Color Space : sRGB or Adobe RGB? Why?

<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-family: Arial;"]I have received conflicting advice about which to use so I'd like for you all to chime in. The manual for my 50D states:<o:p></o:p>


<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-family: Arial;"]About Adobe RGB<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-family: Arial;"]<o:p></o:p>


<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-family: Arial;"]This color space is mainly used for commercial printing and other industrial uses. The setting is not recommended if you do not know about image processing, Adobe RGB, and Design rule for Camera File System 2.0 (Exif 2.21). The image will look very subdued in the sRGB personal computer environment and with printers not compatible with Design rule for Camera File System 2.0 (Exif 2.21). Post-processing of the image with software will therefore be required.<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-family: Arial;"]<o:p></o:p>


<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-family: Arial;"]About me:<o:p></o:p>


<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"]I shoot in RAW (have had color space set to Adobe RGB). I convert from RAW to jpeg using DPP version 3.6.1. I do not print at home (now). I have used Adorama, Target andWalgreens for various prints (mostly small stuff 4X6, etc.) with varying success. I have noticed that some of my prints appear to be off (this is where I should admit that I have not calibrated either my laptop of LCD monitor yet [:$])the main problem I have seen with my prints is a general &ldquo;dullness&rdquo; to some of them. Some look perfect though. I guess it could also be the less than stringent practices within the photo labs (I use the term loosely) of Target and Walgreens!

I've had this same question nagging me recently. What's the difference between the two? What should I be using?


I voted for sRGB, but only because that's what I use, not what I think to be better. I just don't know anything about them to know which one is "better."

AdobeRGB has a much wider color space, and as such it can deliver better results. Of course, since sRGB is the consumer/general purpose standard, you have to know what you are doing, when using other color spaces.

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Originally Posted by Christian

Of course, since sRGB is the consumer/general purpose standard, you have to know what you are doing, when using other color spaces.
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Care to share some knowledge?

Your prints being off has nothing to do with the color space and everything to do with proper color managed calibration. You need:


1). An external colorimeter (like Color Munkey or Spyder etc) to profile your monitor, which is always step 1. Without this, proper color management is impossible.


2). Then, you need to install profiles of your devices such as printers, but also of external devices at service points or labs (profiles of their machines).


3). Then you need to make everything connect on the software side of things (I only use Lightroom and Photoshop so cant tell you if or how DPP handles color managed workflow) and THEN you have control over color consistency between what you see and what you reproduce.





Mind you, most cheaper monitors can only reproduce sRGB anyway. More expensive monitors can show the (much wider) Adobe RGB gamut (which handles shades of various colors better but *can* cause duller looking pics unless postprocessed a bit. Also: converting between the formats is useless because converting between sRGB and Adobe RGB wont give you extra colors. And if you shoot RAW, you may want to consider working in an even wider color gamut called ProPhotoRGB, which is the native color space of Camera RAW. But having a properly calibrated and high-end monitor that can actually display all these colors is a good starting point.





So is reading color management for dummies by the way. Not meant in an offensive way. But I see SO many questions about this I am beginning to wonder if there shouldn't be a FAQ in some topic but I am too lazy to write it. It's not *that* complicated but is is complicated enough to type it all myself.

Read this: (Some basics about color spaces). (PS: To make sure you keep color consistent between apps and output etc. you *still* need to calibrate and stuff but this is a good start to learn about color spaces, color clipping etc).


http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/prophoto-rgb.shtml

Thankyou so much for asking Mark. Same question has been on my mind too.

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Mark,


When shootin inRAW the color space you have your camera set to is moot. The in-camera choice is for in-camera jpeg and thumbnail processing only. When you process with DPP you will have the option of saving the jpeg with either sRGB, Adobe RGB, Apple RGB, Wide Gamut RGB, or ColorMatch RGB. There is a check box on save to embed the ICC profile into the jpeg. If you had Adobe color space chosen in camera, more than likely DPP will embed that profile in the developed image.


I do everything in sRGB unless it is a specifically difficult photo where sRGB will not render the colors correctly. That happens because the color gamut is not wide enough to represent the actual color.99.9% of the time my RAW converter SilkyPix renders the color in sRGB just fine. I do not work a lot with DPP so I can't comment too much on that program.


The reason I choose sRGB 99.9% of the time is because that is the color space developed by Microsoft and Hewlett Packard as the industry standard for color processing. If you are in this PC and HP printer camp as I am it makes sense to stick with that color space. I use adoramapix for all pro-style printing but use a HP D7560 4 color photo printer for everything else. I have compared the HP output to Ritz and find I like the HP reds a lot better. The blues are a bit over the top but at &lt;24 cents a 4x6 and the freedom to print borderless 4x6, 5x7, It makes a great proving tool before shipping print jobs to adoramapix. Adoramapix uses sRGB and specificallly states that no other color spaces are used. I have to say that I cannot see any difference between their ouput and the output from my HP.


I spent over two years working on Madisons path. It's way to expensive and for me personally wasnot worth it. Using the color sliders (in-monitor)or display driver sliders (windows display properties) adjust the red, green, blue values until white, grey and black are as neutral as you can get them compared to a physical in hand grey card or Spyder Cube like color target. If you have a Gretag Color Chart (it's a lot less expensive than Spyder 3 or Color monkey) Take a photo of it with your camera in good light (preferably 5600 Kelvin studio or daylight) Using DPP defaults, set style to neutral, standard, landscape, etc. and look at the color chart vs. monitor to see what is the most accurate overall color rendering. Process3 or 4styles to jpeg and print using a windows based graphics program. Or send that photo or a set of photos off to Walgreen/Whoever for 4x6s. Compare them with the Gretag color target and see what the results are. How close is the monitor to those results? By tweaking a little you can get close enough to get super and resonably accurate results. Just pick up a calendar or post card from your local gift shop. Do you really think that scene photographed actually llooked like that? NOT!! The greens are vibrantly etherial and the sky is so dark it looks purple. That's what I like to call the polarized velvia look.


