Monochrom Editing / Export and "Color" Space?

[ramarren]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

2 hours ago, ph0toni said:

@ramarren I meant that my images have lost the color profile
my monochrome BW is saved on the site as an sRGB
my AdobeRGB file is saved on the site as an sRGB
While your BW image, Photoshop recognizes it as grayscale without color profile
.
This image LINK , Photoshop recognizes Adobe RGB
while this image LINK , Photoshop does not recognize the color profile.
.
very strange

What "site" are you referring to? 

With respect to the BW image file I inserted above, that is an image exported from LR Classic as JPEG with a 2400 pixel long edge from the SlideShow module: the original export, uploaded to Flick.com, has an sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile. What is presented here is some scaling of that image, requested from Flickr or manipulated by the L-camera-forum software. I've attached a zipped version of the original file uploaded to Flickr if you want to look at its metadata. But remember: this is NOT one of the test output renderings I made to compare with ... this is my standard presentation JPEG. The test files are full resolution, and I can send them to you if you're interested to compare them. 

G

222-wallaroundolivegrove.jpg.zip

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[ramarren]

19 minutes ago, jaapv said:

ACR is the raw converter for Photoshop...  I suspect that Ramarran is using an older version.

t has nothing to do with this site, but by the way the files are labelled and configured.

I use Lightroom Classic, latest version. ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) is an embedded component, not an independent plugin like with Photoshop. 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

G

[ph0toni]

2 hours ago, ramarren said:

What "site" are you referring to? 

this site, this forum !!!

----

I feel like I'm talking to the wind.

in your post the image was in grayscale
instead the zip file is sRGB
have you tried saving my and your previous images on your PC and opening them with lightroom? (I use photoshop)

[jaapv]

On 11/22/2024 at 10:08 PM, nameBrandon said:

Thanks for the reply! The conversion is a function of preparing a JPG for web / social media. Agreed that we are losing a ton of information, but it's unavoidable if one wishes to standardize to sRGB.

My question was primarily around the techniques people employ to limit the impact of that conversion to their images. Sounds like you accept the loss and move on, which is perfectly fine. I was curious if others perhaps embedded profiles that had a wider gamut like Adobe RGB and relied on browser interpretation to provide the appropriate rendering.. or perhaps people may have looked into extremes of their images and then proofed the output in target space in photoshop and adjust accordingly by perhaps raising the black and white points, etc..

The real concern I have (which is not unfounded, see below) is the additional compression that some image hosts / provider then re-apply to the already converted JPGs, which can cause even more severe artifacting, particularly if those extreme areas are not well managed in the first place upon initial color space conversion.. 

This is an extreme example, and is a combination of a browser issue as well as extreme dark areas, but this is why I started looking into it in the first place..  Look at the blocks on the right hand side. These are obviously not present in my original, nor in my exported JPG. They are a function of how the image host is further compressing the jpg I uploaded as well as the particular browser (in this case). But I did test this, and they are avoided if I raise the black point of the image by +10 or so, and follow the same processing chain. 

Appreciate the response(s), but it doesn't seem like there is anything novel here that anyone is doing to manage this, or that I've missed any standard techniques that people might take when working with monochrom files in a narrow color space. 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Just for the record, you uploaded a .png file here.

 

 

[ramarren]

1 hour ago, ph0toni said:

this site, this forum !!!

----

I feel like I'm talking to the wind.

in your post the image was in grayscale
instead the zip file is sRGB
have you tried saving my and your previous images on your PC and opening them with lightroom? (I use photoshop)

Thank you. Just saying "the site" doesn't indicate much.

As I said above, the original image file (identical to the one in the .zip file) was tagged sRGB and uploaded to Flickr.com. How Flickr.com massages it on the way to presentation in this thread with an embedded image display command is up to how the l-camera-forum server interacts with Flickr when you hand it a flickr.com address. 

I never intentionally tag anything as "grayscale". I use sRGB as my default color profile when I post things to the web for general audience consumption. sRGB includes enough color values to cover any 8-bit grayscale needs for a computer monitor display, IMO. 

