Lightroom 4 pro photo ?

kevinfoto · May 13, 2013

Question? When I export my photos from lightroom.. I'm using pro photo. But then the images come out dark on a computer other than mine.
Am I doing something wrong?

Ysarex · May 13, 2013

Yep, export your photos using sRGB.

Joe

kevinfoto · May 13, 2013

Why does it do that?

Ysarex · May 13, 2013

kevinfoto said:
Why does it do that?

It's a color management problem. Every pixel in your photo has RGB values that define it. R=180, G=80, B=170 for example. The problem is that those values alone do not define any specific color. It's like these symbols you're familiar with -- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz -- which we combine in different ways to have meaning; for example this combination "gift." In the context of this forum post you and I know what a gift is since we're reading and writing English. But in German gift means poison. Language supplies a necessary context for those symbols to have real meaning. For RGB color values to have real meaning a referenced color space is required. Both the squares below have the same RGB numerical values. The referenced color space identifies the real color those values specify.

So your photos contain an embedded ICC profile that identifies the color space and allows the RGB numeric values to be decoded. In a sense it's like saying this photo is written in French or this photo is written in Korean. The problem you experienced is software (web browser most likely) failing to read the RGB values correctly by referencing the embedded ICC profile.

The sRGB color space was designed to provide a best-fit match to our modern computer display hardware and since it's creation hardware makers have worked to design hardware that works well with sRGB. So if software is going to fail to translate your photo correctly by reading the embedded ICC profile then your best chance of having that photo look close to what you intended is to "write" it in sRGB.

Joe

Big Mike · May 13, 2013

Great answer Joe.

Just to follow up, Pro Photo is a very large color space....and that is a good thing, IF you plan to edit the image further in another program.
AdobeRGB is a fairly large color space, again....it's useful if you plan to export from LR and then edit in another program.
sRGB is smaller but it's the universal color space...and as such, this is what web browsers and most photo printing labs will expect. So if you plan to upload your photos to the internet, view them with other programs / other computers, or if you plan to send them out for printing...then you will want to have them set to sRGB.