Printing - sRGB and Adobe questions

[Brownbear]

I'm still a little confused about the best choices for colour management. I have read the tutorials here, including this very informative one https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...lor-spaces.htm here, and researched the subject. Indeed when you research the topic the Cambridge tutorials come up, again and again.

Up until a few months ago I had my camera and monitor set to Adobe, and I recently changed both to sRGB thinking this was the best choice, even though many seem to recommend setting ones camera to Adobe and working the raw file in Adobe and then converting the jpeg image to sRGB for presenting on the web and even printing. I also understand that many say the difference is not that noticeable.

When I print photos I typically send them out for printing, and up until this point I never worried about the colour mode. However, a girlfriend of mine who was kind enough to play model for me asked me to send her some prints. I asked a local printer if they would prefer the adobe or sRGB file and they advised that they would like the file in sRGB or the image will look flat. They also advised that sRGB is the format used by all commercial printers.

The printer also advised that if I printed the photos myself (very basic HP Photosmart 5520 printer) that it would print better in Adobe? I printed a copy on plain paper in Adobe and sRGB and I prefer the muted, truer colours (blue ocean, red dress) of the Adobe colour. The images were taken with a Sony camera set to Adobe, and when viewed in Lightroom on a monitor calibrated to sRGB the reds are a little clipped which is not the case in the Adobe format. So it seems that the histogram also varies with ones choice of sRGB or Adobe.

At this moment I am thinking that I should set my camera to Adobe, so the raw original file offers the extra printing colours (always available if needed) but I'm not sure what this means in terms of how I should set the calibration of my monitor, ie; to Adobe or keep it at sRGB? And does it also mean that I have to change the calibration of my monitor and process the photo individually (ie; change back and forth between sRGB and Adobe depending on whether I post an image here, send it out for printing or decide to print it myself to suit my colour preference?)

ie; If I change my camera settings back to Adobe it seems like it will make everything very complicated... (post processing, printing choices, posting to the web choices)

Thank you.

[DanK]

If you are shooting raw, the choice of color space on your camera has absolutely no effect on the raw file. I believe it does affect the on-camera histogram, but I don't know that for certain.

You have not said what software you are using, and that matters. Lightroom works in a variant of ProPhoto RGB, which is a larger color space than either sRGB (the smallest) or Adobe RGB (intermediate in size). It will do that regardless of your camera setting, as long as you shoot raw. It will translate that to sRGB to display on your monitor. When you export, for example, if you want a jpeg to send to a printer, then you have to choose a color space. sRBG is the standard for displaying on the web. Most commercial printers want sRGB, but some will take Adobe RGB. If they assume the wrong color space--e.g., if you send Adobe RGB when they use sRBG, and if they don't convert to the correct color space, the colors will look wrong. If you print yourself using lightroom, you don't have to pay any attention to this--it will automatically convert to the correct color space if you have the right ICC profile loaded for your printer and paper.

Re the monitor: unless you have a wide-gamut monitor, I doubt you have any choice. All of mine are sRGB-only. My calibration software does not even ask.

So my drill is:

--I usually leave my camera set for Adobe RGB, but I don't pay much attention because it has no effect on my raw files.
--my working space for Lightroom and Photoshop is ProPhoto RGB.
--when I export for the web or to pass on to others, I use sRGB.
--when I export for printing (which I rarely do), I ask the printer what they want.

[Boatman]

You said, "RAW original file". If you are shooting in RAW, then the camera does not use a color space. It uses the RAW space for the RAW file and applies the camera setting selected color space only to the JPG, if you create one in the camera. For the RAW file, you only chose a color space when you convert the image for viewing or printing in your photo editor. Even when you import into Lr (assuming you use Lr), the image is still RAW and not constrained to RGB or anything else. When you export out of Lr to a JPG you do the conversion.

This means that, if shooting RAW, you really don't have to worry about it. You can create RGB images but will always have the full RAW file that can also create AdobeRGB or ProPhoto images from if you need the wider gamut.

If you are not shooting in RAW format (you should be), the gamut is baked into your image and that's all you have to work with.

