Lightroom & Photoshop Colour space question

Brian G

Brian G

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Brian
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I was beginning to think I was getting to grips with this "Colorspace" malarkey but I'm experiencing a small issue that I don't really understand.

I do the majority of my PP in Lightroom (sometimes with the odd "plug-in") and that works fine.
Sometimes I need to some more complex editing so I pass the image over to Photoshop CS6 as a 16-bit tiff to maintain best Image Quality.
When I've finished in PS I save the image (still a 16-bit tiff) and it then appears next to the original in my LR catalog.
So far so good.
At our club the projected images are required to be jpeg with sRGB colourspace.
The tiff image in PS is in ProPhoto colourspace, since this is the working colourspace of Lightroom.
If I save the finished tiff back to Lightroom and select "Export" I can save it as a jpg with sRGB colourspace,
This is what I currently do, and all is fine and the image looks the way I want it.
I thought it would save a step if I saved the tiff directly out of Photoshop as a jpg, but I cannot save the image from Photoshop as a jpg since I cannot change the colorspace in the "Save as" menu - it's saved in ProPhoto colorspace..
In PS there is an option to "Assign profile" so I thought I'd apply the sRGB profile to the tiff and then save as a jpg.
A soon as I apply the sRGB profile in Photoshop to the 16-bit tiff, the colour goes flat and desaturated.

It's got me puzzled - why does converting to sRGB in PS affect the colour, yet exporting from LR as sRGB preserves the correct image appearance?
 
You can also select to export to PS from Lightroom as sRGB. There is an option for this in preferences. That would save you a step.
 
Chappers said:
You can also select to export to PS from Lightroom as sRGB. There is an option for this in preferences. That would save you a step.
Click to expand...

But the you lose the wider colour space of ProPhoto RGB for editing in PS.

TBH the export options in LR so much more flexible than PS I prefer to export from there. Much easier to save a preset for the OP's camera club if there are also specific dimensions, and if you have more than one photo you can export them all together.
 
Chappers said:
You can also select to export to PS from Lightroom as sRGB. There is an option for this in preferences. That would save you a step.
Click to expand...
I did say I was exporting to Photoshop as a 16 bit tiff to preserve maximum image quality whilst I edited.

Musicman said:
But the you lose the wider colour space of ProPhoto RGB for editing in PS.

TBH the export options in LR so much more flexible than PS I prefer to export from there. Much easier to save a preset for the OP's camera club if there are also specific dimensions, and if you have more than one photo you can export them all together.
Click to expand...
Yes, I think I agree, exporting from LR is much simpler, and I have to resize too for projection, although I prefer to also keep a full sized image in case I want a print at some point.
I was just considering that I could cut out a step if I saved directly from PS.

Thanks for the help - one day I'll get the hang of Photoshop!
 
Check your not trying to save the 16bit as a jpeg as I believe you have to change to 8 first.
 
You can always export to edit in Photoshop from Lightroom. Do any adjustments in Photoshop and save it back into Lightroom. This round tripping is easy and work well. This maintains the full colourspace for both the original and the edited version. Now simply make an export pre-set in Lightroom with the dimensions you need and select sRGB as the output colourspace
 
gerry s said:
Check your not trying to save the 16bit as a jpeg as I believe you have to change to 8 first.
Click to expand...
I had always believed that saving as a jpg automatically truncated the file to 8 bits, besides which, the problem occurrred before the file was saved, not as a result of saving.

Chappers said:
You can always export to edit in Photoshop from Lightroom. Do any adjustments in Photoshop and save it back into Lightroom. This round tripping is easy and work well. This maintains the full colourspace for both the original and the edited version. Now simply make an export pre-set in Lightroom with the dimensions you need and select sRGB as the output colourspace
Click to expand...
Yes. That's pretty much what I am doing now, except that I export a full sized jpg image as a backup, as well as the reduced sized one.
I was thinking that saving a jpg out of PhotoShop might save a step in the workflow, but it seems it raises more problems than it solves, so I'll continue to work as I do at present.
 
You could create an action in PS to do the conversion, resize and export.

The one action could create the reduced size and full size images for you in one go.
 
Seems a bit pointless when it can be done more easily in Lightroom.

Exporting from Lightroom brings other benefits, such as ensuring the full, correct IPTC and EXIF data is attached to the exported file. Photoshop's export option only includes minimal copyright and contact information. Lightroom can also apply output sharpening to the resized file with a single click, rather than having to build an action which resizes and applies it. Amongst its other features, for example, Lightroom allows you to apply a standard watermark during export.

