Colour Space Brain Freeze.

[intrepidstu]

Ive been reading about colour profiles and colour spaces for the last couple of days now and am still not sure if i get it or not. The trouble is, im not sure that half the people who write articles about it on the web have actualy got it either !

I understand that a device specific profile is simply there to account for the differences in the way a unique device renders colour, ie when a monitor is profiled against a known set of colours so that it actualy renders said known set of colours correctly. I think i even understand that the aRGB and sRGB colour spaces actualy represent the same NUMBER of colours, only they represent a "different" set of colours. What i dont understand is all the literature ive read that says that when working in photoshop you should use aRGB, but the same literature says that monitors cant display a high percentage of the colours in the aRGB space???

What im getting at is...how can i possibly use photoshop, or any other image editing program, to edit the colours in an image when my monitor doesnt actualy allow me to see these colours anyway ?? I cant add more saturation to a colour when i cant see that colour on my monitor ! I understand that adobeRGB can be converted to sRGB after you have worked on the image in photoshop, but again...i cant see alot of the colours in the adobeRGB colour space on my monitor anyway...so whats the point of selecting it as a colour space when working on an image?

I hope ive made myself understood.

I shoot RAW and use ACR 6. I have it set to covert the finished output to aRGB (which i think ill change tomorrow), I have CS5 set to the aRGB working space as well. At the moment none of my images are printed (they normaly just go to Flickr as Jpegs), but i am thinking of starting to print either on a low price printer, or sending them to the local photo developing shop.

Cheers
stu.

[autofocus]

Stu, I feel your pain. It can be very confusing, and I won't profess to say I know all the answers. But what I've been able to gather over the past is that most affordable monitors are set as sRGB. So, what advantage is there to setting your color space to adobeRGB? good question. I also found out the hard way that many of the labs you use want sRGB to print. A while back I had set everything to adobeRGB thinking that my prints would have better color, and my images coming back from the lab, quite honestly, looking like sh!t. After some very frustrating hours trying to figure out what happened, and why, my lab set me back on track by informing me that they required sRGB...problem solved. So you may want to keep that in mind and ask your print source facility what they need.

[kcoppock]

Originally Posted by intrepidstu

Ive been reading about colour profiles and colour spaces for the last couple of days now and am still not sure if i get it or not. The trouble is, im not sure that half the people who write articles about it on the web have actualy got it either !

I understand that a device specific profile is simply there to account for the differences in the way a unique device renders colour, ie when a monitor is profiled against a known set of colours so that it actualy renders said known set of colours correctly. I think i even understand that the aRGB and sRGB colour spaces actualy represent the same NUMBER of colours, only they represent a "different" set of colours. What i dont understand is all the literature ive read that says that when working in photoshop you should use aRGB, but the same literature says that monitors cant display a high percentage of the colours in the aRGB space???

What im getting at is...how can i possibly use photoshop, or any other image editing program, to edit the colours in an image when my monitor doesnt actualy allow me to see these colours anyway ?? I cant add more saturation to a colour when i cant see that colour on my monitor ! I understand that adobeRGB can be converted to sRGB after you have worked on the image in photoshop, but again...i cant see alot of the colours in the adobeRGB colour space on my monitor anyway...so whats the point of selecting it as a colour space when working on an image?

I hope ive made myself understood.

I shoot RAW and use ACR 6. I have it set to covert the finished output to aRGB (which i think ill change tomorrow), I have CS5 set to the aRGB working space as well. At the moment none of my images are printed (they normaly just go to Flickr as Jpegs), but i am thinking of starting to print either on a low price printer, or sending them to the local photo developing shop.

Cheers
stu.

First, I'll link to this PDF from Adobe which I believe should be very helpful for you:
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdf...w_workflow.pdf

Okay, so Adobe RGB is actually a larger color space than sRGB. That is, it consists of the sRGB color space, and then some. (see page 6 of the linked document for a reference graphic showing the different colors encompassed by each space). I've seen a lot of recommendations to use the ProPhoto RGB color space -- which is even larger than Adobe RGB -- when editing RAW images, though I can't say it's something I've put a lot of research into.

If you get into more costly monitors, you'll find ones that advertise that they display XX% of the Adobe RGB color space. For example, I have the HP w2408h, which covers 92% of the Adobe RGB color space. That means this monitor can produce colors that a typical sRGB rated monitor simply cannot.

Now, if you're only planning to print them on a budget printer or a local photo lab, odds are, working in ARGB will probably just end up frustrating you. If you forget to convert back to sRGB before saving an image for viewing on screen (e.g. pictures going to Flickr), your colors will be very different than how they appeared in Photoshop. Most (all?) browsers by default do not perform color management, so they just assume the sRGB color space for any images, leading to an incorrect color interpretation.

What I would say is that for your usage scenario, stick with sRGB. Unless you take photos that include out of sRGB gamut colors (fairly rare, from my understanding), and have a quality photo printer that is able to output colors outside of the sRGB gamut, it's just going to be a hindrance and a frustration.

