The 9.7-inch iPad Pro Color Gamut

I was working late one night a few weeks ago and saw a tweet by Craig Hockenberry that immediately piqued my interest. The new iPad Pro 9.7-inch model had just been announced, with an intriguing new True Tone display feature that adjusts the screen’s color temperature based on the ambient light in the room. And Craig, one of the first iOS developers outside of Apple, recognized what was going on:

I wrote more in “ColorSync Support in iOS 9.3 (!)” about why color management on an iOS device is a new and exciting development, particularly for photographers.

Soon after, Craig asked if I had any wide-gamut photos he could use to test with, and I happily sent him a few images. Many of them are HDR (high dynamic range) photos, which I supplied saved in both ProPhoto RGB and AdobeRGB color spaces. Each space includes more color than the standard sRGB color space used by all other iOS devices (including the 12.9-inch iPad Pro). He put one of the ProPhoto images onto three different iPads to see the immediate difference:

The iPad mini 2 can’t handle the ProPhoto color space at all, which is why the shot is so bland. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro does better, and you can see a little improvement in the 9.7-inch iPad Pro at the bottom.

If you have a 9.7-inch iPad Pro, you can see the difference for yourself: Craig set up a simple Web page that lets you load the images and compare against sRGB. You should also be able to see it on a 5K iMac, which also uses the same expanded PCI-3 color space, but I haven’t had a chance to view it on one.

The difference is most noticeable in the Harbor photo: Look at the orange streaky reflections in the water at the center of the image and tap the Compare sRGB button. The other images aren’t as noticeable—I have trouble telling the sRGB differences, probably because the gamut is most pronounced at the red/orange end of the spectrum.

Craig writes more about it on his site, which I highly recommend: Looking at the Future.

Many thanks to Craig for featuring my photos in his explorations. As a reminder, I sell prints of my photos, so if any of those strike your fancy, contact me.

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