Color Spaces

[Steven M. Anthony]

One thing still confuses me (at least about color spaces...): I have seen the argument/suggestion to use ARGB over sRGB because ARGB has a larger color gamut. I've also seen the diagrams of the ARGB and sRGB color gamuts and how the former is, indeed, larger than the latter.

But if one's printer (or image-editing software printer driver) is going to convert the ARGB file to sRGB before printing, it seems it would be better to just start off with the sRGB color space. I know when I do all my editing work in ARGB and then convert to sRGB for the web or to print, there is a noticable color shift that I have to correct.

Are there other benefits to ARGB in terms of editing (like there are between RAW vs. jpeg) that you lose with sRGB?

[Jesper]

If your printer is going to convert the image to sRGB, then there wouldn't be much to be gained by working in Adobe RGB first.

Most labs that can print digital photos unfortunately don't understand colour management with ICC profiles and colour spaces, and the safest bet is to give them photos in sRGB - their big printers usually expect input images to be in the standard sRGB colour space, even if the people operating the printers have no clue themselves...

If you're printing on your own inkjet printer at home, it or the printer driver does not convert your image to sRGB prior to printing. To print properly, you should find an ICC profile for the native colour space of the printer, paper and ink combination you're using (often manufacturers supply these profiles on a CD with the printer), turn off colour management in the printer driver and tell your printing software what ICC profile for the printer to use. The software will convert from Adobe RGB to the printer's colour space directly, there is no step to convert to sRGB inbetween.

This article explains how to print in Photoshop: Managing Colour when Printing (http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps7_print/ps7_print_1.htm)

[CyberDyneSystems]

Two reasons.

1. Most modern printers have a larger color gambit than sRGB.. even they are not identical to ARGB.. they can take advantage of your image files additional color info.

2. By using sRGB on your images in the post process stage, you are tossing out color info that may be retained by using the wider color gamut. So working in the wider ARGB is akin to preferring 16bit tiff files over 8 bit. Even if you eventually have to print in 8 bit.. at least the whole time you are working on your files and saving them to tiff,. you have not "thrown out" any color info by converting to 8 bit.

[Steven M. Anthony]

Thanks for the info! I'll stick with ARGB.