Is this colour profile workflow right?

Hi there,

I’m just after some advice on workflow and colour management throughout the process from taking the photo to printing. Basically I’ve read different things on how people edit throughout the process but not much as to how their wide gamut monitors are set. I just want to check I’m not doing something glaringly wrong. I mainly shoot weddings and landscapes and when making prints the companies I get prints from use I believe convert to sRGB. My setup and process is:
5D mkII shooting in Adobe RGB colourspace (I shoot in Raw so believe this doesn’t matter anyway?)
Dell U2711 wide gamut monitor but set to sRGB when editing.
Working in Photoshop with the source space set to Adobe RGB but then finished the edit converting to sRGB and saving the image to JPEG.

Now my understanding is that when converting to sRGB at the end of the process it will retain the exact same colours that I am viewing however they will be labelled a different number from the sRGB to Adobe RGB profile. I would say my main aim is to get accurate prints. Is it possible to edit in a wide gamut setting on the monitor and get accurate prints? If so how? I've read that there are advantages in using Adobe RGB as there is a larger colour range to play with. I'd be interested to hear if anybody does this and what benefits they feel they gain and also if it is problematic in any ways such as printing and saving images for web use.

Thanks!

It is only advantageous to edit in Adobe RGB if you will be printing with a printer that can reproduce the Adobe RGB gamut. This means (generally) a good quality home inkjet. Most commercial labs cannot produce prints with a wider gamut than sRGB and if this is the image's destination then your best practice would be to have ACR and PSCS set to sRGB as the working space. In fact, working in Adobe RGB and later converting to sRGB results in a smaller number of actual colors in the image (the Adobe RGB range may be larger but the theoretical maximum number of colors is the same for both spaces and some will get lost in the conversion from Adobe RGB to sRGB). Moreover, it is not necessary to convert to Adobe RGB now if you shoot Raw since should you need an image for an end use that will support the wider gamut at some time in the future you can easily return to the Raw file and export from it again in the Adobe RGB space.

Thanks Tzalman, I will adjust my process accordingly!

haydnbuzz wrote in post #14994320
Hi there,

I’m just after some advice on workflow and colour management throughout the process from taking the photo to printing. Basically I’ve read different things on how people edit throughout the process but not much as to how their wide gamut monitors are set. I just want to check I’m not doing something glaringly wrong. I mainly shoot weddings and landscapes and when making prints the companies I get prints from use I believe convert to sRGB. My setup and process is:
5D mkII shooting in Adobe RGB colourspace (I shoot in Raw so believe this doesn’t matter anyway?)
Dell U2711 wide gamut monitor but set to sRGB when editing.
Working in Photoshop with the source space set to Adobe RGB but then finished the edit converting to sRGB and saving the image to JPEG.

Now my understanding is that when converting to sRGB at the end of the process it will retain the exact same colours that I am viewing however they will be labelled a different number from the sRGB to Adobe RGB profile. I would say my main aim is to get accurate prints. Is it possible to edit in a wide gamut setting on the monitor and get accurate prints? If so how? I've read that there are advantages in using Adobe RGB as there is a larger colour range to play with. I'd be interested to hear if anybody does this and what benefits they feel they gain and also if it is problematic in any ways such as printing and saving images for web use.

Thanks!

The part in bold should be addressed, because it indicates a misunderstanding that should be cleared up!

When you Convert to Profile an image to a different color space, you are actually changing the image RGB data. Then, the conversion software should also put the Color Space "tag" into the image exif (when you save it). This is done so that the image "reader", if it is color manged/smart, will know how to "render" the RGB data and make it look "right".

Otherwise, you can have problems. If, for example, your image is in aRGB but you either view it in a "dumb" viewer or if it doesn't have the aRGB "tag", the colors will look "off".

And, there is another "function" that can confuse you, it is the PS "Assign Profile" function, which is inconveniently "lumped" with the Convert function in the Edit Menu! This function actually does "Assign" the Color Space Exif tag without converting the image color space!

So, you can get a "view" of how this works by Assigning a wrong profile to and image and checking out the results. There may not be a huge difference between, say, an aRGB "assigned" to an sRGB (although ProPhoto RGB will tend to be quite noticeable. Try it out and open the "assigned" image in a "smart" viewer or browser, although if it is a "dumb" viewer it will automatically render with the default color space (typically sRGB). So, with a "dumb" browser/viewer it will "stumble" in rendering a mis-labled aRGB or ProPhotoRGB image.

Play around a bit to get a "feel" of what is happening, both with Converting and Assigning.

And then, as a general rule, avoid the Assign Profile feature!

And, until you really nail down your workflow, I'd just set your Raw converter to output in the sRGB space and your Photoshop Color Settinngs to use sRGB. Carefully read and select your options as to how to handle things when you get/open an image that is either not "tagged" or is in the "wrong"/non-sRGB color space.

haydnbuzz wrote in post #14994320
Dell U2711 wide gamut monitor but set to sRGB when editing.

Why on earth would you do that?

^^^ +1. Sort of defeats the purpose of having a wide gamut display. For starters, you should talk to your print lab and find out exactly what they require and what they are capable of in terms of output gamut. If they have soft proofing profiles available for their printers, see if they will send you those so you can proof your edits accordingly. Finally, make sure everything on your end is color managed, so you can feel confident that what you are producing on your display is accurate.

When you start with data in one color space and CONVERT to another, the conversion is performed according to the rendering intent you choose. If the colors present in your image in the source color space all fit into the destination space, then the conversion should produce colors that are visually "the same"; however, if the source contains colors that are outside the destination space, then the conversion strategy will determine how these outlying colors get mapped into the destination space. Typical rendering intents that are used in digital photography conversions are "Perceptual" and "Relative Colormetric" - Perceptual will convert with the goal of maintaining visual relationship between colors, Relative Colormetric will shift all colors to make the outliers fit into the destination with the closest reproducible color in the destination.

So, converting may not exactly preserve color - it is a natural consequence of some colors in one space not existing in another space. You can see this occur in the Convert To Profile preview window - you can change the rendering intent and see if the preview gives a better result for the conversion. As an example, choose an image with deeply saturated red and orange in ProPhoto (exported from ACR) and then convert that to sRGB - theses colors will shift to accommodate sRGB.

kirk

Any conversion in PS from ProPhotoRGB or AdobeRGB to (the standard) sRGB profile will be relative colorimetric, regardless of what you set. There is no perceptual conversion available.

Colors in sRGB gamut will remain unchanged, colors outside sRGB gamut will be clipped.

Great thanks for your all your help. I think I've finally got my head around this!