Really confused about color space

Yes, I thought I could continue with Adobe RGB 1998 but I have run into the problem where my clients are taking their family portraits to my photo processor and having him make Christmas cards with his templates. His templates are in SRGB so walla all my portraits are looking bad in his templates.

Your suggestion about using Assign just might work! In my quick test, it looks the same as RGB 1998 in Corel. I'm still going to take a look at these recommended sites for getting my color setting correct, but THANKS! I'll try setting up one of these as an assigned SRGB and have it printed to see what it looks like. THANKS AGAIN!!

Amy

Certainly worth a try, because one carefully hand-picked test print ought to resolve the issue.

From the standpoint of a business practice, I guess you could say that there can be unexpected bad side effects from allowing the clients to have the digital files.

So you're seeing exactly what I'm seeing. I'm having trouble believing though that all the portrait photographers in the world aren't up in arms that the skin tones they're seeing on the screen are not what they're seeing in print.

Let me just clarify....are you seeing the colors of the SRGB mushroom jpg or the RGB 1998 mushroom jpg on your Adobe Photoshop screen? I see the RGB 1998 skin tones on my screen regardless of which color profile that I'm in while in Photoshop.

If I could see the skin tones in Adobe Photoshop as they would look when printed as an SRGB jpg then I could deal with this problem when adjusting the color balance while in RAW mode. Perhaps my Adobe PS is set up wrong in displaying the colors to me?

Thanks,
Amy

While in PSCS, I see that which is in the left hand image above. I.e., I see the warmer colors of the sRGB color space (because that is my working space per Color Settings). I do not see the cooler image at the right, above, unless I go to another program, such as Micrografx Picture Publisher or to a Web Hosted copy of the Adobe RGB 1998 tagged image.

I cannot say what your configuration is, but you can see mine at the Web site that I referenced above.

I did try setting up as you described in your document but I still see the cooler colors. I guess I'll try uninstalling and reinstalling Photoshop.

Thanks!
Amy

If things are still not to your liking after all that, please copy my setup, and then we should go through a procedure in lock step to zero in on what is being done differently. As it is right now, the biggest unknown is whether your monitor is really calibrated properly. I have little reason to belive that uninstalling and re-installing will help.

One very revealing test is to just look at the last modified dates on all of the profiles stored in C:\Windows\System32\sp​ool\drivers\color.

I will bet that there won't be any extraordinary dates in there except the profiles that you yourself created.

Point!
Something is just not right in your color management settings.
But once again I'm a Mac head so can't help too much here.
Someone well versed with Corel & PSCS in Windows is needed.

Assigning should be avoided if at all possible. When you assign you are giving numbers meaning, i.e. what will r27g25,b187 look like in reference to the LAB color space when I assign the profile of my digital camera. If you were scanning film you would assign the scanner profile to the scanned image and then convert to a working space. Converting is intended to "preserve the look" of an image according to one of 4 rules of intent.
Try opening an image in PS and assign various profiles to the image. Now try converting. There will be minimal change in the converted images while in the assigned images there is the potential for major shifts.

Long story short, if you are shooting digital and using RAW files processed by one of the major applications DPP, PSCS, etc... you should not be assigning profiles to images unless you realy know what the heck you are doing.

I opened the sRGB.jpg and discarded the profile. The image takes on a warm cast as you were describing you saw in print and Corel PhotoPaint. Which leads me to believe you have some settings that need attention.

Realy look into the color management settings you are using. Keep them consistent between all applications. And test print at another lab. This will be of major help!!!

I'm going to ask a stupid question, that may have been asked, but are you viewing the image in a color managed application to make these comparisons?

Yes, I'm viewing the image in Adobe Photoshop and Corel PhotoPaint.

I was poking around my Corel and noticed that it was set to ignore ICC profiles when opening a file (!?!). And remember that it looks just like my prints so perhaps my lab is ignoring ICC profiles. Is that supposed to happen?