EDIT: Just to add, FAR more important than processing your RAWs in ARGB, is to process them in 16-bit, especially if you plan to do any editing with the photo.

[intrepidstu]

Cheers for the replies guys. I dont want to sound ungrateful, but while the responses are apreciated, they dont answer the issue i am having in my head. I know that this is one of those questions that normaly recieves a general set of answers relating to colour spaces as a whole, but my specific question is this.

If i have a monitor that can only realy display the colours in the sRGB colour space, then how can i edit images on that monitor, in the aRGB colour space ?
If i have photoshop set to aRGB, what colours am i ACTUALY LOOKING AT on my monitor screen (in real time) when editing the image ?
If my monitor only lets me see the sRGB colours, then as far as i can make out, i am simply editing colours in the sRGB colour space (even when i am suposedly using the aRGB colour space) since these are the only colours i can see on my monitor anyway.

If i had a monitor that could see aRGB, then i wouldnt have a problem understanding this issue, but as far as i know, aRGB came out before any monitors were able to display it anyway.

Cheers guys.
stu

[teaking]

I hope this may help in some way.

As you have your monitor profile set, a working colour space and an output colourspace the colour management is taking the aRGB colours and converting them to your mointors profile and as that is not able to display the aRGB colours you are seing a representation of aRGB in sRGB colour space which is pointless as you could use sRGB to start with thats what the colour management is doing converting between colourspaces.

You could edit by numbers so if your output can print aRGB but your display shown only sRGB using numbers you could achieve the colours in print but you wouldnt be able to edit visualy. in your case it looks like it will be an sRGB printer so best to stick with sRGB.

[zona5101]

a couple of thoughts

* Why is this important - what is the practical application, what problem is solved?
A better effort maybe served by matching the color space to a printer or to an internet standard? Maybe - depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

* Even if you wrote an interface to match the colors perfectly, it would be perfect in one place, your monitor - everyone else would have monitors that rendered slightly different.

Ignoring my ramblings, an email to Adobe, or a post on their community board may get you a more technical answer.

[intrepidstu]

Originally Posted by teaking

I hope this may help in some way.

As you have your monitor profile set, a working colour space and an output colourspace the colour management is taking the aRGB colours and converting them to your mointors profile and as that is not able to display the aRGB colours you are seing a representation of aRGB in sRGB colour space which is pointless as you could use sRGB to start with thats what the colour management is doing converting between colourspaces.

You could edit by numbers so if your output can print aRGB but your display shown only sRGB using numbers you could achieve the colours in print but you wouldnt be able to edit visualy. in your case it looks like it will be an sRGB printer so best to stick with sRGB.

Thanks...This is the question i am seeking an answer to. You seem to grasp what i am asking pretty well. I totaly understand you answer but it does lead me to ask why the aRGB space was even invented if monitors cant display it (no monitor could display it when it was invented). My intuition is telling me that it MUST be possible to be able to edit in aRGB (with a non aRGB monitor) and be able to see in real time (whilst editing) what the printed image will look like in an aRGB image.

If not, then surely editing in aRGB on a non aRGB compatible monitor would be like taking a colour picture on your camera....editing it on a black and white monitor....and printing the result in colour. In this instance, you have no idea how the print will turn out because you are trying to sedit colours on a device that can not see them as you edit them.

[intrepidstu]

Originally Posted by zona5101

a couple of thoughts

* Why is this important - what is the practical application, what problem is solved?
A better effort maybe served by matching the color space to a printer or to an internet standard? Maybe - depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

* Even if you wrote an interface to match the colors perfectly, it would be perfect in one place, your monitor - everyone else would have monitors that rendered slightly different.

Ignoring my ramblings, an email to Adobe, or a post on their community board may get you a more technical answer.

The question is to help me understand the editing process.

Matching the colour space to the printer does not help me (that would be done anyway), as im interested in the ability to "edit" certain colours "before" printing. I need to be able to get the same colours in the print that i get on the screen whist editing, and cant see how using the aRGB colour space can possibly achieve this !

as i have said in the post above this one....it appears to me that editing in aRGB is like taking a photo with your camera...editing it on a black and white monitor...and printing in colour ! If you cant see the colours you are editing..then how can you possibly edit them ? Do you understand where i am coming from ?

[autofocus]

In keeping with what Zona (Bruce) said above why are you putting yourself through this exercise when it's probably determined that your monitor is not capable of seeing the full spectrum of aRGB? It's also been mentioned that there are high end monitors that do have that capability. It's also been determined (at least with the three labs I use here in the states) that they want sRGB files to print. I think you are getting hung up on this unnecessarily. So, if your monitor is only sRGB capable, and many, if not most labs want sRGB, the answer seems to be obvious.

[zona5101]

Short of the ideal super monitor that has no limitations on rendering color, the gamut warning is your tool....but it sounds like you want a more theoretical understanding rather than practical application and I would defer to folks at Adobe or the like.