As a more general point, the workflow in Lightroom is designed so that external editors such as Photoshop are there just for the purpose of editing; management and output of files is intended to be done from Lightroom. If you are uploading files to Flickr or other online services, for example, that can be done directly from Lightroom rather than dumping output files onto your local filesystem and then having to upload them with some other tool.

I would suggest that it is worth getting into the habit of using Lightroom's export options, otherwise, should he have no edits to make in Photoshop Brian would have to either make an unneccesary trip to Photoshop to run his action and create his JPEG, or use two different methods for exporting depending on whether or not he is making additional edits in Photoshop. If you create your outputs in Lightroom, you can use the same, simple method for all images.
 
Christ, I can't imagine going BACK to LR once I've exported a file - can't stand to be in that bloody laggardly program any longer than absolutely necessary.

For those wondering about "Convert to Profile" and "Assign Profile", just think of it as the difference between taking an English Language book and simply moving it to the "French Language" section of the library, as opposed to actually translating the book first. "Assign" just attaches a new profile, but doesn't adjust the image to look the same under the new profile. Convert will adjust the colour numbers to best-fit it within the new profile.

You can of course then sharpen (With far greater control than Lightroom), save to JPG (which as alluded to by Brian will truncate to 8 bit) etc etc etc. Or you can save as a TIFF, re-import to LR and have some arbitrary un-previewed level of sharpening applied on output.

Did I mention I hated Lightroom? :)
 
Denyerec said:
Christ, I can't imagine going BACK to LR once I've exported a file - can't stand to be in that bloody laggardly program any longer than absolutely necessary.

For those wondering about "Convert to Profile" and "Assign Profile", just think of it as the difference between taking an English Language book and simply moving it to the "French Language" section of the library, as opposed to actually translating the book first. "Assign" just attaches a new profile, but doesn't adjust the image to look the same under the new profile. Convert will adjust the colour numbers to best-fit it within the new profile.

You can of course then sharpen (With far greater control than Lightroom), save to JPG (which as alluded to by Brian will truncate to 8 bit) etc etc etc. Or you can save as a TIFF, re-import to LR and have some arbitrary un-previewed level of sharpening applied on output.

Did I mention I hated Lightroom? :)
Click to expand...
I'm afraid I'm with Rob on this.
I do most of my work in Lightroom and only occasionally need to resort to Photoshop.
If LR runs slowly on your system you probably to take a look at your computer setup or the way it's installed.

I think I understand your analogy with the profiles - my only further question in this case would be: When would you just want to Assign a profile without Adjusting the image?
 
I have a 4ghz i7 with 32gb RAM, multiple SSDs and a 970 GTX - I've looked at everything to do with the damn system, including a full OS reinstall and clean copies of everything. The only component I've not replaced is the GTX970, but with GPU disabled that won't intervene, and it's still sad as molasses. Maybe a 1070 with GPU support enabled would be nice and zippy, but if that were the case, no-one would be using LR on laptops... I'd hazard what I consider "fast" is different to many, though I know a lot of photographers stuck with 3000-4000 image sets who complain that LR's performance is simply lacking.

You can assign profiles without conversion to recover from a mismatched profile (For example if you've been sent an image that's previously been mangled), and to do various arcane tricks to do with false gamma and shadow range remapping - stuff that was relevant in Photoshop 4-6, but is less relevant now with automatic magic filters like Shadow&Highlights and Exposure layers available in CC.
 
Denyerec said:
I have a 4ghz i7 with 32gb RAM, multiple SSDs and a 970 GTX - I've looked at everything to do with the damn system, including a full OS reinstall and clean copies of everything. The only component I've not replaced is the GTX970, but with GPU disabled that won't intervene, and it's still sad as molasses. Maybe a 1070 with GPU support enabled would be nice and zippy, but if that were the case, no-one would be using LR on laptops... I'd hazard what I consider "fast" is different to many, though I know a lot of photographers stuck with 3000-4000 image sets who complain that LR's performance is simply lacking.
Click to expand...
It's interesting that people have such problems with Lightroom and it's difficult to provide benchmark figures to compare systems.
My system hardware is very similar to yours, self-built with i7 processor but only 8GB RAM and a very basic AMD Radeon R7 250 video card.
To load LR "from cold" takes about 6 seconds to display the library images, whereas Photoshop CS6 takes about 8 seconds to fully load.
IMHO people seem to become obsessed with graphics card performance in relation to PS.
PS (and Lightroom) does not need an elaborate video card.
As long as your card supports GPU acceleration then that's sufficient, and having a basic card certainly does not slow my system.

