Are There Problems with Adobe RGB?

[VidThreeNorth]

Since the beginning of my digital still pictures, I have used "Standard RGB". Standard was supposed to be reliable for use on the Internet. That is to say, if I uploaded it somewhere that, for example, resized it before transmission, then the colours would remain essentially the same, whereas, if I uploaded an Adobe RGB, then it might be converted to Standard RGB during the resizing. So in order to know how an image would look after being altered on a remote site, I decided to upload Standard RGB in the first place.

So here we are in 2021, and all my cameras and all my processing software is set to create Standard RGB, except for one camera. For a couple of years now, I have set my Yi-M1 to output Adobe RGB JPEGs. I did this deliberately because I wanted to maintain awareness of the difference between Adobe and Standard, and to evaluate the difference over a long term.

Some people might be surprised to hear that after all this time I found that in general, I actually preferred Standard RGB. The extended response in the greens for Adobe RGB does not look "good" to me. In some cases I have been known to "tone down" the greens in Adobe RGB JPEGs in order to bring out the reds and blues.

Recently I was looking through some of the Adobe RGB's created by the Yi-M1, and I was thinking about whether I should switch over to Adobe RGB for "everything" (everything except video, which has its own colour space issues).

But the only issue hanging over my head is that after all this time, I still do not know if uploading Adobe RGB around the Internet can result in problems caused by sites converting images from Adobe RGB to Standard RGB. Today, I think we can count on virtually everyone with a colour display to be able to support Adobe RGB. I cannot recall having an problem using Adobe RGB on any of my computers (going back over 10 years). So I cannot see any reason for anyone to convert uploaded images from Adobe RGB to Standard RGB. But that is the question: Are there any sites that do such a thing? If not, then I think I'm going to make the switch.

 

[weepete]

A lot of monitors can't display the full Adobe RGB spectrum, but can cover 95-100% of sRGB. Not all browsers are colour managed either, and tend to use sRGB as standard. Most high end gaming monitors are starting to be evaluated with the DCI-P3 colour space, and I suspect that may eventually push the market, though Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 are fairly similar.

The convention is still to shoot RAW in Adobe RGB, process in Prophoto RGB but soft proof and export web images to sRGB. For printing your lab should be able to advise which colour space to use.

 

[VidThreeNorth]

Hmm. Disappointing. I guess I will stick to my current setup ("Standard RGB" for everything except the Yi-Mi). Oh well. . . .

 

[weepete]

There's no harm in shooting in a wider colour space, but yeah, it would be nice to see a move to a standard wide gamut colour space.