The only photographs I've downloaded and examined from this thread are the two that the original poster put up as examples of what he was trying to determine. I examined them using EXIFTool, Lightroom Classic, and Affinity Photo. I did try calculating a pixel difference image from them with Photoshop, but the two captures are about 4 pixels shifted one to the other so doing a pixel difference is tricky ... It's hard to shift an image by just four pixels so that they'd be in perfect alignment for difference calculations, and I didn't have time to fuss with them.

G

[nameBrandon]

On 11/23/2024 at 7:08 PM, jaapv said:

Just for the record, you uploaded a .png file here.

 

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

I did, because it was screen capture to illustrate the display issue from a compression/browser artifact from a specific image host.. MacOS just saves screenshots as PNG's by default, I guess.

[MichaelWPlant]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Hi Everyone, I recently got a Leica M11M camera and now I am trying to workout whether I should be processing my images in ACR and when outputting the images whether I should output to the Color space: ProPhotoRGB or to Grayscale, and if Grayscale which version grayscale. No one talks about this in any of the videos on processing Leica Monochrom files. 

Many thanks Michael 

Edited March 7 by MichaelWPlant

[jaapv]

They don’t talk about this as there is no essential difference. The three colour channels are identical in any RGB colour space, making the outputs identical. The differences: In greyspace some tools do not work and in RGB you can shift the channels to produce toning. You can also use the luminance channel in LAB

i would say that it is a misnomer to even talk about colour space as space by definition is three dimensional, represented by three colours. Monochrome  cannot be more than two dimensional represented by black and white. 

[MichaelWPlant]

H Jaapv,

I get that then is it better to output the raw files to GrayScale or to a Color Space like ProPhotoRGB like I would for a colour image. I know that if you use a plugin like Silver Efex then the image has to be in RGB for the plugin to be able to work on the image. However if one is not working with that sort of Plugin is there any reason to be using ProPhotoRGB or should I be selecting a Grayscale 'colorspace' to be working in? 

That is what I am trying to work out as there seems to be very little talk of this anywhere.

Michael

[jaapv]

Well, to begin with greyscale is not a colour space but a photometric numerical representation of grey levels. Basically a luminosity scale. RGB will incorporate the luminosity values in the colorimetric values of the three channels, but as these channels are identical the outcome will be identical to greyscale. The only thing that can be done is raising or lowering the level of the values in the channels which will result in toning. Should one convert the RGB file to L* A*B* from which RGB is derived, the A* and B* channels will be zeroed and the L* channel identical to the Greyscale. So it really does not make any difference unless you want to use your file in an environment that demands RGB.

[hdmesa]

On 3/7/2025 at 10:05 AM, MichaelWPlant said:

Hi Everyone, I recently got a Leica M11M camera and now I am trying to workout whether I should be processing my images in ACR and when outputting the images whether I should output to the Color space: ProPhotoRGB or to Grayscale, and if Grayscale which version grayscale. No one talks about this in any of the videos on processing Leica Monochrom files. 

Many thanks Michael 

Use sRGB or Display P3 since these are the only color spaces that browsers recognize. (sRGB versus P3 makes no difference for b&w, but P3 is better for color images.)

Something critical to adjusting monochrome images (IMO) is to adjust the border/background tone of your image editor to match the website you're going to post the image on. Images posted on websites with white backgrounds need to be brighter for the whites to not look too dull. When posting on darker sites, bright highlights that looked fine on sites with a white background may look like blown highlights. And it's not just highlights. The perception of overall image contrast can change depending on the background. For posting to sites like IG and FB where the site background is up to the user (white or "dark mode"/black) then set your editor image background/border to middle grey to edit – then preview how it looks on both extremes of white and black before exporting the final JPEG.

 

 

Edited May 9 by hdmesa

[MichaelWPlant]

On 5/9/2025 at 1:05 AM, hdmesa said:

Use sRGB or Display P3 since these are the only color spaces that browsers recognize. (sRGB versus P3 makes no difference for b&w, but P3 is better for color images.)

