Today’s Question: I have my color space in Photoshop set for ProPhoto RGB, but my monitor supports only sRGB and Display P3. How will the mismatch affect my workflow? I find a bunch of monitors that support sRGB and even Adobe RGB, but none that support ProPhoto RGB. What are your thoughts?
Tim’s Quick Answer: The key is really to optimize the image for the final output, which will always involve a color gamut that is smaller than the ProPhoto RGB color space. The reason to use ProPhoto RGB as a working color space in the first place is to provide more flexibility in your workflow for a broader range of output scenarios, such as digital display versus print on various mediums. This is helpful even when using a monitor that can’t display all the colors in an image.
More Detail: I can say definitively that there will never (ever) be a monitor that supports the full ProPhoto RGB color space. That is because the ProPhoto RGB color space is so large that it includes colors that are beyond the range of normal human vision, even to the point of including “imaginary” colors.
However, I still favor the use of the ProPhoto RGB color space, even though monitors don’t come anywhere close to being able to display the full color range of ProPhoto RGB, because doing so provides greater flexibility in your workflow. The only caveat is that because ProPhoto RGB is such a large color space, it should only be used with 16-bit per channel images to avoid the risk of posterization in an image.
While no monitor comes close to displaying the full range of colors in the ProPhoto RGB color space, it is still preferred to have a display that provides as wide a color gamut as possible. Just about every display will cover the full range of the sRGB color space, because this is a relatively small color space that was originally intended to encompass the range of colors of a monitor display.
Especially if you prepare your images for print, I suggest opting for a display with a color gamut that covers 100% (or more) of the Adobe RGB color space. A pretty good number of displays support Adobe RGB, and you don’t need to look at the most advanced—and most expensive—displays to find one that supports Adobe RGB.
Beyond having a display with as wide a color gamut as possible, and to be working in a large color space, it can be helpful to use soft proofing to get a better sense of which colors in the image are beyond the capabilities of the intended output method. This is especially important when preparing an image for print, where each combination of printer, ink, and paper will have a unique range of colors that can be reproduced. That variability is the exact reason that a large color space can be helpful, so that regardless of the output color gamut, you have optimal information in the source file. For example, if you prepared an image specifically for an uncoated matte paper, that file would not provide a good source when printing on glossy paper, where a larger color gamut is generally available.
