Lightroom and sRGB clipping

Hello all,

I have a dilemma that I've been confused about for quite a while now. Many of my pictures are well outside of the sRGB gamut and, in order to bring it back within in the gamut I have to lower exposure by -2EV or so. This obviously results in a very dark picture. I sometimes take my picture into photoshop and desaturate sections that are out of gamut to bring them within sRGB. The odd part is I can then up vibrance and get something that looks fairly similar to my original prophoto RGB image.

This is pretty impractical to br bringing each image into photoshop though. I'm wondering what everyone else does to manage with this difficulty.

Unfortunately, Lightroom doesn't have an sRGB "preview/softproof" utility for color spaces. Both DPP and ACR have this, but LR sadly doesn't (yet).

There are, though, good controls in LR to bring colors into behaving in the sRGB space. Not just Exposure, but especially the Hue, Saturation and Luminance (HSL) controls where you can adjust the impact of selected colors.

If you get a feel of how to do this in Lightroom you can minimalize the sRGB problems.

tonylong wrote in post #10519615
Unfortunately, Lightroom doesn't have an sRGB "preview/softproof" utility for color spaces. Both DPP and ACR have this, but LR sadly doesn't (yet).

There are, though, good controls in LR to bring colors into behaving in the sRGB space. Not just Exposure, but especially the Hue, Saturation and Luminance (HSL) controls where you can adjust the impact of selected colors.

If you get a feel of how to do this in Lightroom you can minimalize the sRGB problems.

Unfortunately with a aRGB monitor I'm not sure how easy it will be to evaluate in lightroom. Sure I can use those controls but it would be guess work I think to figure out if I was in or out of sRGB.

Sdiver2489 wrote in post #10521586
Unfortunately with a aRGB monitor I'm not sure how easy it will be to evaluate in lightroom. Sure I can use those controls but it would be guess work I think to figure out if I was in or out of sRGB.

Well, you can use DPP as a quick reference -- DPP lets you switch the "working color space" on the fly, similar to what you can do in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS. So, you can at least see the Raw data histogram in sRGB prior to making adjustments in Lightroom, and you can check a conversion as well (the histogram to check is in the RGB tab available to jpegs). I've done that when toning down bright flowers and fabrics.

I can't believe they haven't incorperated this feature in LR yet...one would think there would be overwhelming demand.

I guess I'll just process my flower/bug macros in CS5.

Sdiver2489 wrote in post #10522106
I can't believe they haven't incorperated this feature in LR yet...one would think there would be overwhelming demand.

I guess I'll just process my flower/bug macros in CS5.

Well, ACR does have that feature, so it would be a good move for you to use it in critical shots. The good news is that if you get a good result from CS5 ACR it can be directly transferred to Lightroom 3 via LR reading the xmp file if you tell it to. In fact, if you get settings in ACR that work broadly, you could use them to create an LR "Flower Preset".

Sdiver2489 wrote in post #10522106
I can't believe they haven't incorperated this feature in LR yet...one would think there would be overwhelming demand.

Softproofing has been requested since the first Betas of LR IIRC.
It's not a high priority to Adobe apparently.

If you're using a wide gamut screen, I agree you are SOL.
Then again: A bit of clipping isn't the end of the world for web images IMO.

If you have to "lower the exposure by -2EV or so" to get within sRGB gamut, your saturation is way too high, you worry too much, or you shoot pretty specific subjects.

Edit: Ah. Flowers. Fair enough

René Damkot wrote in post #10522645
Softproofing has been requested since the first Betas of LR IIRC.
It's not a high priority to Adobe apparently.

If you're using a wide gamut screen, I agree you are SOL.
Then again: A bit of clipping isn't the end of the world for web images IMO.

If you have to "lower the exposure by -2EV or so" to get within sRGB gamut, your saturation is way too high, you worry too much, or you shoot pretty specific subjects.

Edit: Ah. Flowers. Fair enough

Yeah the trickiest are red flowers. Getting adequate saturation while staying within sRGB can be quite the pain.

