Which color profile on a Mac

[mrcmrc]

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Hi all,

just to ask to Guy and to the other Macs people which color profile it's better to use... I'm going to use RAW Developer to get some tiffs and then making some adjustments in PS2.

 

In past I have just worked on jpegs for web use, so I have to use the "Monitor RGB" working space in PS2 due to some browers limits.

 

But now I asking which color space it's best to use... (sRGB IEC61966-2.1, sRGB Profile, ProPhoto RBG, Apple RGB 1998, Apple RGB...).

 

Many thanks to all and best wishes!

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[jfaier]

Marco - for my working space I either use Adobe (1998) or ProPhoto. Both have sufficiently large enough color spaces to allow safe editing in PS. I think Adobe (1998) is a bit more forgiving - that is, you can edit the dyanmic range in curves or levels and make other edits In PS that don't play as much havoc on the final output of the image. While in ProPhoto, sometimes you make edits to an image and you don't realize you are editing beyond the gamut of your destination profiles - the result will be banding, posterization, blotches of colors that are out of gamut - and general ugliness. So with ProPhoto you have to be more careful when you edit and enhance saturation. There are some other very good wide gamut color spaces out there as well you can use for work spaces.

[carstenw]

ProPhoto RGB is a larger space than Adobe RGB, and Adobe RGB is not always as large as the gamut of a digital camera. There are several sites where you can find more information about this, possibly including Uwe Steinmueller's, and perhaps Luminous Landscape.

[bradhusick]

I use ProPhotoRGB as the working space, but make sure you soft-proof using the printer profile for your particular printer and paper. Doing this will give you an accurate view of your printed output, assuming your monitor is profiled. This is cmd-Y in Photoshop.

 

-Brad

[jscottyk]

Check out the white paper by Andrew Rodney, "The Role of Working Spaces in Adobe Applications."

 

Adobe - Digital photography white papers and primers

[ChrisC]

Marco - There is no simple explanation for your question, and to find the answer some studying is essential. Which workspace is suitable for Guy [for example] could be wrong for you because your archiving and output needs could be quite different. It's rather like needing to know why one would choose an M8 instead of another camera. You could, for example , be working [as a close friend of mine is] solely for CMYK off-set print output in which case you, like my friend, might not feel the need to archive in a colour space bigger than Adobe 98 given that the work will always be output through an even smaller CMYK space.

 

Pro-photo is a very large space, Adobe 98 is somewhat smaller, and sRGB smaller still, and whilst people have been known to rant in favour of one or the other, each space has it's place. Personally I favour one of Joe Holmes earlier large colour spaces designed to archive film scans, but when my M8 arrives my future digital-origin files may well be archived into one of his more recent D-cam working spaces designed for digital capture.

 

For a start I would suggest you look at Joseph Holmes website, see his work [and get a sense of the artist and technician at work], and click on the 'profiles' link on his home page, and follow whichever link your nose points you at:

 

http://www.josephholmes.com/

 

I have said before on this forum that Joe Holmes is one of photography's best kept secrets. Good luck, and beware of the alligators lurking in the black arts world of colour management. You may well be strolling into a thorny subject.

 

.............................Chris

[Guest WPalank]

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Marco,

It depends on your final output. The way I have been taught:

sRGB-for web

Adobe RGB-for printers, more specifically the Epson Pro line.

Prophoto-widest colorspace but save for a rainy day as none of the current printers can handle it, but who knows? Both Canon and HP are making very large claims for the future. Cheers!

[frc]

After visiting Joseph Holmes' website I disided to keep my mouth shut about this issue.

[Guest stnami]

color space

mac or PC no difference.

I agree with William on this, keep it simple and work on your colour matching skills as well as getting your White Balance right.

Not sure if I would pay for profiles as they usually reflect a specific colour style, eg I find Joe Holmes's colours too stark and and oversaturated, others love that look.

 

RAW Developer is great for the warm tones but struggles a bit with the greens at times,I feel that it is the most subtle of the RAW applications, produces excellent B&W results as well due to the use of LAB curves.

[mrcmrc]

Thanks guys, great answers for a difficult question.

 

I'll take a look at the Holmes' site, read Rodney white paper.

 

Best wishes for a great 2007 to all ;-)

[Mark Antony]

Marco,

It depends on your final output. The way I have been taught:

sRGB-for web

Adobe RGB-for printers, more specifically the Epson Pro line.

Prophoto-widest colorspace but save for a rainy day as none of the current printers can handle it, but who knows? Both Canon and HP are making very large claims for the future. Cheers!

 

I'd agree with most of that, except that the colourspace that is used for the workspace depends to some extent on the gamut of the input device (camera/ scanner)

The idea basically is that the workspace should be larger than both the input and destination space, but not buy much as too wider space can cause problems in conversion.

Below is a illustration of aRGB plotted against my Epson 2400 Fotospeed gloss paper profile:

You can clearly see that if you use aRGB as your workspace you will loose some colour in the yellow and magenta/blue colour extremes when printed with an Epson 2400.

So if those colours are in your original, they will be clipped by your workspace (aRGB) even if the printer can reproduce them. In other words it's a common misconception that the Epson printers have a colour gamut that is equal to aRGB

Mark

[woodyspedden]

I had the wonderful opportunity to work with Joe recently at the "Digital Printing Summit" in Page AZ. I understand why one of the thread responders would say that "after reading the Joe Holmes site, I am keeping my mouth shut about color spaces."

 

Actually while technically brilliant, and experientially gifted, Joe is also a very real person, photographer first, technologist second, and is willing to spend an inordinate amount of time teaching people like me. Let me try to wade through a lot of technobabble to get to his main point based on a number of questions I posed to him.

 

First, he believes that you should use the smallest color space that holds all of the colors of your input device.............in most cases of Digital cameras this would mean using his DCam4 space. Smaller than ProPhoto but larger than most, if not all, camera spaces. This leads to fewest remapping errors due to too small a space but little to no errors from having too large a space.

 

So I am using DCam4 now (used to use his Chrome 100 space) and am very very happy indeed. I would encourage all here to experiment with color spaces. One of the advantages of Joe's spaces is that you get the master space and 29 other "variants" which can be "assigned" (rather than converted) to vary around the center of the space. (Hope I said that right Joe!). Anyway, try. You can download ExtaSpace profiles free to experiment with the entire concept. This stuff is not trivial but requires no degree from MIT or CalTech to utilize.

 

Cheers and good luck

 

Woody Spedden