Monochrom Editing / Export and "Color" Space?

[jgeenen]

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vor 16 Minuten schrieb 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

For color, you should take a larger color space than the one displayed by your monitor. For black and white this is not relevant, since you are just changing the brightness of the white point.

The computer translates the color values in the files to pixel brightness. If the display driver does not know the mapping table for a specific color space you might get wrong results (aka colors). So it is good to take a common standard everybody knows (and has implemented), that is sRGB for screen. For BW that makes little difference (there is only one „white“).

if you include toning, it does make sense to stay with RGB, but if you just want to manipulate in black and white, make sure that the bit depth is preserved (never save a DNG as 8-bit-tiff or jpg), but you don’t need to transport the redundant three-pixel values (but it doesn’t harm either - except that the file is bigger). 

 

[ph0toni]

14 hours ago, jgeenen said:

For color, you should take a larger color space than the one displayed by your monitor.

It doesn't make sense... if you use ProPhoto, it means "stretching" the colors you can't see. Yes, the file is BW, but you're processing values outside the gamut of your monitor.

14 hours ago, jgeenen said:

 

if you include toning, it does make sense to stay with RGB, but if you just want to manipulate in black and white, make sure that the bit depth is preserved (never save a DNG as 8-bit-tiff or jpg), but you don’t need to transport the redundant three-pixel values (but it doesn’t harm either - except that the file is bigger). 

Yes

the best thing to do is save the file you're working on as a 16-bit TIFF. Once post-production is complete, share an 8-bit JPEG.

[jgeenen]

vor 18 Minuten schrieb ph0toni:

if you use ProPhoto, it means "stretching" the colors you can't see.

You can‘t see it, that is correct, but if you process the image, the result might be visible. Imagine a tone curve manipulation - eg. by changing the color temperature: When pushing beyond sRGB space, this curve will be flattened (absolute colorimetric rendering) or compressed (relative colorimetric rendering). If you then revert the process, the result will be a flat colored visible area similar to banding.
Btw, that is exactly how Adobe raw converters work - regardless of the format/color space of an image or capabilities of a device, processing is always in ProPhoto RGB with a high bit depth (at least 16bit) to avoid information loss during processing.

 

[ph0toni]

As far as I know... Camera raw, Capture one, etc... when they open the RAW files they display it in LAB 16 bit, regardless of whether it is BW or RGB 10 - 12 - 14 bit