Madison, I'm not into arguing here but I do have a fun challenge for you and anyone else using color managment in their workflow. Open Adobe Photoshop, start new image, 4x6 300 DPI is fine. Pick White 255,255,255 as the main, Blue 0,0,255 as background. Using the gradient tool, paint a horizontal gradient from left to right. What do you see? Print a photo of this gradient and compare. Take a photo with your camera of the gradient photo and compare in post to the original. Sample the colors as they vary from white to blue. What are the results? This is one of the sole reasons I gave up on color management. It's not simple, it's not easy, I spent hours on the phone with datacolor, I even got to e-mail and talk directly to Dana Gregory who is consider by most as the industry guru on the topic. I have been liberated in my photography to shoot and print and accept the results. I no longer stare sleepless at print after print wondering when I was going to get every color on the test print to match up. I have become accustomed to proofing with my cheap HP, adjusting in PS or SilkyPix as needed and getting on with my life. My clients, what few there are, have never complained. Thank goodness I don't make my living as a photographer.


So I humbly submit that unless you're a professional photographer, print maker, publisher, etc, relying on color accuracy to make your daily bread, shoot sRGB and stay away from spyders.
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Chuck
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Thanks for your very detailed explanation Chuck! I really appreciate that both you and Madison took the time and thought to thoroughly answer my question. That's what I love about this Forum!


I have only skimmed this article but Ken Rockwell seems to share Chuck's opinion on color management:


<span style="font-size: x-large; font-family: Arial;"]sRGB vs. Adobe RGB

Opinions differ greatly on the subject. But there are two subjects. One is which color space to use and the second is how to keep color reproduction consistent across your devices from monitors to printers to the lab. They are two very different subjects if I may say so.





As for the use of color space: again, opinions vary. I come from a graphic design background of over 15 years of working. So my system was calibrated for various stuff anyway. I had the hardware, and I adjusted it. I do not shoot in jpg so color space is no issue. To have some elbow room (and because it is built into the programme and an emerging standard) I work in Prophoto RGB (since this is what Lightroom needs to properly edit 16 bit raw files. It is the largest RGB color space out there and will accommodate the broad range of colors in your raw file. sRGB will clip colors and so will AdobeRGB although in a different way. (Both color spaces clip but the distribution of gradients work differently in Adobe RGB).


The blue to white test you mention is flawed on so many levels (including taking pictures reproductions !?!) that I won't comment on it (it will get very very and I mean very technical). Thing is: When I still had a job (I lost it; Hooray for the economic crisis!) I had access to very expensive professional monitors that had a very wide color gamut. These days I only have access to my 17" Macbook Pro screen. Yes it is calibrated properly. Yes color reproduction is consistent no matter where I print my stuff. But no, it cannot reproduce all the colors in the pictures nearly as well as the Eizos they used to use at work. Without a really good monitor you can only go so far (which doesnt mean you shouldn't calibrate cheaper monitors with external colorimeters because you really should).





Small footnote:


I am just starting out as a photographer (starting photo school in September after doing classes in 2008) and I have this color management thing because of the field I come from. So I come from a color managed graphic design standpoint, not a photographers one. Although the underlying goal, color consistency and the use of proper color spaced and proper color calibration to maintain color consistency across your workflow, remains the same. Only profiles of equipment and color spaces of pictures will be different.








But it's a hot topic. We will have to agree to disagree. I'm cool with that. [:D]

Madison,


I gotta here your take on the flawed blue to white gradient deal. How can a gradient from 255,255,255 to 0,0,255 be flawed? I'm an engineer, technicals excite me!


Let's start another thread!!


Chuck

I use sRGB because I can't see the difference between the two [:)]

You have 2 things to know when it comes to colorspace. If your putting your images on the web, use SRGB, most browsers (all except Safari, and Firefox) do not support anything higher than srgb, so if you put a picture on the web in Adobe RGB anyone looking at it will see incorrect colors. Also if you get a wide Gamut monitor and enable Adobe rgb color space, most webpages will look like crap, ie anything in SRGB will not display properly on your monitor (everyone elses pictures)





If you are printing to cheap places use SRGB, as they most likely will screw up a Adobe RGB image.





in other words, stick with the standard SRGB. Keep your raw files, as in the future you can display them all as adobe rgb etc.

I'm a proponent of calibrating where you can.


There's general white balance, but there's also gamma curves, which or course can affect the issue of, "white balance at how bright?". I played with some pictures with my new laptop. Then I calibrated the laptop. Some stuff I had played around with prior to calibration were way screwed up.


I find when I have my monitor calibrated and my printer/paper profiled, the results are more consistent. They aren't exact, but they're at least fairly predictable.


On the color space issue, sRGB is the hands down standard if you want it fairly universally compatible. I was using Adobe RGB for my .jpg output, and was wondering why so many things (but not all, depending on content) looked so muted and desaturated (on web links) compared to when I was looking at them in DPP. When I found out that web browsers don't support Adobe RGB, it all made sense. If the display chain can't (or won't) display the full range, what it displays is then compressed in terms of dynamic range and/or color saturation.


It seems that when flipping back in DPP usingsRGB color space will allow you to maximize your 'pop' with standard computer imaging applications. However, Adobe RGB allows a little more detail at the extremes of dynamic range and color saturation. Of course, you should select the color space output first before you apply any post processing.


I work in Adobe RGB if I'm going to be printing. Otherwise, I go sRGB.