srgb or adobe-rgb?

[vvizard]

When loading a raw-photo into Photoshop-CS, it says it's not taken with the adobe-rgb color-space, and that it will use srgb instead.. Should I set the cam to adobe-rgb since Photoshop-CS is what I post-process all my pictures in? Will I notice any difference, if so what?

[leony]

Adobe RGB (1998) is the standard profile. sRGB has a much smaller gamut and is only useful for web graphics. If you intend to have your images printed use Adobe RGB and make sure to profile your environment so that there is no guess work.

Hope this helps.

[Vegas Poboy]

Ditto
Adobe RGB is the way to go

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Go to Edit>Color Settings and change your defaults.

For a quick summary see:

http://www.pixelpixel.org/pstips/14.htm

Regards,

[Foreside PhotoGraphics]

If you shoot with, say a D60 (which uses sRGB colorspace), and then convert in P'shop to Adobe 1998, you gain nothing, am I wrong? You can't increase the colorspace AFTER you've shot, can you?

-zeldon

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Foreside PhotoGraphics wrote:
If you shoot with, say a D60 (which uses sRGB colorspace), and then convert in P'shop to Adobe 1998, you gain nothing, am I wrong? You can't increase the colorspace AFTER you've shot, can you?

-zeldon

Zeldon,

If you are converting wiith Camera Raw (I assume that's what you mean), then you can choose Adobe RGB or even the much larger ProPhoto RGB. The gamut of the camera is being clipped by the conversion process (in BreezeBrwoser or FVU) not at capture. The same would be true, if you were using Capture One.

Regards,

[vvizard]

I'm shooting raw yes. As I don't know much about theese things (I've always been doing mostly web-graphics in PS and haven't cared to much about colour-spaces). Now I've decided to trust Roger's tips (Heck, I don't know enough to doubt it anyway =)). I'm then using the ProPhoto RGB. Should I let the cam standing at Adobe RGB then?

And a question. If the image is captured in Adobe RGB, but the PhotoPro got a "wider" (is that a good description) color-space, wouldn't that be useless for my 10D, since the pixels anyway is recorded in a with a more "narrow"(??) color-space?

[Jesper]

There is a problem with Canon's software: it does not tag the TIFF file with an ICC profile, so that Photoshop doesn't know the file is in AdobeRGB.

You should assign (not convert) the AdobeRGB color space to the image in Photoshop.

[Roger_Cavanagh]

vvizard wrote:
I'm shooting raw yes. As I don't know much about theese things (I've always been doing mostly web-graphics in PS and haven't cared to much about colour-spaces). Now I've decided to trust Roger's tips (Heck, I don't know enough to doubt it anyway =)). I'm then using the ProPhoto RGB. Should I let the cam standing at Adobe RGB then?

If you are shooting raw, the camera colour space setting is irrelevant for conversion of raw files as are the other settings. The settings are applied to the embedded JPG. If you ever use the JPG, then you may prefer to configure sharpness, etc. to your taste. You can't do this with Adobe RGB set.

And a question. If the image is captured in Adobe RGB, but the PhotoPro got a "wider" (is that a good description) color-space, wouldn't that be useless for my 10D, since the pixels anyway is recorded in a with a more "narrow"(??) color-space?

That's the same question I answered in reponse to zeldon. The sensor responds to a wide range of colour, we constrict when we choose a destination space for conversion.

The 10D can definitely capture colours outside Adobe RGB, although your output device may not be able to use those colours.

I've never seen a problem using ProPhoto, but it's a bad idea to do much editing in 8-bit with ProPhoto. It's a huge space compared to Adobe RGB, but you still only have 256 value for each channel, so you can create banding if you make aggressive adjustments to levels, curves, etc.

Regards,

[slin100]

Jesper wrote:
There is a problem with Canon's software: it does not tag the TIFF file with an ICC profile, so that Photoshop doesn't know the file is in AdobeRGB.

Canon argues that it's not really a bug with their software. They say that the standards prohibit them from embedding the AdobeRGB profile into TIFF/JPG images, so the images are left untagged. They will correctly tag sRGB images.

You should assign (not convert) the AdobeRGB color space to the image in Photoshop.

This is absolutely correct. And you should set your working space to AdobeRGB, as well.

[Jesper]

slin100 wrote:
Jesper wrote:
There is a problem with Canon's software: it does not tag the TIFF file with an ICC profile, so that Photoshop doesn't know the file is in AdobeRGB.

Canon argues that it's not really a bug with their software. They say that the standards prohibit them from embedding the AdobeRGB profile into TIFF/JPG images, so the images are left untagged. They will correctly tag sRGB images.


Aha.... strange, because there is lots of other non-Adobe image processing software that doesn't have a problem with this. Does Canon have some legal conflict with Adobe or don't they want to pay royalties or whatever to Adobe?? It's also too bad that Canon doesn't mention this in the manual of the software and that the bundled Photoshop Elements 2.0 does not have the assign / convert profile feature! That makes Adobe RGB almost unusable with the software supplied with the camera.....

Detail, but OK: images in sRGB are also not tagged by the Canon software, but almost all Windows software uses sRGB as the default profile if the image doesn't contain a profile.

[slin100]

Jesper wrote:
Does Canon have some legal conflict with Adobe or don't they want to pay royalties or whatever to Adobe??
I don't think so. What I've read is that Canon strictly adheres to the DCF (http://it.jeita.or.jp/document/publica/standard/exif/english/Dcfe.pdf) file format for images as defined by the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA (http://www.jeita.or.jp)). The standard only defines a colorspace attribute for sRGB.

It's also too bad that Canon doesn't mention this in the manual of the software and that the bundled Photoshop Elements 2.0 does not have the assign / convert profile feature! That makes Adobe RGB almost unusable with the software supplied with the camera.....
Almost unusable is right. You can get Elements to assign the AdobeRGB profile if you Save As the file. There's also a freeware tool that will embed an ICC profile into a JPG or TIFF image. Unfortunately, I think it destroys the EXIF information. Breezebrowser can also embed profiles.

Detail, but OK: images in sRGB are also not tagged by the Canon software, but almost all Windows software uses sRGB as the default profile if the image doesn't contain a profile.
That's definitely not true for JPGs straight out of a 10D. I just checked and they are definitely tagged when the camera is set to sRGB.

[Jesper]

Thanks for the explanation.....