Assigning color space for linear raw

[pigasus]

When I bring an untagged linear raw image into Photoshop 6, should I leave it unassigned prior to running LinearSharpen?

After running LinearSharpen actions, I'm confused about what mode the image winds up in. Is it in 'Wide Gamut' color mode (is this an ICC profile?) or has it been converted by the actions to a selected mode (sRBG or AdobeRGB)? What if I want to wind up by converting to my working space of BruceRGB?

Thanks for the help.

Pigasus

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Pigasus,

When I bring an untagged linear raw image into Photoshop 6, should I leave it unassigned prior to running LinearSharpen?

Yes, choose "no colour management" or have the colour settings defined to achieve the same result, but without being asked.

After running LinearSharpen actions, I'm confused about what mode the image winds up in. Is it in 'Wide Gamut' color mode (is this an ICC profile?)

Yes, Pekka leaves images in Wide Gamut RGB. My guess is he chose this colour space because it is so wide, he has the latitude to apply the necessary adjustments to the D30 linear data. He does suggest leaving images in this colour space for further editing. I am not entirely certain about this. Here's what Bruce Fraser says:

Wide Gamut RGB, which is built into Photoshop, is pretty wide but has weak blues that tend to shift to purple, and hues tend to shift when you edit tone. This happens to some extent in any RGB space, but it's much more pronounced in wide-gamut spaces in general, and even more so in Wide Gamut RGB.

What if I want to wind up by converting to my working space of BruceRGB?

There's no reason not to convert it to any space you want. Pekka does recommend that conversion to sRGB should be done via Adobe RGB. This is because sRGB is quite a small gamut and colour artefacts are introduced by going directly. I seem to recall reading that Bruce RGB was designed to be "output-centric", which implies to me some restriction in gamut. However, it should be easy to test whether direct conversion from Wide Gamut to Bruce produces any noticeable colour changes.

Regards,

Roger

[TLMelanson]

My experience mirrors Roger's.
You will get very weird color shifts if you fool with the color space before running 342.
Definitely experiment with converting to both Adobe RGB and s-RGB. *Sometimes* you may find s-RGB provides the better alternative with Adobe RGB give you oversaturated prints.