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Color spaces, explained

A color space defines which colors can be represented at all. It's a separate question from HDR's brightness range — even though the two often travel together in practice.

"Why does this photo look different in this app than that one?" is very often a color space question, not a bug. Different color spaces — sRGB, Display P3, Rec.2020 — cover different amounts of the visible spectrum, and an app that doesn't manage color correctly can show the same file's numbers as noticeably different actual colors.

These three articles cover the gamuts you'll actually run into, from sRGB's modern default successor (Display P3) to the very wide broadcast standard (Rec.2020) and the full HDR system spec built on top of it (Rec.2100).