Since the dawn of time, man loves to barricade himself in factions, to feel part of a group, to side with one ideal rather than another. In the contemporary era there are photographers (or filmmakers, such as Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson for example) who have sided with film, others with digital, among the gamers instead we have had epic challenges like SEGA against Nintendo, or Sony opposed to Microsoft. In the smartphone world, however, there is a battle between Apple and iOS lovers and diehard Android, and we want to talk about this war today. Not in a general way but taking a very precise element: the color depth of the screens.
The Cupertino manufacturer has for years played all his cards on a wide chromatic range called DCI-P3, since the iPhone 7 family in 2016, while on this point Android only some time ago made interesting steps forward. But is it really worth betting on a DCI-P3 display? What real differences are there with sRGB screens?
DCI-P3 against sRGB
At first it was the same Android that did not know how to manage a very "wide" color profile like the P3, only the latest versions have managed to "put a piece" in it, with apps such as Google Photos that immediately lined up. Consequently the first compatible terminals have also sprung up on the market, just to give some examples we can name Oppo Find X2 Pro, Xiaomi Mi 10, the OnePlus 7 family, even the new Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra manages to reproduce 110% of the DCI range- P3.
But let's try to clarify once and for all, what advantages does the DCI-P3 bring compared to the classic sRGB? To better understand this concept, an image (below) comes to our aid which leaves little room for the imagination – and shows us how the P3 profile is actually able to represent many more colors and shades than classic sRGB, with numerous advantages in rendering photographs and videos.
In absolute terms, taking the CIE 1931 color space (reference), the P3 reproduces 45.5% of the entire range, 25% more than the sRGB. To understand the concept materially, we refer you to a site that shows the same photos in both sRGB and P3, so you can immediately see the difference between the two color profiles. Obviously if you use a non-P3 screen, the differences will be less evident.
The DCI that precedes the P3 the words Digital Cinema Initiatives, an association strongly desired by giants such as Warner Bros, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Universal Studios and SONY Pictures Entertainment to have a better performance than sRGB on consumer screens such as smartphones, tablets, monitors and laptops (there are several laptops on the market to offer the P3, including the latest MacBook Pro and iPad Pro / Air 3). It's just about time, the goal is to completely replace the sRGB profile with the P3, the high end of the smartphone market has practically already done so, we just have to wait for the alignment of the medium-low range.
Software + Hardware
Of course the hardware cannot do all the dirty work, it is essential that the software also give a big hand. Apple has long aligned both sides, taking photographs with P3 profile and thus showing them at their maximum potential on the screens of the latest Apple devices. So Android phones will also have to do to play on par with Cupertino, it will also be essential gradually change the web – where the sRGB profile reigns supreme also for compatibility reasons. In fact, the RGB is certainly the most popular profile in the world, the horse on which to focus from the point of view of extreme compatibility.
Even if it's a kind of sacrilege, even the best SLR and mirrorless cameras on the market continue to offer sRGB as a color option, opposite to the more performing Adobe RGB (52.1% of the CIE 1931 range) – but only for compatibility reasons, in order not to have to change everything in post-production. In addition, returning to smartphones, it is good to also pay attention to the thousands of photo editing apps on the various stores.
In case you want to keep a P3 profile within an image, and therefore all its original colors, it is good to treat it with compatible software (think of Adobe Lightroom for example, also in a mobile version) or with proprietary apps for photo editing.
Most of the third-party apps instead, those perhaps useful to add filters and anything else, in the saving phase do nothing but sweep away any additional nuance to return to sRGB. This is fine for social or web use, but not in case you want to do "something more" with your creations.
The process of transition to P3 will still be assimilated for good, indeed most people do not even imagine what we are talking about, in any case – as mentioned above – very soon the DCI-P3 will be the standard of the mass market, the times they are very mature and it is good to understand immediately the benefits and advantages, also by virtue of a future purchase.