Adobe RGB vs sRGB [I know you're probably sick of this...]

[Kerbouchard]

For me, there seems to be absolutely no reason to use Adobe RGB. Printing labs won't accept it. It doesn't display on most monitors. It needs to be converted before publishing. It also has a smaller gamut than the ProPhoto colorspace.

Basically, Adobe RGB is a middleground compromise that has all of the hassle and about 20% of the percieved benefits. It is outdated and at this point, irrelevent.

For me, 99% of things I do is in sRGB. For the atypical shot that exhibits banding or the color not being quite right, I will run it though in ProPhoto to see if that helps. As far as Adobe RGB, I don't use it and I can't think of a reason anybody should.

 

[Kerbouchard]

For me, there seems to be absolutely no reason to use Adobe RGB. Printing labs won't accept it.

All fine-arts printers accept Adobe RGB. Here's just one example...

Bellevue Fine Art Reproduction: Frequently Asked Questions about Giclée printing and Art Scanning

"Q: How should I prepare my digital files? What
image file formats will you print?

Some artists scan and prepare their work themselves, and send us
the digital files. There are other "digital" artists who's work is computer
generated (CG), such as fractals, photoshop collages, Corel Painter images, etc.
And of course there is no shortage of photographers out there who want to see
their work printed on high quality art paper, canvas, or on large format photo
paper.

If you are one of these people, then the answer to this question
is for you!

First, we prefer files that are 300 ppi (pixels per inch) at the
size at which they will be printed. Files can be as low as 150ppi and in most
cases will still print well. But lower than that and we may recommend the file
not be printed.

We accept jpg, ai (Illustrator), tif, pdf, and psd
files. We prefer high quality jpg files, or uncompressed TIF
format images. Please send flat files and remove alpha channels.

All images should be saved with an embedded ICC profile. In most
cases this will be your working profile. In some cases it may be derived from
your camera profile. In Photoshop when you "save as" you will see a dialogue
that comes up to save the image with an ICC profile, like this:"

An image of a PS "Save As" dialog is shown on the web page, showing Adobe RGB as the selected space. But this company will work with whatever you send them. And this is generally true of these type of shops.

So just because Costco or Walmart doesn't accept Adobe RGB, doesn't mean that no one does.

Based on that text, they also accept ProPhoto colorspace which is superior to Adobe RGB.

I didn't say there was no reason to use anything other than sRGB. I said there was no reason to use Adobe RGB. It has a more limited color gamut and contains all of the hassle that a broader colorspace has that is only a click away. Adobe RGB is antiquated and irrelevent at this point.

Personally, there are only 4 color spaces that I use and here they are in order of use.... sRGB, LAB, CMYK, ProPhoto, and the other three are usually only temporary transitions so I can do something I need to do. Output files are converted back to sRGB.

 

[greybeard33 5]

For me, there seems to be absolutely no reason to use Adobe RGB. Printing labs won't accept it.

All fine-arts printers accept Adobe RGB. Here's just one example...

Bellevue Fine Art Reproduction: Frequently Asked Questions about Giclée printing and Art Scanning

"Q: How should I prepare my digital files? What
image file formats will you print?

Some artists scan and prepare their work themselves, and send us
the digital files. There are other "digital" artists who's work is computer
generated (CG), such as fractals, photoshop collages, Corel Painter images, etc.
And of course there is no shortage of photographers out there who want to see
their work printed on high quality art paper, canvas, or on large format photo
paper.

If you are one of these people, then the answer to this question
is for you!

First, we prefer files that are 300 ppi (pixels per inch) at the
size at which they will be printed. Files can be as low as 150ppi and in most
cases will still print well. But lower than that and we may recommend the file
not be printed.

We accept jpg, ai (Illustrator), tif, pdf, and psd
files. We prefer high quality jpg files, or uncompressed TIF
format images. Please send flat files and remove alpha channels.

All images should be saved with an embedded ICC profile. In most
cases this will be your working profile. In some cases it may be derived from
your camera profile. In Photoshop when you "save as" you will see a dialogue
that comes up to save the image with an ICC profile, like this:"

An image of a PS "Save As" dialog is shown on the web page, showing Adobe RGB as the selected space. But this company will work with whatever you send them. And this is generally true of these type of shops.

So just because Costco or Walmart doesn't accept Adobe RGB, doesn't mean that no one does.

Based on that text, they also accept ProPhoto colorspace which is superior to Adobe RGB.

I didn't say there was no reason to use anything other than sRGB. I said there was no reason to use Adobe RGB. It has a more limited color gamut and contains all of the hassle that a broader colorspace has that is only a click away. Adobe RGB is antiquated and irrelevent at this point.

Personally, there are only 4 color spaces that I use and here they are in order of use.... sRGB, LAB, CMYK, ProPhoto, and the other three are usually only temporary transitions so I can do something I need to do. Output files are converted back to sRGB.

This is how I am thinking on the whole color space thing. My LR 3.6 doesn't recommend Adobe RGB as it can't reproduce all the colors available to Lightroom 3.6. Adobe LightRoom recommends ProPhoto, so what is the point of Adobe RGB?

