A Question On Color Space.

DennyCrane · Nov 28, 2009

Does anyone use Adobe RGB as their camera's color space? Are there any real world advantages in shooting that over sRGB?

ANDS! · Nov 28, 2009

No there aren't. Most people will not be able to tell the difference; however most industries that have a need for a "color space" will use sRGB as their default. The old adage has been - if you know what you're doing, use whichever space your comfortable with. If not, just use sRGB.

Garbz · Nov 28, 2009

I wrote a quick opinion here:

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...prophoto-colour-management-general-worth.html

In summary you get benefits only if you carefully colour manage your image from start to end, print on a very very high quality printer, and have a scene that actually extends out of the normal colour gamut. Things like sunsets often do, but most other scenes fit quite nicely in sRGB. But these three conditions rarely line up nicely so my personal opinion is it's not worth the hassle of having to ensure you convert between colour spaces when uploading or sending images across the internet, or insuring the correct colour profile is given to the printing company.

Andrew Boyd · Nov 29, 2009

We use AdobeRGB (1998) in our entire workflow---our Canon Mark II's let us specify it as the shooting space, then we specify it as our RGB color space in Photoshop as well. I've always read that the Adobe RGB space has a bigger color gamut than the older sRGB space.

Andrew Boyd
TheDiscerningPhotographer

DennyCrane · Nov 30, 2009

That's what I've read, too. I might try some shooting & processing in Adobe and see if there's a noticeable (to me at least) difference.

Thanks all for the responses.

dhilberg · Nov 30, 2009

If you're really that concerned about it, shoot in RAW and edit in ProPhoto RGB. It has a larger gamut than even Adobe RGB, as Garbz mentioned.

Understanding ProPhoto RGB

Regardless, if you shoot in RAW you can go back and reprocess the photo in whatever color space you want.

Personally I don't bother. I just edit in sRGB as all my photos go straight to the Web anyway.

Nice write up Garbz. One thing I don't understand is the 16-bit color depth. Is there a benefit to processing in 16-bit sRGB?

aerialphoto · Nov 30, 2009

DennyCrane said:
Does anyone use Adobe RGB as their camera's color space? Are there any real world advantages in shooting that over sRGB?

I think it depends on what you're doing.

I had a couple of images that were driving me nuts because I couldn't get the blues to look right. I finally woke up and reprocessed them to Adobe 1998 and ProPhoto RGB and everything looked absolutely perfect, as did the prints. sRGB just didn't cut it...usually it works out fine but not in this case.

icassell · Nov 30, 2009

aerialphoto said:
DennyCrane said:

Does anyone use Adobe RGB as their camera's color space? Are there any real world advantages in shooting that over sRGB?

Click to expand...

I think it depends on what you're doing.

I had a couple of images that were driving me nuts because I couldn't get the blues to look right. I finally woke up and reprocessed them to Adobe 1998 and ProPhoto RGB and everything looked absolutely perfect, as did the prints. sRGB just didn't cut it...usually it works out fine but not in this case.

Did you then print them yourself, or did your printer print them in ProPhoto?

aerialphoto · Nov 30, 2009

I did it myself. I use an Epson R1800 - the prints were pretty much a dead match. I know a good number of printers want things in sRGB so that would obviously be something to consider.

bhphotography · Nov 30, 2009

I have my camera set to Adobe RGB, as from what I've read it records more colours than sRGB. I'm not sure if it actually makes a difference, but when I'm shooting I'd rather have the most information possible, at least to start.

icassell · Nov 30, 2009

bhphotography said:
I have my camera set to Adobe RGB, as from what I've read it records more colours than sRGB. I'm not sure if it actually makes a difference, but when I'm shooting I'd rather have the most information possible, at least to start.

Do you print your own, or send out? If you send out, do you notify your printer that you work in Adobe RGB?

aerialphoto · Nov 30, 2009

bhphotography said:
I have my camera set to Adobe RGB, as from what I've read it records more colours than sRGB.

It does, but if you shoot raw it's mostly irrelevant.

Garbz · Dec 1, 2009

aerialphoto said:
I did it myself. I use an Epson R1800 - the prints were pretty much a dead match. I know a good number of printers want things in sRGB so that would obviously be something to consider.

Dead match to what? By the way what model monitor do you have?

dhilberg said:
Nice write up Garbz. One thing I don't understand is the 16-bit color depth. Is there a benefit to processing in 16-bit sRGB?

Definitely. 8-bits holds 255 shades of red, green, and blue, blended together to give you the colours you see. For the sRGB gamut it works out quite nicely, you end up very close to being able to represent every visible shade defined in the gamut. However say you have an image that you need to double in brightness. Where does the extra data come from? You effectively now are only representing every second visible shade.
16-bits holds 65535 shades of red green and blue. That is far more shades than any of the gamuts define, but this data is used whenever you do anything in an image to increase the accuracy of the change.

Bottom line sRGB with no post processing 8bit is fine. With post processing the extra data helps. Gamuts larger than sRGB 8bits is not fine. So anyone shooting in JPEG AdobeRGB, don't! Shoot in RAW.

DennyCrane · Dec 1, 2009

I shoot RAW +jpg. I'm not so concerned so much about web images end up as (like when posted here or on other sites). I'm really only concerned with the final printed image. I have Adorama do my printing and although I really dont have any complaints so far, I'd love any extra little bit of quality I could eek out. I'll try some Adobe on a few RAW and compare it to sRGB and see what happens.

aerialphoto · Dec 1, 2009

Garbz said:
Dead match to what? By the way what model monitor do you have?

To the on-screen image. I guess I should be more clear, the problem I was having was with blues just not looking right on a couple of images. Changing from sRGB solved that, and the final prints were exactly what I was seeing on the screen.

Right now I'm using an HP LP2475W