Color Settings/Management

Hi, just have a question about color settings and color management.

My camera is set to sRGB
LightRoom is set to ProphotoRGB
Photoshop is set to sRGB

Should I change LR so that they are all the same? Or should I change my camera and PS?

Change Lightroom

Elie I did not think you could change the working colour space in LR. My personal working system is this.
I shoot only RAW so of course my camera files have no colour space. I do though have the camera (20D) set to sRGB. The only time I really make use of the embedded preview is on the back of the camera. I import the images into LR4 and do my RAW processing there. For probably in excess of 95% of my images that will be all the processing that the image needs. For the images that need processing further then I send them to PSCS5 via the edit in command. I have my options set up so that on saving the image is a 16 bit PSD in ProPhotoRGB. I have some issues with the export command causing artifacts in exported images in CS5. In which case I do an export to a PSD file again as 16 bit / ProPhotoRGB and with no resizing/output sharpening. Either way these images after processing are brought back into LR with all of the rest of the processed images that did not need processing in PS. I then only produce "output" files from LR as I need them. I have several different output presets saved depending on specific use of the image. For most uses that will include converting the image to the sRGB colour space.

The only exception to this will be when printing or creating files for print. Locally I print 10×8 and A4 on my Canon MG5150 printer with OEM ink and on Canon Platinum Pro paper. I print direct to the printer from the print module and use the Canon profile for this. For larger size prints I have found a lab that produces very good work for a great price. I follow the instructions that they give for their pro service and embed the profile that they provide. In this situation they do nothing at all to the image file before printing. They will also accept sRGB files too.

If I were to use a different lab then I would follow their recommended procedures. But out side of specific instructions I would always just use/set sRGB as the colour space.

One thing that seems to escape a lot of pepole is that yes AdobeRGB can use a wider range of colours than sRGB, but in an 8 bit file you can only see approx 16.5 million of them, so the AdobeRGB colours have to be further apart from each other. This can in extream situations adversly affect very fine graduations, especially if the scene only has colours from within the sRGB colour space. I was as guilty of this as many others, for many years equating more colours=better. This becomes less of an issue when you use 16 bits per channel as you go from 256 shades to 65536 shades for each colour channel.

Alan

I think he is referring to either the Export space or the Edit in PSCS space, or both. These, other than print space, are the only things that are settable in LR. If his working space in PS is sRGB it makes little sense to generate RGB images in a wider space and then convert them in PS to sRGB. (And a potential problem if his c.m. policies are set to use the embedded profile in the case of a profile mismatch and he is unaware that he is in ProPhoto RGB.)

There is a story (probably apocryphal) that an elderly woman approached Louis Armstrong after a concert and asked, "Mr. Armstrong, what is jazz?" and Satchmo answered, "Lady, if you gotta' ask, you wouldn't understand." Here the rule should be, "If you gotta' ask, use sRGB."

fotoworx wrote in post #15926366
My camera is set to sRGB

Irrelevant

fotoworx wrote in post #15926366
LightRoom is set to ProphotoRGB

Where? If "export": Use sRGB, following Tzalman's logic.
If "external editing": you might want to keep it as is, depending on the next one:

fotoworx wrote in post #15926366
Photoshop is set to sRGB

Where? And what other settings? (the "mismatch" tick boxes are more important in this case).
http://www.getcolorman​aged.com …nagement/pscolo​rsettings/

Also: What are you using the images for?
If the answer is "web", "email" or "sending off to be printed", use sRGB everywhere.

Thanks everyone for the responses.

René I'm a little confused still (actually a lot to be honest) I don't know why I have such a hard time getting my head around this.

I print at home 99% of my prints.

fotoworx wrote in post #15928811
Thanks everyone for the responses.

René I'm a little confused still (actually a lot to be honest) I don't know why I have such a hard time getting my head around this.

I print at home 99% of my prints.

Some home/inkjet printers/commercial printers are capable of handling a wider color space, which is why Canon and others do include aRGB as a "choosable" color space.

But, to effectively use the aRGB space, you need to understand what you are doing and then to use that work space throughout your workflow (starting with Exporting from/Editing from Lightroom. Using aRGB can be useful for a wide range of colors. But, if you don't see the use, and if you don't know the capabilities of your printer, sticking with sRGB can give you overall good results and can also avoid some "goofups".

Tony do you recommend that I just leave -

My camera is set to sRGB
LightRoom is set to ProphotoRGB
Photoshop is set to sRGB

As they are?

fotoworx wrote in post #15928869
LightRoom is set to ProphotoRGB
Photoshop is set to sRGB

As they are?

Again: Where?

Edit: Okay, bit longer, before I'm off to bed.

Assuming in LR you're referring to the "transfer to PS" settings or exporting a tif/psd file for exporting in PS, since ProPhotoRGB should not be used on a jpg anyhow:

If you didn't tick the "profile mismatch" box in PS color settings, and set the policies to "convert to working space", what you have set in LR is largely irrelevant, since PS will convert to the default working space upon opening, without notifying you.
If you didn't tick the "profile mismatch" box in PS color settings, and set the policies to "use embedded", you will be working in whatever you chose in LR.

