Color Selection Settings on 2013 27" iMac

[Jonathan Pears]

Loving our new fully spec'd up iMac, its an amazingly grreat workhorse with R3D's...

In the display menu, there are many different color calibration options. The list is:

Apple RGB
CIE RGB
ColorMatch RGB
Generic RGB Profile
PAL/SECAM
ProPhoyo RGB
SMPTE-C
sRGB IEC61966-2.1
Wide Gamut RGB

What do you guys think?

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

I would guess wide gamut but I'm not sure, I'm sure someone here knows

 

[Jack Shanahan]

What kind of playback do you get on 4k files with the new imac?

 

[Jonathan Pears]

I can play 4K files back at 1/4 res without any stops or buffering. For me, that works....

It goes to full res everytime you pause. Awesome when pared with Premiere Pro CS6 and its render engine. Importing straight into CS6 with no conversion, straight to edit in 4K and then the export to whatever you need.

Any more light on the color will be much appreciated!

 

[Alex Mills]

I'm also interested in this

 

[Marc Wielage]

My opinion is that you cannot calibrate an iMac to get close enough to SMPTE RP166 conditions for Rec709. It's fine as a display for the user interface, but I think you need a real monitor with more range to really deliver Rec709 or P3. But for that, you'll need to spend about as much money as an iMac, just for the monitor itself. I'd feel the same thing about high-end graphic artists or visual effects artists: I don't think the Apple displays will get you there.

Use a non-calibrated monitor at your own peril.

 

[Jonathan Pears]

Thanks Marc, and yes in an ideal world we would all have that extra $5k sitting around for a perfect monitor. But this is a conversation about making the best of what we have, and what we have is that list of options at the top that we are trying to decide from. Am i looking to match a monitor to a professional grade one, no. But i am looking to get the best out of what we have available to us....

Thanks so much for the input though, you are completely correct in what you say.

Anyone else have any light to shed on this iMac query?

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

There is another thread on here where some experienced dp's seem happy with the LED apple cinema display, for what it's worth...

 

[Bryce W.]

Jonathan, did you get an answer to your question.

From what I've read, the imac monitor is close to srgb. What I don't grasp is that a wide-gamut rgb falls outside of sgrb...if this is the case how would it be possible for the imac to display that type of color space properly.

Does anybody have the answer to this?

 

[paul schefz]

most video or broadcast color profiles are very limited (have a small color space) and since plenty of photographers (who work in abobe rgb or rgbpro or similar color spaces) work on iMacs this really should not be an issue...preparing for print is a little bit like preparing for broadcast....except that for print you usually start in 16bit and have to make sure all that beautiful detail you captured still somehow comes across in a magazine....
the problem is not really what the imac can show but if you are using the correct profile to represent what is the agreed upon common ground of what people happen to watch the footage on.....and that color space (similar to how you prepare files for the web where srgb is almost overkill) is usually very small....
in other words: all that beautiful shadow and highlight detail your imac screen can show you...find a color space and squeeze it in there before output....
of course a special monitor only showing a certain (limited) color space is a better and simpler solution but there are ways to "dumb" the imac down....the idea that you have to get some 12 bit eizo does not make much sense because either way you need to work in a much more limited space, not the other way around....

 

[Danai Chutinaton]

Jonathan,

Calibrating your imac by eye is very difficult to do. Fortunately its very easy and inexpensive if you were to pick up an X-Rite i1 Display Pro. They sell for about $250 dollars.

http://www.xritephoto.com/ph_product_overview.aspx?id=1454&catid=109&action=overview

The i1 Display Pro will create a custom profile for your monitor instead of the generic/canned profiles you currently see listed.

 

[paul schefz]

of course a calibrated monitor will show the selected color space more accurately....xrite, spyder, even the munki will probably do it for the iMac...

 

[Danai Chutinaton]

I've used all the i1 Display and Munki products from Xrite on the iMac and the best of them all is the i1Display Pro that I linked to above.

 

[Bryce W.]

most video or broadcast color profiles are very limited (have a small color space) and since plenty of photographers (who work in abobe rgb or rgbpro or similar color spaces) work on iMacs this really should not be an issue...preparing for print is a little bit like preparing for broadcast....except that for print you usually start in 16bit and have to make sure all that beautiful detail you captured still somehow comes across in a magazine....
the problem is not really what the imac can show but if you are using the correct profile to represent what is the agreed upon common ground of what people happen to watch the footage on.....and that color space (similar to how you prepare files for the web where srgb is almost overkill) is usually very small....
in other words: all that beautiful shadow and highlight detail your imac screen can show you...find a color space and squeeze it in there before output....
of course a special monitor only showing a certain (limited) color space is a better and simpler solution but there are ways to "dumb" the imac down....the idea that you have to get some 12 bit eizo does not make much sense because either way you need to work in a much more limited space, not the other way around....

Paul, the reason I asked about wide-gamut rgb was with regards to DCI-P3. Because an imac has approximately an srgb color space this means that it won't be able to show a color space used for digital cinema projection. Why would apple then have a wide-gamut rgb profile if it is not possible to show these colors?