Something critical to adjusting monochrome images (IMO) is to adjust the border/background tone of your image editor to match the website you're going to post the image on. Images posted on websites with white backgrounds need to be brighter for the whites to not look too dull. When posting on darker sites, bright highlights that looked fine on sites with a white background may look like blown highlights. And it's not just highlights. The perception of overall image contrast can change depending on the background. For posting to sites like IG and FB where the site background is up to the user (white or "dark mode"/black) then set your editor image background/border to middle grey to edit – then preview how it looks on both extremes of white and black before exporting the final JPEG.

 

 

Thanks for the reply, and that last bit about the site background is a good point thanks for the tips.

Michael

[Jeff S]

One still has no idea how viewers’ monitors/screens are actually presenting the resultant image. I’ll stick with prints for ideal display.

[ramarren]

On 5/8/2025 at 5:05 PM, hdmesa said:

Use sRGB or Display P3 since these are the only color spaces that browsers recognize. (sRGB versus P3 makes no difference for b&w, but P3 is better for color images.)

Something critical to adjusting monochrome images (IMO) is to adjust the border/background tone of your image editor to match the website you're going to post the image on. Images posted on websites with white backgrounds need to be brighter for the whites to not look too dull. When posting on darker sites, bright highlights that looked fine on sites with a white background may look like blown highlights. And it's not just highlights. The perception of overall image contrast can change depending on the background. For posting to sites like IG and FB where the site background is up to the user (white or "dark mode"/black) then set your editor image background/border to middle grey to edit – then preview how it looks on both extremes of white and black before exporting the final JPEG.

On 6/7/2025 at 2:08 AM, MichaelWPlant said:

Thanks for the reply, and that last bit about the site background is a good point thanks for the tips.

Michael

This is one reason why adding a modest white border around an image to be presented on an arbitrary number of different websites is very effective ... It helps the viewer's eye set the "maximum white" tone. Using a little shadow effect as well also helps 'pull' the photo away from the background a little bit, helping the viewer's eye see the image as separate from the website. Black or gray borders do similar things but often look a little too forced. 

 

On 6/10/2025 at 8:29 AM, Jeff S said:

One still has no idea how viewers’ monitors/screens are actually presenting the resultant image. I’ll stick with prints for ideal display.

.. Which is fine albeit it is difficult to discuss or share a photo on line that way.  Ideal, like perfection, is often just a motivation for procrastination.  😆

G

[Jeff S]

2 minutes ago, ramarren said:

.. Which is fine albeit it is difficult to discuss or share a photo on line that way.  Ideal, like perfection, is often just a motivation for procrastination.  😆

 

Speak for yourself.  I participate in many discussions based on both private online sharing and in-person print viewings. The latter are far more rewarding. Nothing to do with procrastination for me, just choice of audiences. Broad forum sharing holds no interest, for many reasons.  Most here would be better off procrastinating and reevaluating IMO.

[ramarren]

3 hours ago, Jeff S said:

Speak for yourself.  I participate in many discussions based on both private online sharing and in-person print viewings. The latter are far more rewarding. Nothing to do with procrastination for me, just choice of audiences. Broad forum sharing holds no interest, for many reasons.  Most here would be better off procrastinating and reevaluating IMO.

Ah, snarky to the last. 

G

[Jeff S]

22 minutes ago, ramarren said:

Ah, snarky to the last. 

G

Did you read your post?

[ramarren]

50 minutes ago, Jeff S said:

Did you read your post?

Of course. Perhaps you didn't understand its intent. 

G

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[Jeff S]

Guess not

[ph0toni]

Returning to the original question:
1) There's no point in using an RGB color space (like ProPhoto) larger than the one displayed by your monitor.
2) If you want to share photos, use the "basic" sRGB color profile; all or almost all sites use this profile.
3) Starting from DNG, it's better to save with three channels (RGB) than just one (BW) if you later want to edit the photo—contrast, retouch, or unsharp mask.
Am I right?
Hi Toni