 

[Kerbouchard]

This is how I am thinking on the whole color space thing. My LR 3.6 doesn't recommend Adobe RGB as it can't reproduce all the colors available to Lightroom 3.6. Adobe LightRoom recommends ProPhoto, so what is the point of Adobe RGB?

It's kind of like Blue-Ray vs HD DVD or VHS vs Betamax. Some formats thrive and find a market. Some become obsolete. Adobe just continues to include Adobe RGB as an option.

 

[Kerbouchard]

Based on that text, they also accept ProPhoto colorspace which is superior to Adobe RGB.

I didn't say there was no reason to use anything other than sRGB. I said there was no reason to use Adobe RGB.

So when you said "Printing labs won't accept it." did you mean that they wouldn't accept Adobe RGB, but they would accept ProPhoto? I'm guessing not. The implication I drew was that labs don't accept anything but sRGB, and that's really what my post was addressing.

Most printing labs will only accept sRGB. Probably 95% of them. The 5% that will accept an alternate color profile and actually know what to do with them can use ProPhoto just as well as they can Adobe RGB.

Adobe RGB is the odd man out. In my opinion, it is a middleground that holds no value because it is a bad compromise between two better formats.

 

[Garbz]

I don't agree with your assessment that the improvement is marginal, nor that using Adobe RGB in an 8-bit space is problematic.

While the first part is subjective the latter part is not.

It's true you do get some colours that appear out of gamut in nature, but in practice the improvement really is marginal in the sense that even if you display it perfectly you'd only really be able to notice in a side by side comparison. I've told people in the past, every wonderfully saturated and perfectly edited image they have ever seen floating around the internet has been sRGB, so if you want to take great photos you have much bigger things to worry about than your colour space.
In a more practical case I have a monitor which covers 97% of the AdobeRGB gamut, I also edit in Lightroom which uses an internalised colour space called MelissaRGB which can cover every possible colour. Yet the reality is when I hit export I can't tell the difference in 99% of my photos. When I bump up the saturation I can't tell the difference in 98.9% of my photos either. Where I can tell the difference, the difference is again something only really relevant when viewed side by side and registers as a rounding error on my scale of worry compared to sharpness, noise, posterisation, and other things where people can tell the picture looks bad without something to compare it to.

Some cases where I've noticed differences in gamut for final photos:
- The very centre of sunsets are more orange in AdobeRGB photos.
- Green LEDs / Green Lasers look better in AdobeRGB photos.
- I once (only once) took a photo of an ocean where I noticed an ever so slight desaturation in the cyans when I exported. The photos was shot with a polariser and had both saturation / vibrance turned up. (incase anyone is interested this is the pic here https://secure.flickr.com/photos/10090242@N03/4468465353/in/photostream)
Another case where you're likely to hit a limit is HDR work as the result usually contains quite a lot of artificial saturation. But then I think back to pictures like this https://secure.flickr.com/photos/10090242@N03/2638890034/in/photostream which also look just fine.

In general there are benefits. But they are ever so slight.

As for the 8bit vs 16bit thing. That's just simple maths. An 8bit image pretty much only just covers the sRGB gamut as it is without causing posterisation. It's a simple fact that there's more than 16.7million colours within the AdobeRGB gamut with a deltaE greater than the noticeable difference the human eye can see. There's a double whamy of badness because AdobeRGB primarily pushes the green end of the spectrum of which the human eye is most sensitive to visible changes. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at about greyscale images, but remember a colour image is just 3 greyscale images, and the bitdepth is both an issue and highly field relevant in colour images.

 

[Helen B]

I use Adobe RGB for printing. Here are some reasons, in no particular order:

It's not exactly difficult to use Adobe RGB, not even slightly difficult;
Adobe RGB is a better match to most printer gamuts than sRGB or ProPhoto (which is much bigger);
If I do the printing on an inkjet printer, the quality of the workprints are judged, not the image on the monitor;
I know, from the use of ColorThink Pro, that many of my images have colours that are not in sRGB but are in both Adobe RGB and the printer gamut; and
All the printing companies I use either accept or ask for Adobe RGB, including the large web offset company that prints my commercial work who will only accept 8-bit Adobe RGB.



8-bit or 16-bit?
I work in high bit, but may prepare the final output for print in 8-bit.
Not all printer drivers will handle 16-bit (though many now do). If the driver will use 16-bit, then why not use it?
The visible differences between 8-bit and 16-bit colour images are usually very small - remember that Adobe RGB does not get printed to an Adobe RGB space - the black and white points (and therefore the difference between them) are set by the printer/ink and paper respectively. Printing in 16-bit is most likely to be beneficial with greyscale images that will be printed on glossy paper with ink that produces a high density range.

What's right for me isn't going to be right for everybody - no need to say that, of course.

 

[CCericola]

 

[epatsellis]

I have many of the same issues as Helen, shooting for repro, but since the majority of my work is transitioning to in-house printing and fine art reproduction, and the Canon 8300 has such a wide gamut, I use ProPhoto. The differences aren't always readily visible on screen, but in print they are drastically different, especially when going from sRGB to ProPhoto. Granted, not everyone is willing (or cares) to get the last iota of performance that their equipment is capable of, nor do many here use a scanback on a 4x5, but for those of us that are, the extra work is well worth it.