One thing you will want while shooting these is to get a hang in how to use your camera settings. I'd say to start with being "safe" and have your camera set to sRGB, and then the key is to use the RGB histogram to keep your colors in range. The luminance histogram will not give you what you want.

Since the RGB histogram reflects your shooting color space, having the camera set to sRGB will help you to keep your exposure in-gamut. Once you get used to this, you can push things by setting the camera to aRGB which will allow you to up the exposure but you will have to pull things back in post processing as you have been doing now.

tonylong wrote in post #10526207
One thing you will want while shooting these is to get a hang in how to use your camera settings. I'd say to start with being "safe" and have your camera set to sRGB, and then the key is to use the RGB histogram to keep your colors in range. The luminance histogram will not give you what you want.

Since the RGB histogram reflects your shooting color space, having the camera set to sRGB will help you to keep your exposure in-gamut. Once you get used to this, you can push things by setting the camera to aRGB which will allow you to up the exposure but you will have to pull things back in post processing as you have been doing now.

I am not sure how relevant this advice is for a RAW shooter (as the OP says he is). In LR or ACR the image will be in a ProPhoto sized space and will have be reduced to fit into sRGB, if that is the needed output space. ACR may make it easier to do this operation, but it still has to be done. Shooting (exposing) to fit sRGB is, in effect, exposing to the left. A better policy would be to use a Uni-WB WB setting and shoot to the right to maximize data (especially if there is a wide tonal range in the subject - red flower, black bug) with the understanding that it will require special processing.

tzalman wrote in post #10526267
I am not sure how relevant this advice is for a RAW shooter (as the OP says he is). In LR or ACR the image will be in a ProPhoto sized space and will have be reduced to fit into sRGB, if that is the needed output space. ACR may make it easier to do this operation, but it still has to be done. Shooting (exposing) to fit sRGB is, in effect, exposing to the left. A better policy would be to use a Uni-WB WB setting and shoot to the right to maximize data (especially if there is a wide tonal range in the subject - red flower, black bug) with the understanding that it will require special processing.

Well, like I said, shooting in the sRGB space is safe -- as long as your colors don't clip in the RGB histogram, you are OK but, as you said, it's like "shooting to the left". Putting the camera into aRGB and exposing the colors to the edge is more shooting "to the right" because pushing the colors to the edge of the histogram will push them out of the sRGB gamut, and then you need to pull them back in in PP. I think we're saying the same thing, aren't we? I'm just suggesting starting with sRGB and moving forward so you can get a clear understanding of what's going on.

Now I haven't worked with the Uni-WB and don't have a clue as to how it would affect this...

Mostly I don't use the Uni-WB since I realized that it negates the changes to the RAW data made by white balancing but the green channel is hardly changed at all by WB anyways. Since the sensor is more sensitive to green than to red or blue, in a normal scene with a mixture of colors reaching the camera if the green channel isn't overexposed the others won't be either (even if WB has caused them to appear overexposed in the camera's histogram.) I just use the RGB histogram, but look primarily at the green.

However, in a close-up of a red flower the reflected light reaching the camera is almost monochromatic red light. Since the green component in the light is so small I would have to abandon my usual practice and keep my eye on the red. Since the Uni-WB gives a more accurate picture of the RAW red data, it is perfect for this situation.

tzalman wrote in post #10526472
However, in a close-up of a red flower the reflected light reaching the camera is almost monochromatic red light. Since the green component in the light is so small I would have to abandon my usual practice and keep my eye on the red. Since the Uni-WB gives a more accurate picture of the RAW red data, it is perfect for this situation.

Well, it sounds like something to experiment with! We seem to have been getting a lot of these "bright color" questions lately -- it would be good to have a comprehensive "thing" to share with people.

Are we talking about color gamut or just plain blowing out the reds ?

bohdank wrote in post #10526767
Are we talking about color gamut or just plain blowing out the reds ?

Blowing out a color is, typically, related to a color space/gamut. The camera can capture a gamut that is wider than even aRGB, but for practical purposes if you capture an image that is within the aRGB space in Raw, you can tone the colors down in your Raw processor to be compatible with the sRGB color space.