Color Management

[Paul]

I have been ploughing through the threads on color management with respect to this continuing discussion to sRGB or Adobe RGB. It is both educational and confusing. The conclusion appears to me to run with sRGB on all the devices all the time as color losses due to using the smaller gamut are minimal and are offset by reducing the chance of errors. However, Daniel Salazar's picture of the waterfowl (3/23/09) seems to underline the point. It appears, on my monitor at least, that the water is an un-natural blue and the bird's beak and forehead are an overly bright white. This could obviously be a result of my monitor, a different personal perception of what the picture should actually look like, in other words were the colors actually like that, or the result of the color space embedded in the transmitted document. Is it possible to answer any of these questions at all or does one finally reject or accept a picture based entirely on one own tastes.
Paul

[Colin Southern]

I have been ploughing through the threads on color management with respect to this continuing discussion to sRGB or Adobe RGB. It is both educational and confusing. The conclusion appears to me to run with sRGB on all the devices all the time as color losses due to using the smaller gamut are minimal and are offset by reducing the chance of errors. However, Daniel Salazar's picture of the waterfowl (3/23/09) seems to underline the point. It appears, on my monitor at least, that the water is an un-natural blue and the bird's beak and forehead are an overly bright white. This could obviously be a result of my monitor, a different personal perception of what the picture should actually look like, in other words were the colors actually like that, or the result of the color space embedded in the transmitted document. Is it possible to answer any of these questions at all or does one finally reject or accept a picture based entirely on one own tastes.
Paul

Hi Paul,

In summary, with sRGB, try to think "lowest common denominator", whereas with Adobe RGB (with respect to monitors and printers) try to think "different sets of colours, but BIG overlap between them".

In your case I'd think that any differences you're seeing in the colour of water or the whiteness of beaks will almost certainly not be evidence of Adobe RGB out of gamut colours - whites don't enter in to it, and whereas blues MAY, not usually in the range you'd typically find water, and even less likely on a monitor.

If you're trying to evaluate sRGB -v- Adobe RGB then having a monitor thats both calibrated and profiled with correct black and white points is an absolute pre-requisite, followed closely by their display on a colour-managed system.

In my opinion, it's not something worth stressing over; if you capture Adobe RGB, colour balance to a gray card and happen to print additional colours that are visable (even if you can't see most of them on your (essentially) sRGB-gamut monitor) then it's a bonus; the real problem is when you start making big changes to colours without realising that what you've seeing on your sRGB limited monitor is NOT what you've actually chosen, then you can get issues where what you print is more "what you inadvertantly asked for" rather than "what you wanted".