[Polar01]

Christina:if you are going to have Joe the Printer the one that you talked to then set everything to sRGB you see that printer is only able to print those colours found in the sRBG colour bucket with his printer. Your monitor unless it is a highend will only let you see the sRGB colour bucket, all images posted to the web are sRGB. Now higher end printers can print images where you have selected the Adobe RGB bucket or ProPhoto bucket. I use the term bucket instead of space or mode same size bucket for all, however amounts of colours in the buckets is different.
When you save an image as a jpeg the computer automatically changes whatever colour space you had selected to sRGB same thing for web. Most of these printer unless they use a high end printer can only print from a jpeg so sRGB, a higher end printer will be able to print any format and colour bucket. For now I suggest set camera and lightroom to Adobe RGB colour space, if you have a print that has to go outside save as a high quality jpeg file and check on your monitor that the colour is correct. If printing on your home printer in colour management then select let Lightroom manage colour, tell what it is printing on, then hit print.
Christina printing is a whole different world than the camera, once you know your camera you then learn about printing and you see how they merge together, how a change in stock will give the image a completely different feel. You start to think about how the image will look once printed and you have not even taken the image yet. I know you want to learn everything about everything, but slow down you will only confuse yourself. Learn how to get the best out of you camera without thinking, your critters work is very good, learn the same for landscapes without thinking about what you are doing, much different mindset than critter work you still need to work on your landscapes. Now once you have gotten these down then it will be time to work on the printing of these images. So for now set the camera and LR to Adobe RGB, knowing that for web and jpeg the computer will automatically change to sRGB when this happen and they look OK then they should be just fine.

Cheers:

Allan

[Brownbear]

Hi Dan,

I do shoot raw so it is good to know that my choice of setting does not matter.

I use LR 4 and Adobe Elements 9, but perhaps in a few years I might upgrade to Photoshop in which case it would be good to have my photos set to Adobe?

Wonderful explanation of LR. Thank you.

My monitor does ask me to choose between Adobe and sRGB...

If you are shooting raw, the choice of color space on your camera has absolutely no effect on the raw file. I believe it does affect the on-camera histogram, but I don't know that for certain.

You have not said what software you are using, and that matters. Lightroom works in a variant of ProPhoto RGB, which is a larger color space than either sRGB (the smallest) or Adobe RGB (intermediate in size). It will do that regardless of your camera setting, as long as you shoot raw. It will translate that to sRGB to display on your monitor. When you export, for example, if you want a jpeg to send to a printer, then you have to choose a color space. sRBG is the standard for displaying on the web. Most commercial printers want sRGB, but some will take Adobe RGB. If they assume the wrong color space--e.g., if you send Adobe RGB when they use sRBG, and if they don't convert to the correct color space, the colors will look wrong. If you print yourself using lightroom, you don't have to pay any attention to this--it will automatically convert to the correct color space if you have the right ICC profile loaded for your printer and paper.

Re the monitor: unless you have a wide-gamut monitor, I doubt you have any choice. All of mine are sRGB-only. My calibration software does not even ask.

So my drill is:

--I usually leave my camera set for Adobe RGB, but I don't pay much attention because it has no effect on my raw files.
--my working space for Lightroom and Photoshop is ProPhoto RGB.
--when I export for the web or to pass on to others, I use sRGB.
--when I export for printing (which I rarely do), I ask the printer what they want.

[Brownbear]

Homer,

Thank you for a clear explanation. Great to know about raw images.

Allan,

Thank you. Yes, the world of printing seems a little complicated. I will do as you suggested. It is just that when I printed a test image I saw the different colours and then my mind starting wondering if I was doing things correctly.

I don't think my monitor is high end... A Samsung 21 or 24inch screen, that cost about $250 USD but it does ask me to choose between colour profiles.

[Polar01]

Dan said it better than I.

Cheers:

Allan

[DanK]

I use LR 4 and Adobe Elements 9, but perhaps in a few years I might upgrade to Photoshop in which case it would be good to have my photos set to Adobe?

If you are shooting raw, it makes no difference what you choose on your camera, regardless of the software. The setting does not change the raw file.

I don't know what color space options Elements has. I have never used it. If it does ProPhoto, I would use that working space, and I would move the file using TIF rather than jpeg. There again, I would only chose a smaller color space when there is a need to, e.g., when displaying on the web.

[yauman]

FYI, I have a very high end monitor (27" Dell UltraSharp U2713H ~US$900) which I calibrated religiously every month. When I switch it from Adobe RGB or sRGB, I can see very little difference - have to really try and pick out specific patches to notice that I have switched. When I do a "blind" test (as any good scientist should), ie have someone switch the color mode when I'm out of the room, I really cannot tell - guess right no better than just flipping a coin. Now, if I use Lightroom (5.2) and pick a very colorful image (like garden of bright flowers) and boost the vibrance to an absurd and obviously overdone amount, then, by the neon pinks, bright purples and oranges I can sort of tell (at least on blinded test, I get it right slightly better than chance guessing!) So, sRBG is all you need on your monitor and Lightroom settings.

[xpatUSA]

I don't know what color space options Elements has. I have never used it. If it does ProPhoto, I would use that working space, and I would move the file using TIF rather than jpeg. There again, I would only chose a smaller color space when there is a need to, e.g., when displaying on the web.

