sRGB or AdobeRGB again sorry

P

Paul-H

Suspended / Banned
Messages
977
Edit My Images
No
Hi all

A quick colour space question, hopefully

All my equipment, Camera, Scanner, Printer and Editing Software all support both sRGB and AdobeRGB so which is the best one to use on a home printing setup

Do I go sRGB or AdobeRGB on everything.

Thanks

Paul
 
sRGB is "industry standard" (i.e lowest common denominator). If you give an image to someone else, or put it up on the web, it should be in sRGB.

If your complete processing chain is AdobeRGB capable, then it will be better to process and print in AdobeRGB as it has a wider gamut. A couple of caveats:

1) Before you worry about the colour space, make sure ALL of your workflow is profiled with a hardware profiler. You need something that does both monitor AND scanner/printer. Without this, being precious on whether to choose sRGB/AdobeRGB is pointless IMHO
2) Bear in mind that if you export images anywhere or give them to others (e.g. most commercial printers), you will need to save them into sRGB space. This means you will lose some of the richness in colours you may have purposely processed in, possibly either altering the look of the image or (worst case) destroying what you laboured to get into it.

I process in sRGB.
 
Plus 1 ^ i use adobe rgb and print at home as I use an imac I can send 16 bit files and enjoy the results

If I load on the web I use export in LR and select srgb then if I was wanting to send to a printer firm you can use that file
 
Adobe or ProPhoto

Set your camera to Adobe (this will capture the widest gamut it possibly can).
Most monitors can only up to sRGB (a few will have a wider gamut).

your home printer should have its own profile for specific ink and paper. Use soft proofing.

sRGB for all web.
For clients - ask them, if they sound clueless give the sRGB
 
andyscott said:
Set your camera to Adobe (this will capture the widest gamut it possibly can).
Click to expand...
If you capture raws, it doesn't matter what your camera is set to. I'd assume anyone who does significant post processing is going to be capturing raws.
 
I normally use sRGB but I have seen mention of proPhotoRGB ... what's that all about?
 
Pro photo rgb is a larger colour space than Adobe rgb and is the one we should all be going to as the new standard. It's been around for a few years now although I still don't know that many people that use it. Personally I shoot raw and set everything to adobe rgb for processing ... Edit in 16 bit as much as possible and reduce down to 8 bit and srgb wherever needed.
 
arad85 said:
If you capture raws, it doesn't matter what your camera is set to. I'd assume anyone who does significant post processing is going to be capturing raws.
Click to expand...
Indeed, but it matters when selecting colour space in your RAW converter.
 
andyscott said:
Indeed, but it matters when selecting colour space in your RAW converter.
Click to expand...
I was only responding to your "Set the camera to AdobeRGB" :)

The problem in processing in anything other then sRGB is if you output to sRGB, you will change the colours in the output image. Your choice of workflow should be dependent on the output you will be doing most.
 
As if anyone would notice... :)
 
Interesting. I've been shooting on Adobe RGB because I read somewhere if you could do it its better than sRGB. I do a fair few prints for my camera club but I put more photos on here. I notice a difference when I convert the TIFF to sRGB, the photo looks less vibrant.

So I think I'm going to shoot in sRGB from now to save a step and so I know that web hosted photos appear how I intended. I don't think I'm at the stage to worry which space I use for prints.
 
Raptor Mike said:
Interesting. I've been shooting on Adobe RGB because I read somewhere if you could do it its better than sRGB. I do a fair few prints for my camera club but I put more photos on here. I notice a difference when I convert the TIFF to sRGB, the photo looks less vibrant.

So I think I'm going to shoot in sRGB from now to save a step and so I know that web hosted photos appear how I intended. I don't think I'm at the stage to worry which space I use for prints.
Click to expand...
Are you shooting raw or JPEG? If you are shooting raw, it doesn't make a blind bit of difference until you start processing....
 
RAW. But when I go from Adobe RAW to PSE9 it automatically goes to Adobe RGB because that's what it was shot in.... I think that's why anyway lol
 
Seeing this thread makes me want to ask a question I'd posted in the print section.

I've been getting some holiday prints done at Snapmad.com: previously they've been very close to what I saw on screen, and have been good - that was when I was using a Mac. I recently swapped computers to a PC (kept same monitor) and had a bunch of images printed and they were all dark & with reduced yellows - no good at all! Now the interesting bit: when I upload my images to the printers web site I see the images become dull when hosted in their gallery - it I open the .jpg file in a browser window side by side with the uploaded image I can see they are different (this eliminates monitor calibration issues). If I encode the images as AdobeRGB instead of sRGB then the images are closer, but still have reduced yellows. This also happens if the images are exported from lightroom in tif format.

Now here's something interesting: if I take an image from lightroom, past it into a new file in GIMP (in preparation for putting wings on a canvas print) then the new file looks the same when uploaded as it does on screen.

Any idea why lightroom output might behave differently under windows and Mac or from GIMP output under windows 8.1?
 
Sounds like they are not being exported as sRGB. Got an exported image with full exif data intact anywhere?
 