If you chose "off" in policies, your PS color settings are wrong anyhow, but you probably would have noticed.

If you did tick the "mismatch" box, PS will ask you what to do with the image. You can then choose to convert to profile or preserve embedded.

For printing at home, AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB might have (some) advantages, provided your color management chain is okay, and you know what you're doing.

For anything that goes to the web or via email: Convert to sRGB (for mail: unless both you and the recipient know about it.)

Check the PS color settings link I gave, and read it a few times

fotoworx wrote in post #15928869
Tony do you recommend that I just leave -

My camera is set to sRGB

There is only one case for changing your in-camera color space if you are shooting Raw and not processing in DPP: Your in-camera color space can/will affect your RGB histogram in your camera LCD. As a result, you may either use the sRGB in-camera space to "play it safe" with exposing your colors within that space. Or, you may want to set the camera to aRGB if you want to shoot "to the right", pushing colors a bit into the aRGB space (out of the sRGB space) and then "taming" them for the sRGB color space for processing for "general output".

Lightroom uses a "derivative" of ProPhotoRGB as its "working color space". What this means is that its colors and histogram reflect the broader color gamut, which more accurately reflect the Raw data. It can be important for you to understand this -- for images with bright/rich/saturated colors, an image can look "fine" in Lightroom but then after converting to the sRGB space the colors can potentially be off.

Lightroom 4 "corrected" for this by adding Soft Proofing: you can set your Soft Proof settings to use a "target" such as sRGB, and also to show you out-of-gamut warnings, very hand for those color-rich photos.

But the next question is what to use for Lightroom's output color space -- in other words, what do use you use for your Export color space and your Edit in Photoshop color space?

For these, yeah there is some flexibility depending on use, but most of my Exports are for uses such as the Web, sharing with friends/family, and viewing on a variety of viewing apps/browsers. For these uses, sRGB is the only "safe" choice. Many/most of us have mindlessly exported in another space, only to be shocked by "strange" colors.

As to the Edit in Photoshop function, well, similar questions arise. Are you preparing for a print on a printer that will properly render an aRGB image? If so, then sure there can be a case for aRGB. I would, though, avoid using ProPhotoRGB for this type of thing unless you really know what you are doing and why! And, seriously, your printers will tend to be fine handling sRGB files/colors, but an "unknown quantity" for aRGB...it's up to you, but again unless you have a reason to use aRGB, well, I think that it's good to start with an sRGB workflow and take it from there...

Again, I'd start with an sRGB workflow, meaning Photoshop would use sRGB as its "working color space".

Something to be aware of, though, is what was mentioned earlier, and how you want Photoshop to handle files that are either of another color space or an "untagged" color space. In the Color Settings dialog there are several options, which range from automatically converting images to your working color space (like your sRGB) or just opening the image as-is, using its embedded color space or none at all. This can be tricky! In fact, once not long ago I was "messing around" with color spaces, and had set Photoshop to using ProPhotoRGB for some testing, forgot that I had done that, opened some images and had PS convert them without asking me, and then quickly put some out one the Web. It wasn't until after I viewed them in a non-color-managed browser that I realized that they were way off!

So, start out with the sRGB workflow, and then step carefully through any variations!

René Damkot wrote in post #15928914
Again: Where?

LR -

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René and Tony I admit total confusion and appreciate the help from you both.

Yeah, in this case, when you export a file from LR to PS, you will be editing a 16bpc ProPhotoRGB file in Photoshop. PS does tell you so by the way:

I have always been unhappy about that statement on LR's External Edit page that, "16 bit ProPhoto RGB is the recommended choice ....," without any warning or indication of the potential pitfalls of ProPhoto RGB. Any newby seeing the word "recommended" will naturally choose that space.

Elie I think the 16 bit ProPhotoRGB choice is a good one if you are round triping your editing in PS, and bringing all of your images back into LR for final output. That way colour space stays as close to the same throughout the editing process. This is my prefred system, as only a small number of images end up going to PS now. So I can have either processed CR2 or edited PSD files as "completed" images ready for output. It is once I have the images at this point that I will create VC's as soft proofs, which will also be cropped for output aspect ratio (if being printed). It is at this point in the process that I want to consider the final colour space of the image.

This seems to me the way that the LR devlopers are expecting you to work based on the default settings of a fresh LR install. And I guess this is why they give us all of those output features integrated into the LR interface. I also note that in the export dialogues, when preparing the image for "final output" the default colour space is always sRGB.

Another related question is what happens internally when a 8 or even 16 bit sRGB PSD/TIFF image is imported, or for that matter aRGB? Is it converted to 16 bit Melissa? What about any JPEG files that are imported to LR? How are they handled?

Alan