systems assume monitors are sRGB (they're typically not), and send un-calibrated 8-bit RGB as-is. On Windows and MacOS, enabling HDR mode typically sets the correct gamut, etc... and mostly makes things "just work", but that's at the OS level only. Almost all applications map wide-gamut images to sRGB even on HDR monitors or simply re-interpret the RGB values as-if they're sRGB without even bothering to color space convert. Firefox has color management off by default. Microsoft Edge defaults to "crush to sRGB". Apps with embedded web view controls are "who knows?" In general, widge-gamut, 10 bits per channel, and HDR support are all a total shit show. I'm perpetually surprised if any of it works! As a random example, my Nikon Z8 DSLR can natively record HDR 10 bit wide gamut HEIF files in-body. Windows can't display those at all. MacOS and iPhones can... sometimes... but then the viewer apps will often "get confused" and the brightness will jump around randomly and non-deterministically as you switch between thumbnail and full screen views. You can't forward such an image to anyone via iMessage, they'll get gibberish on their end, and SMS/MMS is hopeless. Meanwhile, YouTube HDR generally "just works" on most devices, so I've started sending people my still image photography by converting them to a HDR 4K slideshow in DaVinci Resolve and giving them a YouTube link. It's sad and pathetic that Meta set $80 billion on fire for the Metaverse and the rest of the industry found a decent chunk of a trillion dollars under the couch cushions to throw at AI slop, but nobody can "afford" to have one or two engineers fix their imaging pipeline. Upload a HDR or wide-gamut image to Faceobook successfully and then tell me it "just works". Or send one in an email. Or do anything with it other than view it on your own device.

kllrnohj 5mo ago
HDR has problems that aren't the fault of missing color management. Notably, the fact that HDR of the HLG & PQ variety (so HDR10) do not have specified behavior. The specs are wrong in that they basically just don't exist for half the problem. Which also means most content is badly authored, too, almost certainly including your fancy pants Nikon. This is why gainmap images almost immediately dominated the mobile phone capture space, they are actually properly defined. So both viewers and creators know what they're actually intended to do. The rest of your rant seems mostly anchored around the fact that most things still produce sRGB, which is true, but they still typically map inputs into sRGB appropriately (that is, they get clipped). Which still is being properly color managed.
- jiggawatts 5mo ago
  All of my rant applies identically to 10 bpc images and wide gamut (non-sRGB) for exactly the same underlying reasons. They all have the same fix: frame buffers must be 16 bpc and input images must be color managed. HDR has one extra minor issue on top, which is that there needs to be an output mapping to the display max brightness capabilities but this isn’t that different to what’s needed to correctly tone map wide gamut to arbitrary displays. Also: if the spec is so “wrong” why does YouTube HDR just work? Also… Apple TV, NetFlix, etc… on practically all devices? They got it right! There is no fundamental color management difference between moving and still images. If anything, moving images are harder!

kllrnohj 5mo ago

HDR has problems that aren't the fault of missing color management. Notably, the fact that HDR of the HLG & PQ variety (so HDR10) do not have specified behavior. The specs are wrong in that they basically just don't exist for half the problem. Which also means most content is badly authored, too, almost certainly including your fancy pants Nikon. This is why gainmap images almost immediately dominated the mobile phone capture space, they are actually properly defined. So both viewers and creators know what they're actually intended to do. The rest of your rant seems mostly anchored around the fact that most things still produce sRGB, which is true, but they still typically map inputs into sRGB appropriately (that is, they get clipped). Which still is being properly color managed.

jiggawatts 5mo ago
All of my rant applies identically to 10 bpc images and wide gamut (non-sRGB) for exactly the same underlying reasons. They all have the same fix: frame buffers must be 16 bpc and input images must be color managed. HDR has one extra minor issue on top, which is that there needs to be an output mapping to the display max brightness capabilities but this isn’t that different to what’s needed to correctly tone map wide gamut to arbitrary displays. Also: if the spec is so “wrong” why does YouTube HDR just work? Also… Apple TV, NetFlix, etc… on practically all devices? They got it right! There is no fundamental color management difference between moving and still images. If anything, moving images are harder!