Amy

Windows requires you to have a monitor profile in order to have a complete color managed system. Check that you have assigned sRGB as your monitor profile, or that your calibrated profile is selected, and that that profile is set as "default".

In Photoshop Color Settings
- choose a working space. This can be essentially ANYTHING, most common choice is AdobeRGB or sRGB.
- in Color Management Policies choose "RGB: preserve embedded profiles".
- tick OFF all "ask when opening" boxes.

Now, when you e.g. process an image with Rawshooter Premium, choose "Colorengine camera profile" and RGB working space "Prophoto RGB", convert to 16 bit TIFF and open the TIFF to Photoshop, the color profile scheme goes like this:

1. RSP applies "Colorengine camera profile" to RAW
   
2. then passes the image though "Working space profile"
   
3. Now RSP reads your "Windows monitor profile" and displays the RAW on screen.
   

1. the RAW is passed though "Colorengine camera profile"
   
2. then through "Working space profile" (note: NOT though "Windows monitor profile" at this stage)
   
3. then it is saved on disk and "Working space profile" is embedded to the image
   

1. Photoshop reads your "Working space profile"
   
2. reads that image requests to use "Prophoto RGB" and it sees there is a profile mismatch. You have set PS so that it does not ask anything but preserves the embedded profiles, so PS opens the photo as "Prophoto RGB"
   
3. and then displays it using "Windows monitor profile"
   

Pekka,

Wonderful essay!

One item of caution though.
The Luminous Landscape article reffed. here and in many other threads needs to be taken with a ton or two of salt.
It/he assumes several things which are just not correct regarding digital camera profiles. The camera profile used for comparrison is not-of-this-world, meaning - it is not an accurate representation of what the camera can capture in the real world. And the pitfals of working in such a large color space are not addressed. Like banding and posterising for starters....
Also, none of the other larger-than AdobeRGB working spaces is not addressed.
Yeah, I know the article is about the ProPhoto space. But ProPhoto is only one of many profiles that will do you justice with larger gamut but not so much that it makes life a potential hell.

Saw a few things....

Profile - color space describing the color performance of a device.

Camera Profile - color space describing the color performance of a camera.

Assigning a profile - the act of giving the color numbers of a document meaning. One would assign a freshly scanned image the profile of the scanner. Or in the case of what is going on in PSCS RAW conversion, the RAW file is assigned a camera profile and then converted to one of the four working spaces allowed by PSCS.

Actually both of those are ICC profiles, and for that there is an good explanation in Google, search keyword

define:ICC Profile

"ICC (International Color Consortium) profiles represent the color space of a specific substrate, ink, printer, monitor or capture device. Each of these elements have their own unique color gamut. This is due to the fact that every element is able to achieve a different level of color. ICC profiles can be applied in the edit process or the RIP software."

I would like to hear from someone making profiles, what a color profile is made of in technical sense. Actually I'm sure that info can be found in http://www.color.org/

I think this question is germane to this thread: I really, really like DPP, however the output choices available are sRGB, AdobeRGB,Wide Gamut, Apple and Color Match. Wide Gamut is almost as large as Prophoto and I use it where I have satured yellows and oranges. However, I'd like to try Best, Ekta and Beta spaces. Can I simply replace, say, the Color Match .icc with Best .icc, for instance, in DPP's icc folder and change its name to Color Match and then later reassign the Best tag to the image? Will that work? Or would I need to change the internal name of the file as well?
Elie

The 3 spaces, Best, EktaSpace and Beta to me are great compromises. Try assigning Beta to "mystery meat"(untagged) images. They usually snap into the ball-park with it.

What you are trying to do with the tags is interesting, but there is one heck of allot more going on with profiles than just the name of the file. All sorts of internal taggs, names, etc... that make it hard to confuse color managed applications. However, there may be hope. The same situ exists with Nikon scanner software. I opened up the profile and fiddled liberally with things and was able to get Nikon Scan to recognise EkatSpace and BestRGB.
Give it a whirl.
Good luck!