I assume you have read the Adobe system and settings recommendations at: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html
There's also some suggestions on performance optimization on the Julianne Kost site: http://jkost.com/lightroom2.html (look for "How to Optimize Lightroom 5")
Denyerec said:
You can assign profiles without conversion to recover from a mismatched profile (For example if you've been sent an image that's previously been mangled), and to do various arcane tricks to do with false gamma and shadow range remapping - stuff that was relevant in Photoshop 4-6, but is less relevant now with automatic magic filters like Shadow&Highlights and Exposure layers available in CC.
Click to expand...
OK. Thank you for that. I can see that's an application for that "assign profile" function.
I just got a bit confused between "Assign Profile" and "Convert to Profile"
 
Denyerec said:
Yeah I've trawled every single damn post on the internet about how to make LR not stink when it comes to performance. Once you've sat in front of PhotoMechanic, LR's performance just boggles and frustrates :(
Click to expand...

Photomechanic doesn't actually use the raws. It just pretends to. That makes a huge difference in speed. Also, it was designed to be fast, not to have stupid maps ;)
 
Embedded jpegs are pretty big. (Especially Nikon ones.) There's no colour shift when zooming in. I always assumed that it used the embedded jpegs to zoom in too.
 
Going back to the OP's question - rather than Save As... in Photoshop, you can use File>Export>Export As... to get a JPEG with the right colour profile.
It's definitely easier to do in Lightroom, especially as you can create a preset to do the conversion and output at the correct size all in one go.
 
I got so annoyed with changing colour space I ended up just setting my camera to sRGB and did the same in PS. I use export in lightroom to convert to jpeg but it never occurred to me to use it for colour space.

Im also going to take a look at the LR performance link too tomorrow. All in all a very good thread.
 
Raptor Mike said:
I got so annoyed with changing colour space I ended up just setting my camera to sRGB and did the same in PS. I use export in lightroom to convert to jpeg but it never occurred to me to use it for colour space.

Im also going to take a look at the LR performance link too tomorrow. All in all a very good thread.
Click to expand...
Lightroom always works in ProPhoto colour space, it cannot be changed, regardless of what you are working on.
If you are editing a raw file, then it has no colour space until you export it as a jpg or tiff, in which case you specify the colour space in the "Export" dialog.
 
Brian G said:
Lightroom always works in ProPhoto colour space, it cannot be changed, regardless of what you are working on.
Click to expand...

Isn't that because ProPhoto is a superset of all other colour spaces? So "converting" to ProPhoto never causes a colour shift. I've always assumed that was the reason.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Isn't that because ProPhoto is a superset of all other colour spaces? So "converting" to ProPhoto never causes a colour shift. I've always assumed that was the reason.
Click to expand...
Yes, I believe that's the case.

If I export the ProPhoto colourspace image as an sRGB using the LR "Export" function, there's no obvious colour change on a normal monitor, the same way that "Convert to Profile" in Photoshop doesn't change the image appearance.
It's just that the "Assign Profile" function DID produce a major difference in appearance and I was a little confused as to which function I needed to apply in PS.

I also made an error in implying I could only transfer from Lightroom to Photoshop in ProPhoto colour space.
This is not correct.
In the settings dialog there are options to export to PS in sRGB and Adobe RGB colourspace as well as ProPhoto.
I think I left the image in ProPhoto in order to maintain the highest image quality whilst editing in Photoshop.
If I then save the edited tiff, it appears back in the Lightroom library next to the original and I can save it, change the colourspace and resize it using the LR "Export" function.
 
Brian G said:
Yes, I believe that's the case.

If I export the ProPhoto colourspace image as an sRGB using the LR "Export" function, there's no obvious colour change on a normal monitor, the same way that "Convert to Profile" in Photoshop doesn't change the image appearance.
It's just that the "Assign Profile" function DID produce a major difference in appearance and I was a little confused as to which function I needed to apply in PS.
Click to expand...

If we're getting technical then a convert to profile can change the colours (it doesn't always - watch the reds and purples). Some shades in 1998 can't be exactly expressed in sRGB and vice versa.
 
Brian G said:
Doesn't it all depend on having a wide gamut monitor? (Which I dont.)
Click to expand...

The short answer is no. The long answer is see that link ;)

But basically, most colour spaces contain colours that other colour spaces don't. Whether you can see the difference or not depends on a lot of things including your monitor.
 
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