Color Spaces - A nice primer

https://ciechanow.ski/​color-spaces/

Take a look - this is a nice overview of the what and how of color spaces, with some really helpful interactive exhibits to help understand wha the author is explaining. This was brought to my attention on Dan Margulis' Color Theory mailing list.

kirk

So this bring to mind a question about in camera color space.SRGB or AdobeRGB.I been using AdobeRGB because i do print once in awhile at home and i do send files to be printed to Costco. I use LR and PS setup with the pro photo color space. I use Firefox as my browser with the tweak on the color space.The SRGB i know that's for your internet stuff and such.Been seeing a lot of stuff saying SRGB is the way to go.I myself don,t see how that could be if your printing or having prints made somewhere your leaving a lot of color shades on the table and not in your photos.

Most printers are sRGB space. TV/computer/mobile displays are actually getting larger color spaces than what your standard print is able to get. The reason sRGB has been recommended for web is that it was safe and has been the standard: it won't bring about problems with showing a higher gamut space in an application that doesn't recognize it. However, many modern browsers now support color profiles and will be compatible with AdobeRGB or ProPhoto (as long as you have the ICC saved with the image, and we consider most all current browsers support it).

The problem that the hobbyist faces is that what they are told is a very incomplete discussion of the topic! Let is make an analogy of counting systems vs. color spaces:

sRGB and aRBG have the SAME QUANTITY of hues, they simply distribute the numerical values their hues differently in the color spectrum!

1. Imagine two counting spaces, both that have a limit of 1000 values...the sCount system counts from 0 thru 1000, the aCount system counts from 0 thru 1100 but skips values here and there in order to count to 1100 (still using only 1000 values in the counting system!!!) For discussion purposes, let us assume aCount skips 3, 13, 23, etc. and skips 5, 15, 25, etc. and skips 7, 17, 27 etc. in order to have sufficient values to count above 1000 to 1100.
   
2. Conversion between sCount to aCount means that some numbers are lost in the conversion. Using the above bullet illustration, conversion from sCount to aCount loses the values 3, 5, 7, 13, 15, 17, 23, 25, 27, etc.
   
3. Similarly conversion between aCount to sCount will lose all values from 1001 thru 1100.
   

1. If you shoot aRBG JPG files, and then send them to an outside lab whose printing systems are set up only to accept sRGB, you potentially lose colors when they convert your aRBG file to sRGB in order to make your print (think of the counting systems and the values in aCount that are 1001 thru 1100!)
   
2. If you look for commercial printers who CAN print aRGB, you will find them to be quite rare! For many years, on POTN I had a running 'challenge' to members to identify a lab they used which COULD accept aRGB without conversion...there were fewer than five in the POTN world.
   

The original intent of the post was to lay a foundation for why color spaces exist and how they were developed. It helps one appreciate why some RGB triplet has physical significance only when you specify the rules for describing what that triplet means, and those rules depend on your "color space" model. However, all color spaces have a common connection space that is physically based on the human visual system's response to light - a fundamental aspect of manipulating color in the digital realm that is worth at least appreciating, if not understanding.

This was not intended to degenerate into the sRGB versus AdobeRGB debate that surfaces daily on the internet. Many people talk about color spaces and have no idea what they are and why they were created - they just want to "know" what the "best one" is for "photography." Of course, the answer is "the one that suits your needs" - but how do you know what you need if you do not understand what a color space is?

It is a "nuts and bolts" article and that is precisely why I posted it. If you are not interested in it, and you TL/DR'ed it, no biggie.

The conversion from a source color space to a destination color space does not simply clip colors and "lose" them. There are different strategies ("rendering intents") for converting from a larger to a smaller color space that will affect the output, and knowing how color spaces work will give one an understanding of, and an appreciation for, the subtleties of finessing color during the conversion process to preserve, as practically as possible, the intent and perception of the original image. Again, if that's not important to you, no sweat.

There may be reasons that you want to start with an image encoded in a large gamut color space (for example, raw conversion, editing) and then map the image (convert it) into a smaller gamut color space for output to a limited gamut output device (web display, printing). With some understanding of how color spaces work and how conversion strategies between color spaces can optimize your image data during conversion, your output can be a perceptually faithful rendering of your source image, within the constraints of your output device.

kirk