Adobe RGB or SRGB?

[drdannn]

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I watched several Photoshop instructional videos all recommending Adobe rgb 1998 for setting in Photoshop, which I did. I just noticed that the same choice is in the m240 menu.

 

So I am wondering about this and please help:

1. Do you all use Abobe rgb 1998 in Photoshop?

2. Same question for the m240 camera menu?

 

Thanks for your suggestions. Dan

[pgk]

It really depends on what you are going to use the images for, how much editing you are going to do and so on. Personally I always keep to Adobe RGB in PS (if you shoot RAW then the camera setting is irrelevant) and then change when outputting for various uses.

 

Many will no doubt tell you that Adobe RGB is 'better', which it is theoretically, but it can also cause problems for some printing requirements and for web or other screen viewing uses. My way of working is to suggest that if you are going to view final output on a computer screen convert to sRGB, if you are sending files to a printer (ie Photolab) convert to sRGB, but retain in Adobe RGB during edit and for 'professional' applications (such as Photolibraries or publishers - although this isn't always best depending on their understanding!).

 

FWIW the practical differences in using either are less than many might imagine - I've played around to check;) - although purists will disagree.

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[helohe]

It depends on whether you are using jpeg or dng in the camera. if you use dng, then the setting adobe rgb or srgb in the camera is totally irrelevant, it only applies to in camera jpeg.

I set my photoshop to ProPhotoRgb for editing and import. But export everything as srgb.

Also I have the camera set to srgb.

[drdannn]

It really depends on what you are going to use the images for, how much editing you are going to do and so on. Personally I always keep to Adobe RGB in PS (if you shoot RAW then the camera setting is irrelevant) and then change when outputting for various uses.

 

Many will no doubt tell you that Adobe RGB is 'better', which it is theoretically, but it can also cause problems for some printing requirements and for web or other screen viewing uses. My way of working is to suggest that if you are going to view final output on a computer screen convert to sRGB, if you are sending files to a printer (ie Photolab) convert to sRGB, but retain in Adobe RGB during edit and for 'professional' applications (such as Photolibraries or publishers - although this isn't always best depending on their understanding!).

 

FWIW the practical differences in using either are less than many might imagine - I've played around to check;) - although purists will disagree.

Hi Paul, I first got an M camera in 2009 and have always used SRGB in camera and in Photoshop for Jpegs. I shoot only sometimes in RAW because I simply do not have time to PP every capture to see if I am going to like it. So I would say that 75% of shooting is JPEG "fine" and I adjust the settings for that in the cameral menu. To comment to your kind response, I do print all my photos on a Canon 9500 Pro, and I print up to 13"x19".

 

Larger than that I take to a pro photo lab.

 

Is there a way to convert my saved Adobe RGB files to SRGB in order to export or post on-line?

 

I believe that the true measure of a photograph is in it's printed form since the computer always back-lights the image; hence making it look more vibrant and printing is an art in and of itself. FWIW I also see little if any differences in the printed photograph or on screen. Thank you!!!

[drdannn]

It depends on whether you are using jpeg or dng in the camera. if you use dng, then the setting adobe rgb or srgb in the camera is totally irrelevant, it only applies to in camera jpeg.

I set my photoshop to ProPhotoRgb for editing and import. But export everything as srgb.

Also I have the camera set to srgb.

 

Dear Helohe, Thanks!! Does in camera Adobe RGB do anything when shooting in JPEG? Or is that irrelevant in JPEG?

 

How do you convert a ProPhotoRgb to srgb for export?

 

Thanks so much. Dan

[250swb]

Yes, that's the way to do it, export from camera to ACR as ProPhoto RGB, keep the modified master file as a TIFF in ProPhoto RGB for printing and archiving, then change that file to an sRGB JPEG for Internet use.

 

Steve

[FlashGordonPhotography]

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Personally I prefer to keep the camera settings in sRGB. For raw files it doesn't matter what the camera setting is because raw data doesn't have a space until it's opened in an editor (Photoshop or a raw converter) and the editor will assign a space (you can set this in Photoshop but not in Lightroom).

 

For jpeg files I usually prefer sRGB for a few reasons. Firstly, much of the web and many on-line print services expect to see a sRGB file. Give them aRGB and you'll get some weird results unless they're aRGB ready. Many aren't. Secondly, a larger colour space does not mean you get more colours. It means you get the same amount of discrete colour steps over a larger area. In some cases this can lead to more posterisation not less as the gaps between the colour steps will be larger. Bit depth determines the number of colour points, not colour space. JPEG files, by definition, are 8 bit files. That means 256 steps for RG and B and a total of only 16.7 million colour points. That's compared to billions in a 12 bit file and trillions in a 16 bit file. Your camera records more than 8 bits so you'll see the benifit (some of the time).