Well, there is this in the exif:

Code: 
$ exiftool\(-k\) The\ pastor-08068.jpg
ExifTool Version Number         : 8.48
File Name                       : The pastor-08068.jpg
Color Space                     : sRGB
...
Profile Creator                 : KODA
Profile ID                      : 0
Profile Copyright               : Copyright (c) Eastman Kodak Company, 1999, all rights reserved.
Profile Description             : ProPhoto RGB
Media White Point               : 0.9642 1 0.82489
Red Tone Reproduction Curve     : (Binary data 14 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Green Tone Reproduction Curve   : (Binary data 14 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Blue Tone Reproduction Curve    : (Binary data 14 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Red Matrix Column               : 0.79767 0.28804 0
Green Matrix Column             : 0.13519 0.71188 0
Blue Matrix Column              : 0.03134 9e-005 0.82491
...

Which also suggests ProPhoto RGB....
 
arad85 said:
sRGB is "industry standard" (i.e lowest common denominator). put it up on the web, it should be in sRGB.
Click to expand...

why ?

I'd been lead to believe that IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari all support sRGB and aRBG.
 
Last edited:
JennyGW said:
why ?
Click to expand...
Because sRGB is what is assumed if no colour space is stated in the photo. Also, some browsers don't handle colour spaces correctly when embedded in the image. Load this: http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter page up in Chrome, Opera and IE if you want to see how the same image can be rendered differently.

The bottom line is if you want consistent behaviour everywhere, sRGB is where you need to be.
 
Let me go back & look at that - I did change the colour space after I had issues to try to fix it (that's when I found AdobeRGB was less bad) but I'd thought this image pre-dated those changes.
 
OK, I think I've found it - in external editing I had set colour space to Pro Photo RGB. Odd that the exif data displayed both sRGB and Pro Photo RGB instead of just one or t'other.

BTW I just re-looked at the exif data, and in the viewer I used in Firefox it ONLY showed sRGB. Were you looking in Photoshop? Thanks BTW.

Later on I'll export an image & upload it to the printers site to see if it behaves as I should expect.

*edit* - that's fixed it. Even though it was only the external editor settings that were changed, rather than the export settings, that was apparently enough to cause colour space problems.

:ty:
 
Last edited:
A vast majority of people are accustomed to see their photographs in sRGB. Everything they own is probably set up for sRGB. It has become a universal standard.

However Adobe RGB and Pro photo and various other professional RGB and systems are better, if used correctly as part of a system.
The problem is you have no control over the end user and he might be using something else.

Most of the shots displayed on photo boards like this one, show in sRGB, and that is certainly good enough for screen work.
A perfectionist might well adjust his work from raw and 'save as' in more than one colour space... but for most of us life is less complicated and is just too short for that, our needs are more easily satisfied.
 
Keep life simple and stick with Srgb... there's much less chance of anything going wrong and in reality the difference between Srgb and Argb is so subtle hardly anyone, if anyone, will be able to tell the difference anyway.
 
Thanks again Andy - GUI for me though. :)
 
gerry s said:
Pro photo rgb is a larger colour space than Adobe rgb and is the one we should all be going to as the new standard. It's been around for a few years now although I still don't know that many people that use it.
Click to expand...

Because there are no monitors capable of reproducing it's colour gamut, so you can't accurately judge anything that's extremely saturated.. and it far exceeds 99.9% of available printers. Adobe RGB can be fully viewed on a wide variety of high end monitors, and can be reproduced by a wide range of printers.

More isn't always best.
 
Seeing this thread now I want to ask a question.

Assuming my PP is in adobeRGB and I want to upload to websites so I convert to sRGB, will it not do a terrible job of it and me having to do another level of post processing?
 
ricky1980 said:
Assuming my PP is in adobeRGB and I want to upload to websites so I convert to sRGB, will it not do a terrible job of it and me having to do another level of post processing?
Click to expand...
Define "terrible".... You will lose saturation and the image will end up more muted than you expect from your processing.
 
arad85 said:
Define "terrible".... You will lose saturation and the image will end up more muted than you expect from your processing.
Click to expand...
that's what i meant. or does LR and Photoshop does a good job of extrapolation?
 
yes i can see that. the article says LR uses prophoto RGB under development mode. whilst thats fantastic, i can see my pictures are being clipped quite badly in some instances under the gamut warnings...any chance that prophoto setting can be changed?

just found the answer...you can't
 
Last edited:
ricky1980 said:
just found the answer...you can't
Click to expand...
But you can enable soft proofing in sRGB when developing, so you can see the effect. In fact, if you enable soft proofing, and develop in that, you are effectively developing in sRGB.
 
I might have misunderstood some of the posts here - but is no-one using ProPhoto for post-production (in Photoshop, not Lightroom)?
 
Ozei said:
I might have misunderstood some of the posts here - but is no-one using ProPhoto for post-production (in Photoshop, not Lightroom)?
Click to expand...

Most of us are. I.e. you edit in the largest space, then at the very end optimise it and export JPEG / TIFF for the target space (usually the totally out of date and out of touch with true colour reality sRGB).
 
daugirdas said:
Most of us are. I.e. you edit in the largest space, then at the very end optimise it and export JPEG / TIFF for the target space (usually the totally out of date and out of touch with true colour reality sRGB).
Click to expand...

That's what I normally do - i.e. use ProPhoto for all editing stages, then export from Photoshop either as sRGB for web use or as per the printing lab's recommended space. It's just that posts 30 & 31 seem to be saying that there's no point in using ProPhoto because monitors can't display it properly (I could have misunderstood the posts though :cautious:).
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top