confusion over color mgment?

I have been using Adobe1998 in my camera and on my CS3. H&H lab is telling me to convert to Srgb instead. I don't quite understand why or if I should. Won't I be losing some color depth somewhere? If my file is saved as a high quality jpeg edited with Adobe1998 how would I convert it to SRGB or when? I have an Epson printer at home that I use to print out for myself and family members. If I convert the file to Srgb, won't my prints look different than the Adobe1998 prints? Would I be better off to print my customers orders at home so I have control over the finished product? What printer would be able to do texturized prints or canvas? I hate to NOT use a lab, just because they are so much cheaper than printing at home.

Tough one.

My first thought is work in the same system as your print people use. It will only confuse them if you dont. But if you print at home that means you have to work in 2 profiles.

Im going to keep an eye on the responses here.

Simple.

Follow the instructions of your print labs for photos you're sending out to print. You can convert to sRGB as your last step before saving. In the Photoshop menu go to Edit > Convert to Profile and select sRGB IEC61966-2.1 in the Destination Space Profile drop-down box.

Since I too work in the Adobe RGB color space, the way I do it is to save my edited file with the Adobe color profile, then convert it to sRGB and use the "Save As" command to save another copy that goes to the lab.

Adobe RGB does have a wider color gamut than sRGB but you should not notice any difference because the conversion process remaps the colors to fit within the smaller gamut.

BeckyMax wrote in post #5618235
I have been using Adobe1998 in my camera and on my CS3. H&H lab is telling me to convert to Srgb instead. I don't quite understand why or if I should. Won't I be losing some color depth somewhere? If my file is saved as a high quality jpeg edited with Adobe1998 how would I convert it to SRGB or when? I have an Epson printer at home that I use to print out for myself and family members. If I convert the file to Srgb, won't my prints look different than the Adobe1998 prints? Would I be better off to print my customers orders at home so I have control over the finished product? What printer would be able to do texturized prints or canvas? I hate to NOT use a lab, just because they are so much cheaper than printing at home.

ok thanks, I'll try that.

FedkaTheConvict wrote in post #5618583
Adobe RGB does have a wider color gamut than sRGB but you should not notice much, if any difference because the conversion process remaps the colors to fit within the smaller gamut.

Fixed


Becky: If you're interested, there's plenty of reading material in the link from my sig

Simple solution for you. Change labs.

Both of the labs I use accept files in AdobeRGB and the results are just fine.

I use WHCC, and CPQ... I could never sell my customer's prints from my home printer and feel good about it.

I have a quick question and forgive because I am very new to the site so I'm not sure how to post my own thread yet!

My questions is:

When I am editing my photos in CS3 I want to be editing in CMYK but every time I open a new image, it's opening in RGB. (Image-Mode-RGB). How do I get my images to automatically be in CMYK?!?!?!

Hi echphoto..., welcome to the forum.

Can you describe the kind of work you're doing? I just want to make sure you really need to be working in CMYK.

In general, a CMYK conversion should be the absolute last step in your editing process. It's very unwise to work in CMYK, except in rare circumstances.

Hey there!

I have a photography business where I send images out to a lab for processing. I heard that RGB is generally used for the web and CMYK should be used when printing. I am fairly new to the photography world so I'm still realizing where I fall short technically! Is it wrong that I think I'm supposed to be working in CMYK?

Echo Photography
(Yes...I spelled it wrong in my username as a result of always typing so fast...I am a nerd!)

Technically you shouldn't be using AdobeRGB with JPEGs since JPEGs are always 8bit and this could lead to posterization.

Don't use CMYK for editing.
For starters: Way too much different CMYK profiles out there. Secondly: You loose way to much gamut that way. Third: Printing is not offset.

@blinded: AdobeRGB can be used in 8bpc. ProPhotoRGB should not.
If you are doing heavy edits to 8bpc images, you're in for posterization, regardless what working space you are in. IMO there's no reason to be doing such heavy edits to jpg files anyway. You have the Raw for that...

echphotographystudios.​com wrote in post #5693915
Is it wrong that I think I'm supposed to be working in CMYK?

Yes, it's very VERY wrong. I'm glad you came to us before coming to too much grief.

CMYK is not what you want. RGB all the way, and I'd recommend sRGB for beginners.

forkball wrote in post #5628437
Simple solution for you. Change labs.

Both of the labs I use accept files in AdobeRGB and the results are just fine.

I use WHCC, and CPQ... I could never sell my customer's prints from my home printer and feel good about it.

You're kidding right! I do my own printing with a color managed system and an epson R2400. My clients tell me that my prints look better than anything they have ever seen. I have had pros ask me where I get my prints done.

The reason I print at home is for the control over the finished product and because my prints look better.

queenbee288 wrote in post #5695869
You're kidding right! I do my own printing with a color managed system and an epson R2400. My clients tell me that my prints look better than anything they have ever seen. I have had pros ask me where I get my prints done.

The reason I print at home is for the control over the finished product and because my prints look better.

No I'm not kidding... from a cost perspective and a time perspective, it's more time and money to home print. I don't have the Epson R2400 but even if I did, I'd never consider printing out 500-600 proofs on it when I pay so little to have them done for me. And the school/teams picture day work I do, CPQ will do individual packaging on a per file basis, die cut my wallets, and they offer so many products that quite frankly would take me forever and cost me twice as much to produce myself with a home printer, not including the print cost itself. I'll send a private message to you with my costs so you can see what I mean.

As for keeping control over my final prints, WHCC and CPQ both offer studio color control printing, which means they take the files as I send them without doing any editing or color changes. The prints I get from either of those labs are just about perfect when compared to what I see on screen. The paper is outstanding and the colors are exactly what I see on screen. In fact, I've earned about $7,000 in new contracts this year alone because of my print quality. I'll tell you more about that too... I've used labs that were just awful, but CPQ, and WHCC are incredible. They both have a nice set of soft proofing ICC profiles(for each paper type) to use and as long as you embed the color profile (sRGB or aRGB) the prints are perfect. Except the press products. That's a different machine and I find that sRGB is the only profile you would want to use for those for the CMYK conversions. If sRGB is embedded the press products are perfect as well.

WHCC has a 3 day turnaround time from order submission to the time I recieve it at my door. CPQ is about a week but their customer service is probably the best I've ever encountered in ANY industry. Both labs have ROES which I love. Mainly I use CPQ for my school/team stuff and WHCC for my seniors/weddings/portr​aits.

Now I do have a neat little Epson 4x6 printer that I love. I'll use that to print 'on site' prints but that's a different situation. But my main printer is a Canon IP6600D and I'm not getting consistant results from it and the colors DO fade and shift. If I had the R2400, I would be able to feel ok about selling prints made from it, but I still wouldn't do it because it's much cheaper for me to send out my lab work.