 

If I'm in a larger colour space than sRGB I want to have more colour points than an 8 bit file can provide. That means that if I'm shooting for an aRGB file or larger I'll be shooting a raw file, not a jpeg.

 

Unless you have a specific reason to do so I would leave your jpegs as a sRGB file.

 

As for the first question, I suspect those tutorials are a bit out of date. Modern digital cameras can produce colours beyond the aRGB gamut. Most modern tutorials should recommend raw files are opened in ProPhoto RGB for editing and sent to either aRGB or sRGB for output.

 

Gordon

Edited July 28, 2014 by FlashGordonPhotography

[jaapv]

Bear in mind that Photoshop is one of the most convoluted pieces of software that exist. If you ask questions like this in a forum you are bound to get a whole bunch of diverging answers from members ranking fom just past beginners to experts. This thread is a good example. I see posts ranging from plain wrong through applicable in specific cases to wholly correct .

 

My advice would be to obtain some basic advice from people you trust and to start on your own learning curve, beginning at the level you are now, which apears to me to be quite a bit above zero, if you produce good output on a professional printer.. There are workshops ranging from basic to esoteric and books to match.

 

If you want to use books, which was and is my preferred way of learning I would advise you to start off by a couple of books by Scott Kelby which will give you basic recipes and will open a window to further vistas.

Then you can progress to works by specialists like Matt Klokovsky and Jeff Schewe for further insight into different aspects like sharpening and noise reduction, colour management, layers, etc. A good companion is the exhaustive manual-type book by Martin Evening. You can, if you are masochist enough, peruse the headache-inducing works of Dan Marguilis on LAB colour, and there is more.

And then there are a phleatora of instructive videos on the Adobe website. All more objective and to the point than forum advice, however well meant (including my own.)

Edited July 29, 2014 by jaapv

[jaapv]

To return to your questions: I always use as large a colourspca as possible, dropping down to the required colour space as needed.

 

The use of sRGB has diminished considerably over the last years, with most printers - including your thirsty Canon- and printing services accepting and producing better results with Adobe RGB., reducing the use of sRGB to the Internet, email, sharing on the social media and not much more. Also useful for professionals giving files to clients whom they do not trust with large spaces.

 

However, the use of a space like Adobe RGB and Profoto presupposes the use of monitors that allow the rendering of that colour space. Otherwise there is a risk of clipping and false rendering of out of gamut colours. It takes a bit of expertise to handle those situations.

As far as I am aware there are no Prophoto-capable screens yet.

 

In other words, use Adobe RGB, shrink the colour space according to your output and remember that you will never be able to expand a smaller space. Once you have gone down to sRGB ( or CMYK for that matter) all out of gamut colours are irretrievably lost.

 

Finally, if your workflow is Photoshop do make sure you convert your DNGs to at least 16 bits, even if the camera output is less. Otherwise editing will produce data loss and banding. The same appliest for Jpegs. They are 8 bit, but edit in 16.

I have been known to be paranoid enough to edit 16bits camera output in 32 bits, but will freely admit to overkill.

Edited July 29, 2014 by jaapv

[CaptZoom]

Duobleplusgood on Flash's post (#7), Jaapv's post (#8) and to piggy back along on post #9, as a general rule use as big a color space as possible for editing and archiving while rendering copies according to final output (print vs web display).

[pgk]

Unless you have a specific reason to do so I would leave your jpegs as a sRGB file.

If you are shooting Jpegs this would be my suggestion too. Its a bit like Betamax versus VHS in that more devices display/print 'better' from sRGB, in my experience anyway. (And this includes many printing labs; the reason is almost certainly because its the colour space of an awful lot of the images supplied to them). It may not be best practice but its practical advice.

 

[Caveat: I would ALWAYS keep a 'locked' copy of your original Jpeg file so that you always have this to fall back on - and this could be in aRGB provided that you always convert and save as sRGB.]

[250swb]

I don't understand the desire to throw away colour information at the very beginning by only using sRGB for JPEGS? It takes a only couple of clicks to convert down from ProPhoto (or Adobe RGB) to sRGB when making a JPEG for the web or email etc. but surely it isn't necessary to start with an sRGB file? Just seems like shooting yourself in the foot to me, it isn't quicker, it isn't more accurate, it doesn't maintain the maximum you can get out of the file, you just neuter the potential of the image.

 

I mean, you save all your pictures presumably because you want them for the future, but who knows what technology will be around in a couple of years time, cheap monitors that show ProPhoto colour space, printers that can match the colour space, faster internet so you don't need to compress files to JPEG at all. All sorts of reasons why you may one day wish you'd not decided on the expediency of a short term fix for the sake of saving fractions of a second converting from a higher to a lower colour space.

