Switching Color Space from Adobe 1998 to sRGB

[toglenn]

I have been shooting RAW images for about four years and have been searching for a RAW processing program that does a good job without endless tinkering.

Photoshop CS is my favorite, although still requiring a lot of “image tweaking” it gives me better results than Canon SDK or Capture One except for one area….Reds.

The Reds in CS are very strong, even after calibrating the program, but I have found that switching from the larger color space gamut Adobe 1998 to the narrower sRGB has toned down the Reds and made them more acceptable and I have not seen any changes in the rest of the normal color spectrum.

I know this goes against popular belief but, for me, the proof is in the end results. I wonder if anyone else has had similar results?

toglenn

[Jesper]

What are you doing when you go from Adobe RGB to sRGB - you have an image in Adobe RGB (converted with Camera Raw to Adobe RGB) and then you assign (not convert) the sRGB colour space? What you're doing if you do that, is to purposefully tell Photoshop to interpret the colour information in the image in the wrong way...

A colour space defines the meaning of the R, G, B colour numbers in the image. The numbers themselves don't have any meaning - for example, what kind of green is "0, 255, 0"? Is it grass green, light green, dark green? The colour space determines what kind of green it is. It's just like when you say your car goes 100. Is it going 100 km/h, 100 miles/h, ...?

Colour spaces are not meant to give you different "looks", just like different kinds of film will give you more or less saturated colours, for example.

Here are some pointers to intros about colour management and colour spaces and profiles:

Introduction to Color Management (http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/color_management.htm)
Color management and color science: Introduction (http://www.normankoren.com/color_management.html)
An Introduction to Digital Colour Management (http://www.boscarol.com/pages/cms_eng/)

[toglenn]

Thanks for your input but I'm not Assigning or Converting the color space but shooting and processing the RAW images in sRGB.

I understand that sRGB limits the colors produced by the monitor but if the printer is profiled for the calibrated monitor in sRGB and the results are better, haven't you corrected for errors in color reproduction produced in Adobe 1998?

I understand color management pretty well, I'm just trying to correct for an obvious problem I have in color reproduction.

toglenn

[scottbergerphoto]

I understand that sRGB limits the colors produced by the monitor but if the printer is profiled for the calibrated monitor in sRGB and the results are better, haven't you corrected for errors in color reproduction produced in Adobe 1998?

toglenn
Sorry but that makes little sense. You profile each device so that Windows and each device knows how each other device handles color information. You calibrate your monitor so Windows knows how your monitor will display color. It then works in the background. You don't manually use your monitor profile in any application for printing. Your printer gets profiled for a given printer/ink set/paper combination. You need a different profile for each paper and inks if you use different brands of ink. You thus have
1. a calibrated monitor.
2. A printer profile for a specific paper and ink set.
The color space of your image is identified when you open it in PS. Normally your working space should be the color space the image was converted to in your Raw converter. When you are done editing, you may choose to convert it to a different profile if let's say you want to display it on a monitor(sRGB) and you had it in Adobe RGB.

Most people feel that color reproduction is best using Canon's SDK as the Raw converter. The same converter is in BreezeBrowser. C1 is very popular for its many features. The PSCS raw converter is the least popular for color accuracy.
Regards,
Scott

[Jesper]

It sounds like you're confusing some things....

You don't "profile your printer for the calibrated monitor in sRGB".

Calibrating your monitor means: Setting the color temperature, brightness and contrast to optimum values for color reproduction.

Profiling means: Measuring how a device reproduces color and use these measurements to make an ICC profile. This is not dependent on any other device (such as your monitor when you're profiling a printer, for example).

You use a device such as a Spyder or Eye One to calibrate and profile your monitor. That will leave you with an ICC profile for your monitor. That ICC profile is a device dependent profile for your monitor, which doesn't have anything to do with sRGB, Adobe RGB or any other standard color space. The ICC profile describes how your monitor renders colors. Color management aware applications such as Photoshop will use the monitor profile to make sure that colors are displayed correctly.

Likewise, if you want to use color management for printing, you need an ICC profile for your printer, ink and paper type combination. That is again a device dependent profile, which doesn't have anything to do with sRGB or Adobe RGB. It describes to Photoshop how the printer reproduces color with the specific type of ink and paper you're using.

Next to your monitor profile, you have a number of device independent profiles, which describe standardized color spaces such as sRGB and Adobe RGB. You should use one of the standard color spaces as the working space in Photoshop, so that Photoshop saves your images in a standard color space.

Adobe RGB is a wide gamut color space, which means it contains a wide range of possible colors. sRGB is a small gamut color space, which means it contains less colors than Adobe RGB. sRGB was invented by HP and Microsoft and is supposed to match the "average monitor", so that if you display an image in sRGB on an un-calibrated monitor using software that is not color management aware (the largest part of Windows applications), you'll get a good chance that it will look OK (it won't be really accurate).

Colors that are inside the gamut of both Adobe RGB and sRGB should reproduce exactly the same, whether you use Adobe RGB or sRGB for the working space of your image.

Because Adobe RGB is a wider gamut space, it contains more saturated colors in some areas. It's possible that in your case, when you use sRGB instead of Adobe RGB, the particular red colors are "clipped" because they don't fit in sRGB. I don't know what "popular belief" you are referring to, but this is how it works...

[maderito]

The Reds in CS are very strong, even after calibrating the program, but I have found that switching from the larger color space gamut Adobe 1998 to the narrower sRGB has toned down the Reds and made them more acceptable and I have not seen any changes in the rest of the normal color spectrum.


You won't get a better explanation than Jesper's.

Whenever images and prints seem to come out better when working exclusively in sRGB color space, it usually means that some important detail(s) of color management has not been handled correctly. It could be PS color settings or policies, PS printing workflow, printer driver settings, monitor calibration, monitor profiling, etc. Jesper has pointed many of the potential problem areas.

I think reds are most often an issue for several reasons.

-Reds (and yellows=red+green) are prominent in things that are readily recognizable as having the right or wrong color - so called "memory colors" like apples, skin tones, etc.

-On average, images tend to be warm (reddish) and not cool (bluish).

-We take some of our best images in warm light (incandescent light, late day sun) and we tend to make images warmer when adjusting color temperature during RAW processing.

-Warm images have more saturated reds (and yellows). Warm images also often have clipped reds. Adjusting tonality - especially contrast and saturation - will quickly exaggerate red/yellow problems.
Thus, getting the reds right during image manipulation can be tricky - especially in the midtones (e.g. facial tones) and in the brightest reds where clipping and posterization problems develop.

This issue has come up before. As far as I know, no one has posted a good example of an image that could be handled better in sRGB compared to Adobe RGB. toglenn, perhaps you have one?