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10 bit / 30 bit colour depth on old iMac?

I've recently bought a Cintiq 27qhd and connected it to my iMac 21" mid 2011. It looks marvelous, however, there's still some banding present. I know that this Cintiq screen is capable of showing billions of colours, and yesterday I updated to El Captain since I heard that it supports Deep Color / 10 bit, but even after update cintiq works under 32 bit Instead of 30.


Is there any way to solve this? if not, then will iMac 4K allow for 30 bit colour on my Cintiq?


By the way, my GPU is ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6770 and I have no idea whether it supports Deep Color or not, since I failed to google it out :\

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6), null

Posted on Aug 7, 2016 2:19 AM

Reply
3 replies

Aug 7, 2016 2:35 PM in response to tinangelnyo

Hey there tinangelnyo,


Congratulations on the new Cintiq 27qhd. The iMac has nearly infinite creative design 3rd party accessories. In reviewing your question, it would certainly be great if you could use the 32 bit or 30 bit version. Given the nature of this question, the best resource will be the developers of your Cintiq. They have a wide range of support features which can be found here:


Support your way


After updating your iMac to El Capitan, you may need to install product drivers for this device. From their website, they can be found here:


Drivers


Happy drawing!

Aug 7, 2016 3:13 PM in response to raina_b22

Thank you!

I think I might have failed to explain the situation properly. The cintiq works perfectly fine, no problem with it. This device is capable of showing 30bit color if the system allows it. If the system does not support 30 bit color, the cintiq will automatically work as a regular 32 bit / 8 bit screen. It's completely fine, I was just wondering whether it is possible to configure my iMac to actually show 30 bit / 10 bit color or not.

I've seen posts about Apple finally enabling 10 bit in El Captain for 4K and 5K iMacs http://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/30/4k-5k-imacs-10-bit-color-depth-osx-el-capita n/

Aug 12, 2016 8:32 AM in response to tinangelnyo

There are two part to this.


  1. Is your iMac hardware capable of outputting 10bit colour aka. 30bit colour
  2. Does Apple themselves enable 10bit colour on your iMac in OS X


As a comparison I have a Mac Pro 2010 model with an AMD Radeon HD 7950 video card connected via HDMI to a Sony TV. AMD officially confirm this video card is 10bit capable and indeed if I boot in to Windows 10 via Boot Camp I do successfully get 10bit mode enabled and my Sony TV confirms this. Unfortunately all the same hardware right down the cable when used in OS X does not allow 10bit mode because Apple wilfully have crippled it. Apple do not even support audio on this video card even though again it is capable of it and it works immediately again in Windows via Boot Camp. 😟


Based on my experience you ideally need to boot in to Windows 10 via Boot Camp and see what happens, this will let you check whether your hardware supports 10bit colour mode, as an example a Nvidia GTX-680 card which can also be used in a Mac Pro 2010 does not support 10bit colour according to Nvidia and my own experience in both OS X and Windows 10.


There is a small but distinct possibility that Apple may have been unfriendly enough such that a new iMac can do 10bit mode on its built-in screen but might still not enable it for external screens.


Sadly Apple have proven very poor at supporting 'professional' features like 10bit colour. They also do not support H.265 video, or lossless audio standards like Dolby TrueHD even in their 'professional' software products like FinalCut Pro X.

10 bit / 30 bit colour depth on old iMac?

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