Elements 6 has sRGB and Adobe as standard working spaces. But, it can also open a 8- or 16-bit ProPhoto TIFF, accept editing and save it as a TIFF while retaining the embedded ProPhoto profile, provided you don't convert it at any point. All the time, it shows the "mismatch" asterisk up in the image title bar which real men or women will ignore completely ;-)

However you can't convert a file to ProPhoto and you can't save e.g. an sRGB file as a ProPhoto either. In other words, it will honor a ProPhoto file and save it but one does rather get an impression of reluctance . . "if you must" . .

Gotta love Adobe - don't we all?

[pnodrog]

My approach with any sort of data is always to retain as much as possible and only discard unwanted or unused information when it becomes irrelevant for a specific output.

With images I take them RAW and retain a copy of the RAW file. Import to Lightroom as ProPhoto and retain them as ProPhoto in photoshop but there are some edit operations that only work in an 8bit colour space so I then use an Adobe RGB copy. The only time I use sRGB is for export if required. You can always convert down but once you have there is very little point in trying to expand.

Note: The RAW file may occupy a colour space about ProPhoto theoretical colour space but it as is good as the camera will ever give you.(It may well exceed ProPhot in some regions particularly in the reds)

Big is good. If you discard data you can never get it back accurately.

Below is a diagrammatic representation of the relationship between the colour spaces. It is not absolute because we have no way of viewing all the colours represented.

[Brownbear]

Thank you Ted and Paul for your explanations and examples. Very helpful and informative. I will to read up on ProPhoto to learn more about it.

Paul, that is a very nice visual tool. Thank you.

[xpatUSA]

Paul, that is a very nice visual tool. Thank you.

As you read up on color spaces, you will also read that the differences in the green area are not as great as they appear because, in the diagram above, they're a bit 'stretched out'. To reduce the stretching, CIE (inventors of the earlier graph) produced one which matches human vision mo' better:



You'll notice that ProPhoto is still preety beeg, but the difference between sRGB and aRGB is a lot less than some folks will imply (as they stare at their $5000 wide-gamut monitor ;-)

Pardon my levity . . .

[Macmahon]

Christina

There is a can of worms in this topic. Once you start to worry about it, the only way to satisfaction will lead you through L.Paul's explanation to some investment!

The problem is that good inkjet printers have a colour gamut that is bigger than sRGB - at least in some colours. My printer can print some saturated colours that are outside of Adobe RGB even. But ..... most desktop monitors are limited to sRGB so, as long as you're stuck with such a monitor, you can't see those colours until you print them! See here.

If you cut the colours off, by converting an image - at any point in the workflow - to sRGB, you'll never see them.

That could be good news or bad. The good news is that what you'll see in your workflow, you'll get in print. But if the bride's mother was wearing a deep cyan jacket (as she was in an event I photographed) and you deliver prints of her wearing a nice blue jacket, which she knows she wasn't and can show you that she wasn't, you and she are going to be disappointed!

So, long story short. If you want to get closest to the real colours you're shooting keep the widest possible gamut all the way through to print. If you're unhappy about not being able to see the most saturated colours while you're editing, invest in a wide-gamut monitor that enables you to see more of it, and lastly, use a printer that doesn't demand you throw away the deeply saturated colours.

Sorry to say there's no such thing as a free lunch in this business. On the other hand, when you get into it, beautiful prints are deeply satisfying.

If you're really interested I've got a bit more explanatory stuff on this page and the pages leading into and out of it!

Cheers

Tim

BTW: people may tell you that they can't see the difference between an image covered to sRGB and one converted to AdobeRGB. Well, if they're looking on a monitor whose gamut is limited to sRGB, they'd be right. But the conclusion that there's no difference between the images, is wrong.

[Mike Buckley]

Tim,

I have never seen anything that so concisely explains in lay terms the practicalities pertaining to color spaces as your post and the web page that you referred us to. Moreover, it confirms that all of my decisions pertaining to my own use of color spaces perfectly meets my needs when so many people who "know better" would be perfectly happy to tell me otherwise, apparently because my choices are not mainstream decisions.

[Brownbear]

Hi Tim,

Thank you for taking the time to add to this thread. Very helpful and informative. I'm still learning so it will take me a while to digest and understand all this information but it is wonderful to have and be able to refer back to at my leisure. I will be reading the link you have included. Truly appreciated.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Christina,

Just to add to the above ...

With Colour management, the bigger the colourspace (sRGB -> Adobe RGB -> ProPhoto RGB), the bigger the mess people can get themselves into because the range of colours that the camera can capture - the monitor can display - and a printer can print, are all different. The problems arise when a camera captures a colour that the monitor can't display, but the printer can print -- photographer looks at it on the screen -- thinks "that doesn't look right" - plays around with it until it looks "better" - and then prints it (at which point the printer may print something different again).

