Colour space

[DogHeadGod]

Which colour space do you use on your camera? Mine (D70s) supports sRGB and Adobe RGB. I took test shots of the same colourful item in each profile but I can't tell the difference on screen flicking between the two.

I've read AdobeRGB has more colours but less saturation, i.e. images can look (more) bland if you don't do much post processing to them.

Any thoughts?

DHG

[jdepould]

I shoot in Adobe RGB, but most of my output is for web, and thus is converted to sRGB.

[DogHeadGod]

So you are shooting in Adobe in case you need commercial printing?

I like your ice racing essay btw!

DHG

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by DogHeadGod

I've read AdobeRGB has more colours but less saturation

Both sRGB and Adobe RGB have the same number of colors: 16,777,216 to be precise (for camera-produced JPEGs).

Adobe RGB spreads out the greens a bit more than sRGB does. Consequently there are a few colors that Adobe RGB can represent that sRGB can only "come close". On the other hand, Adobe RGB is very very slightly more prone to "banding" in gradients, especially of greenish colors.

My personal opinion: the quality differences aren't worth a hoot. You'll probably never see a difference. Most commercial printers can't even print all of the color gamut of sRGB, much less Adobe RGB. You need a good home printer to be able to print the extra color gamut. And precious few photos contain colors outside of sRGB anyway.

sRGB is a whole lot easier to deal with. You'll need to have your photos in sRGB to post on the Web, to email, to make a slideshow, to print at a commercial printer/lab, etc.

That said, I think that most of the folks here would say "forget all that and shoot Raw". Then you can select the color space during Raw conversion, and if you need a different color space you can just reconvert to the other color space.

[DogHeadGod]

Originally Posted by Doug Pardee

My personal opinion: the quality differences aren't worth a hoot. You'll probably never see a difference.

Agreed based on my testing earlier on.

Originally Posted by Doug Pardee

That said, I think that most of the folks here would say "forget all that and shoot Raw". Then you can select the color space during Raw conversion, and if you need a different color space you can just reconvert to the other color space.

Now that is interesting! I only shoot RAW, perhaps this is why I didn't see a difference in the first place. So, the profile doesn't affect RAW images until they are converted to jpeg, and even then it can be changed after the fact by applying a different one during conversion?

[sk66]

Color space is irrelevant with most monitors....most monitors are set as Srgb displays...additional colors just won't be apparent. You'll need to spend pretty good money for a wide gamut display for it to make a difference, then it will only be visible to you, and any Jpeg *should* be converted to Srgb anyways...Srgb is a fine and easy color space for 95% of all uses....

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by DogHeadGod

the profile doesn't affect RAW images until they are converted to jpeg, and even then it can be changed after the fact by applying a different one during conversion?

Right. Like white balance, the color space is selected during the conversion from Raw. Somewhere in your Raw conversion software you have a choice of what color space to use for the converted image.

If you're planning to convert your Raw files to 16-bit data for Photoshop, the ProPhoto RGB color space is probably the best choice. It gives the widest gamut, but in order to keep from having problems with banding you do need to work in 16-bit mode while you're in that color space. Before you convert to 8-bit mode (which you'll have to do before you save as JPEG), you'll need to convert your image to a more limited color space such as sRGB or Adobe RGB.

[DogHeadGod]

Thanks for the info Doug!