 

Steve

[drdannn]

Dear,

SWB, Gordon, Jaapv, Capt Zoom, PGK, others who first replied, and all the "thank you".

 

Thank you all for chiming in on this thread. I have learned a great deal from your advice and experience.

 

Best to all,

Dan

[FlashGordonPhotography]

I don't understand the desire to throw away colour information at the very beginning by only using sRGB for JPEGS? It takes a only couple of clicks to convert down from ProPhoto (or Adobe RGB) to sRGB when making a JPEG for the web or email etc. but surely it isn't necessary to start with an sRGB file? Just seems like shooting yourself in the foot to me, it isn't quicker, it isn't more accurate, it doesn't maintain the maximum you can get out of the file, you just neuter the potential of the image.

 

I mean, you save all your pictures presumably because you want them for the future, but who knows what technology will be around in a couple of years time, cheap monitors that show ProPhoto colour space, printers that can match the colour space, faster internet so you don't need to compress files to JPEG at all. All sorts of reasons why you may one day wish you'd not decided on the expediency of a short term fix for the sake of saving fractions of a second converting from a higher to a lower colour space.

 

Steve

 

While I agree with you for my preference, I can see why people shoot jpegs. Some people really love shooting but don't like//understand computers. I certainly know a few good photographers who detest post processing.

 

I usually shoot raw+jpeg. Functionally that's because Leica's DNG's have that tiny embedded thumbnail which makes viewing on anything but a raw processor a pain. But also, if I need to quickly share an image, show off the days takes to friends on my iPad ,shooting in aRGB is the worst choice I can make. aRGB also isn't very suited to 8 bit files.

 

Jaap said above that the use of sRGB had diminished. This isn't true. If anything sRGB is the default viewing space by a vast margin. 80% of all images are viewed on the web. 15% are viewed in magazines. That leaves very little for the rest. Less than 1% of monitors in use can display even the entire sRGB space, let alone aRGB. 99% of photographers don't own a monitor that can display aRGB. No Mac screen currently made can display more than sRGB. 99% of high street labs expect sRGB files. Most of the book makers (blurb etc) convert files to a smaller gamut as well. If anything it's actually a challenge to view images in anything other than the sRGB colour space. There's also zero benifit to working in a higher bit depth than the original. In real terms if you start with an 8bit file and you own an sRGB monitor you're fine working at those settings. It's more important to save a modified file in a non compressed format than to convert to a bigger gamut. How many people really go back through their archives an wish they could rework old files at a higher bit depth? Close to none, I suspect, unless you do it for a vocation.

 

And yet we still see fabulous images everyday on our pathetic sRGB screens. Deep rich colours and beautiful tones. Yes, they might look better from an Epson 3880 on Bartya paper. But if you do that you're less than 1% of the population of photographers, who can't even see the colourspace they're working in because of the "cheap" screen they purchased from best buy is only sRGB. And mentally extrapolating what what's happening to a file that's in a larger gamut than you can see on your screen isn't easy. I doubt most people could describe the colours that are out of gamut in sRGB and in aRGB anyway. Plus, many images are quite contained in the sRGB space.

 

I've spent way too much on monitors and coliormeters over the years. And after a while I discovered that almost all my clients need 8 bit sRGB files. I really only need 14bit (16bit wrapper) larger gamut files for myself. So now I do my commercial work on a sRGB screen and reserve my Eizo's for my personal use. And that has made my life quite a bit easier.

 

If you're really going to work on high bit large gamut images you really need to be set up to do it. Capture, evaluation (monitor), workflow and output. For the rest of us 8 bit sRGB is just fine.

 

Gordon

[01af]

I set my Photoshop to ProPhoto RGB for editing and import. But export everything as sRGB. Also I have the camera set to sRGB.

Yes, that's the settings that make most sense ... when you shoot in raw format at least occasionally.

 

Only if you're shooting in JPEG format exclusively, and never raw, then it may make sense to set your camera and your image-processing program both to Adobe RGB. However if you don't print and always export your work for web only then it would be better to set both to sRGB.

 

I shoot in Raw+JPEG format always. I have set all my cameras to sRGB and Photoshop's working space to ProPhoto RGB.

 

The general rule is—if you have to ask then better set your camera to sRGB.

[pico]

Good article regarding display, tags, colorspace

diglloyd - Reading the publications. - Web Browser Display of Image Color: Color Space and Gamut

[drdannn]

Dear O1af and pico, Thank you for contributing to the thread I started by asking a question. I have learned a great deal. Dan