Colour Space, am I losing out?

johnt

johnt

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John
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Hi Chaps,

Having just purchased a HP9180 printer I have been reading about it and discovered that it can print in Adobe RGB colour space. Until now I had assumed that all inkjets used sRGB and set my camera (Canon 40D) to use this colour space.

As I now have the facility to use Adobe RGB should I bother changing from sRGB or am I wasting potential? How much difference does it actually make, or is this like the RAW / Jpeg debate.

Any help appreciated.

John
 
John

Is the Adobe RGB function, part of the printer driver?

To be honest If it is I'm not sure you may see agreat deal of difference in the long run.

In order to see how well the printer prints, I've just had a look at the paper profiles that Ilford provide for this machine for Galerie Glossy paper. Comparing these to both sRGB and Adobe RGB , it would seem the colour space is very very similar to sRGB and a lot smaller than Adobe RGB.

Now papers themselves can make a difference but not that much, so it seems that the colour printing range for the machine is around that of sRGB.

I have an Epson 2880, and I notice that printing from within Photoshop, and using the appropriate printer profile within soft proofing I get some serious Gamut warnings with very saturated colours such a vivid yellow and vibrant reds when printing from Adobe RGB, indicating that the printer cannot resolve these colours.

Now should you use Adobe RGB instead of sRGB. Well I would always use the largest colour space available, within reason. But that's me. ( And yes I shoot RAW as well). However would you see a major difference in the results, considering both your monitor ( probably) and your printer are working around the sRGB colour space, I would doubt it.



Hope this helps a bit

John C
 
Chappers,

Thanks for the info.

I have done some playing today and I can definitely see a difference between shots taken in Adobe RGB and sRGB on the screen (using macbook pro), the colours look less saturated and more neutral with a better graduation. I suppose that answers the question of whether to use Adobe RGB on the camera, and tallies with your advice.

Now the printing, that is a different matter. I have only made a few prints so far so more testing necessary. I do use the correct ICC profile for each paper and I have discovered I can 'soft proof' this in Aperture to see what it would look like. There is a definite difference between the screen and the proof when using the Adobe RGB colour space as opposed to a shot taken in sRGB, the screen appearance does not change!

So really it's a choice of whether I want the hassle of soft proofing everything before a print or not. It will take longer but the end results hopefully will be better - more testing required!

Anyway, hopefully I can now use the camera to it's full potential, something that I have been missing out on for the last 12 months or so!

Does anyone else have any experience with this?

Thanks

John
 
John

Are you finding good print to screen match when soft proofing? In that you get a similar result to the soft proofed image to the screen and the print.

IF this is the case then you are better off using this route, as you will be seing the image as the printer will produce it. Yes it is a bit more time consuming, but is the better way to go.

Sorry can't give you too much advice re printing from Aperture as I am a Lightroom/CS4 person. I didn't know you could soft proof with Aperture, which makes me kind of jealous as I can't do that from Lightroom, I have to print via Photoshop if I need to soft proof.

Just a word about the MacBook Pro display. I assume you have the unibody model with the LED display. These tend to give a slightly warmer and more saturated image than a conventional display. Not a major problem but one that may be worth keeping in mind

John C
 
pxl8 said:
I recently found this article that does a good job of explaining colour management:

http://photo.net/learn/digital-photography-workflow/color-management/

In summary, always use the smallest colour space you can get away with for the image and the output device - using a larger space than you need actually gives you less colours, not more.
Click to expand...

Useful link thank you.

Chappers,

Yes the soft proofing is quite good. You can simply and easily soft proof for any paper you have an ICC profile for. The results seem to be a little less saturated than the screen.

My macbook pro is the aluminium model, the one before the current model with a matt not glossy screen. I have a huey pro but using this gives a far too blue result, so just using the built in wizzard seems better!

I have some more reading to do on this topic because I don't understand it yet!

Thanks for the replies chaps.

John
 
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