So in that context, sRGB can be thought of as SAFE RGB in that nearly all devices can handle sRGB so it becomes a safe lowest common denominator.

In reality, if you're managing colours correctly, then you usually won't see any difference between sRGB and Adobe RGB, with exceptions for certain strong colours. Further problems arise though when people mishandle the images, eg:

- Commercial printers don't use colour management (don't get me started!) - so they don't "expect" sRGB they simply ASSUME it's sRGB without even looking at it -- and it gets processed as sRGB regardless of whatever it is. Because Adobe RGB is a bigger space, the numbers that represent tones are lower for a given tone (eg pour a liquid into two containers and it'll assume a lower level in the bigger of the two containers) - and the printer prints them as if they were sRGB numbers - then everything comes out "muted". In that situation you simply need to CONVERT (not assign) your image to sRGB before giving to a commercial printer). If you're doing your own prints then Adobe RGB should be fine.

You said your monitor has sRGB and Adobe RGB settings; this is misleading. The Gamut that a monitor is capable of is a physical property of the monitor, not a selection. For good colour management, your computer needs to know what those physical characteristics are (which is why we use a colorimeter to build a profile for the monitor). If the computer thinks the monitor has one set of capabilities and it really has a different set, then your results will be all over the place.

If you want accurate and consistent results then you really have no other option but to invest in a colorimeter like a spyder from datacolor.

Pop along to http://www.nativedigital.com/practic...-v5-ebook-pdf/ for a free (and very good) eBook on colour management if you haven't already.

[ShaneS]

Thank you for all of the information in this thread - it is a lot to digest but will be very helpful as this is the next challenge that I plan to tackle on my photographic journey

[Brownbear]

Hi Colin,

Thank you for adding to this thread. Very informative and helpful. And also for the link which I will check out later today.

I have a Spyder 4 and I calibrate my monitor with this every 2 weeks. In the process of calibration it always asks me to choose between sRGB and Adobe. Initially I had it set to Adobe and changed to sRGB. I can see a difference in the colours but whether my monitor is truly capable of showing me the true Adobe colours I'm not sure, but they are different (richer reds and blues in this photo)...

Thank you.

Hi Christina,

Just to add to the above ...

With Colour management, the bigger the colourspace (sRGB -> Adobe RGB -> ProPhoto RGB), the bigger the mess people can get themselves into because the range of colours that the camera can capture - the monitor can display - and a printer can print, are all different. The problems arise when a camera captures a colour that the monitor can't display, but the printer can print -- photographer looks at it on the screen -- thinks "that doesn't look right" - plays around with it until it looks "better" - and then prints it (at which point the printer may print something different again).

So in that context, sRGB can be thought of as SAFE RGB in that nearly all devices can handle sRGB so it becomes a safe lowest common denominator.

In reality, if you're managing colours correctly, then you usually won't see any difference between sRGB and Adobe RGB, with exceptions for certain strong colours. Further problems arise though when people mishandle the images, eg:

- Commercial printers don't use colour management (don't get me started!) - so they don't "expect" sRGB they simply ASSUME it's sRGB without even looking at it -- and it gets processed as sRGB regardless of whatever it is. Because Adobe RGB is a bigger space, the numbers that represent tones are lower for a given tone (eg pour a liquid into two containers and it'll assume a lower level in the bigger of the two containers) - and the printer prints them as if they were sRGB numbers - then everything comes out "muted". In that situation you simply need to CONVERT (not assign) your image to sRGB before giving to a commercial printer). If you're doing your own prints then Adobe RGB should be fine.

You said your monitor has sRGB and Adobe RGB settings; this is misleading. The Gamut that a monitor is capable of is a physical property of the monitor, not a selection. For good colour management, your computer needs to know what those physical characteristics are (which is why we use a colorimeter to build a profile for the monitor). If the computer thinks the monitor has one set of capabilities and it really has a different set, then your results will be all over the place.

If you want accurate and consistent results then you really have no other option but to invest in a colorimeter like a spyder from datacolor.

Pop along to http://www.nativedigital.com/practic...-v5-ebook-pdf/ for a free (and very good) eBook on colour management if you haven't already.

[xpatUSA]

Hello again, Christina,

While rummaging through my site today, I found the following (source not remembered [edit] it's in this paper http://photo-lovers.org/pdf/color/romm.pdf [/edit]):



The dashed line indicates the gamut of colors to be expected in normal scenes (natural world, I'm thinking). ROMM RGB is the same as ProPhoto. Of interest is the absence of the Adobe RGB (1998) color space. The color model (graph axes) is the same as what Paul posted - CIE x,y.