AdobeRGB1998 or ProPhotoRGB?

I'm with Damien.

Wide color spaces have their place, but it's a confined place.

BigAl007 wrote in post #17355451
Damo77 you are forgetting one very important factor in the question of choice of colour space. We are discussing an approach to workflow when working with Lightroom. Internally you can only work in LR in MelissaRGB. of course LR is doing that in a 16 bit space too. So I have no choice in how I am going to work. I do not worry about it as although most of my images are going to mostly fall only within sRGB I AM still working in 16 bit. Given the difference between 8 and 16 bit, even though am working in a much larger colour space the quantisation steps for MelissaRGB in 16 bit are still going to be smaller than the quantisation steps in sRGB in 8 bit. So when I have LR do that conversion when I export an image I still have very small/no errors in the conversion. Although you do still have to deal with the OOG colours you might have.

But you DO have choice in how you are going to work.

The first choice is to use Bridge, wherein (in ACR) you can properly choose sRGB, and enjoy the completely accurate histogram and clipping warnings, that Adobe haven't seen fit to provide to LR users.

The second (not as good, but still better than nothing) choice is to work with soft-proofing turned on in LR, set to sRGB, and of course set the external editing preferences and export settings to 8-bit sRGB as well.

While in soft-proofing mode, the clipping warnings sadly are not accurate, but at least the histogram is.

Damo77 wrote in post #17351118
Alas, it's the dogma of "you must work in a big colour space" which is getting people into messes every day of the week.

So is the dogma of telling people "you must work in sRGB color space".

"Don't tell people you must do this, because you must do this!"

Most professional way to end photographic 'education' blog: "Ain't nobody got time fo dat!"

Oh no, I've been taught lies by the so-called 'craparazzi'!

That's right, I am. sRGB is the only way to work for everyone without the equipment that you have. To dabble with colours they can neither see nor reproduce is foolish in the extreme.

As other's have stated this forum has a wide range of users. To simply tell everyone that there is no merit to the other options is incorrect. Some have the ability to display and see these gamuts, some have the need and desire to edit, distribute, sell and print in these gamuts. I'm sure many would like to learn the actual pros and cons of all of them, rather than be told that there is only one way, your way, while insulting those who say otherwise. Not to mention the editing program being talked about doesn't even allow the use of the gamut you so aggressively advocate. I use them all. Those learning should know that there are uses and applications for the other gamuts.

Also, that's not my equipment, I did learn on it (and I do have a ~98% aRGB monitor that is surprisingly affordable) but that stuff posted above is what the new people studying digital photography are being taught to use today. Those going to schools for photography will have good education and knowledge in the use of all of the gamuts available, even if some don't want them to.

koala yummies wrote in post #17356259
As other's have stated this forum has a wide range of users. To simply tell everyone that there is no merit to the other options is incorrect. Some have the ability to display and see these gamuts, some have the need and desire to edit, distribute, sell and print in these gamuts. I'm sure many would like to learn the actual pros and cons of all of them, rather than be told that there is only one way, your way, while insulting those who say otherwise. Not to mention the editing program being talked about doesn't even allow the use of the gamut you so aggressively advocate. I use them all. Those learning should know that there are uses and applications for the other gamuts.

This is not a stickied "general information" thread. It's a response to one specific user. And I've seen no suggestion that Andrew has any fancy equipment. Therefore, there is no suggestion that he needs anything other than sRGB.

So I just purchased an Epson R3000 and am an old zone system person, mixed my own chemistry the entire thing back in the darkroom dayzzz. I could see the difference between zone 1 and zone 2 the mystery zone. Should I use adobeRGB or sRGB. I don't use Lightroom just Photoshop. Oh and price is an issue, don't want to waste too much paper.

The choice of aRGB vs. sRGB is only a matter of which 16.7 Million colors/hues to portray in a print, and is NOT a factor in improving upon the tonal density values presented!

Altering the tonal curve in RAW convertors and even in Photoshop will help in visualizing Zone 1 vs. Zone 2, but 'which color space' is irrelavent to your pursuit.

Proper adjustment of your monitor's controls for Brightness and for Contrast are key to being able to SEE the difference of Zone 1 vs. Zone 2 on your monitor! And this is a fundamental step that should be done before any attempt at 'calibration' -- which affects primarily COLOR ACCURACY between monitor and printer. This is a key reason for NOT using a laptop for digital photo editing, BTW...use a monitor with real CONTROLS (not thru software adjustment, but thru KNOBS/BUTTONS)

I don't use a laptop but Mac Pro with a 23" apple display. I can't afford all the calibration tools so I just did the tiny little calibration apple offers thru system pref's. All I want to do is start out as close to accurate as I can. The comment about zone 1&2 was just to offer that I can see little differences.

Hey, can someone please tell me how to turn Photoshop into ProPhotoRGB with a 16-bit color space? I am convinced that this is the best option to make all my programs, so I'm trying to discover how to set that as the default. Thank you.

Read this
http://www.photoshopes​sentials.com/basics/co​lor-settings/

If you shoot RAW, it is the ACR which converts the RAW data to ProPhotoRGB...
http://www.luminous-landscape.com …ex.php?topic=51​274.0;wap2

Or possibly Lightroom, or which ever other RAW processor that you use. It is only when the RAW processing application actually turns your RAW file in to an RGB raster image that it will be assigned an actual colour space. Many RAW applications will allow you to specify which colour space is used when the up to date preview is generated, and this colour space is used for the Histogram that is presented. Adobe Lightroom is actually unusual in that it only offers one colour space for internal working; known as MelissaRGB, it's a variant of ProPhotoRGB with a different Gamma curve. It is only if I am going to process images in LR, then send them out to Photoshop for editing, then bringing that edited image back into LR for further processing that I would use ProPhotoRGB within PS. Otherwise I would just export the image from LR in whatever the final colour space is going to be. The whole point being that one is attempting to avoid changing the colour space until the last part of the processing.

If I were just using ACR, which allows a choice of working colour space, I would generally then work in my final colour space sRGB from the start of the process, again avoiding the need to convert from one colour space to another at all.

Alan

Okay, one last question:

What was Adobe's point of changing the Gamma of the ProPhotoRGB in Lightroom? Why didn't they use the native gamma of ProPhotoRGB when they programmed the software?

Man, reading this thread makes me even happier I ditched Lightroom for CaptureOne Pro.

I work in AdobeRGB from camera until final output, then I convert to CMYK or sRGB depending on the destination.