Comments on: AdobeRGB vs. sRGB

By: Roman

Roman — Wed, 01 May 2013 14:44:00 +0000

You should definitely check with your lab. Professional lab will provide you with ICC profile for soft proof or will tell you which CMYK profile you should use if they print in CMYK.
You have to dig deeper about print and color management. If “LAB” requires sRGB you can’t expect the best from that lab.

By: yoyophoto

yoyophoto — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:26:00 +0000

Roman, i thought the labs only use srgb shouldn’t we convert the raw file on export to srgb? or should i check with my lab what they do?

By: tommyscapes

tommyscapes — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:56:00 +0000

I’ve found that for any serious 16-bit colour editing or manipulation such as HDR editing, that sRGB does not cut it. It has created digital artefacts that Adobe RGB or Pro Photo RGB workflows do not create. In addition, sRGB tagged images look inconsistent across software and the web on my calibrated wide-gamut monitor. sRGB is the standard now, and any wide-gamut workflows need to be converted to it before publishing but in my view it is the poor inadequate cousin that we should be moving on from. sRGB is not good enough!

By: Denzil

Denzil — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 20:17:00 +0000

You know, I thought I had all this figured out then I decided to see what my print labs prefer and it’s all sRGB. I export to ProPhoto and send it in that format and they’ve never complained so they’re probably just converting it to sRGB before printing. Any print I have received has always come back looking fine, never washed out in any way. My main concern is my website where I have images for sale. Am I shooting myself in the foot by uploading the prophoto version? I know most browsers support color profiles now so everything should display correctly for viewers, but am I better off just outputting everything to sRGB? When I originally did all this research I was printing things for myself, and I know in that instance using the larger color gamuts is preferred, but I never imagined so many online print companies used sRGB. I know a lot of photographers online have made the comment that a print company isn’t worth using if they don’t use aRGB, but I’m pretty sure Bay Photo, WHCC, and MPix are well above Costco and Walgreens.

By: Andrew Rodney

Andrew Rodney — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:00:00 +0000

>>All reputable labs will scan to AdobeRGB, if they don’t drop them immediately.

Far better, scan and embed the NATIVE scanner profile. Anyone could scan into sRGB and then convert to Adobe RGB and you’d never know. Why convert from the native scanner color space to Adobe RGB (1998)? An extra conversion for no reason, especially if (and it’s quite likely) the native scanner color space has a larger gamut in some area compared to Adobe RGB (1998).

By: Smokey McPoterson

Smokey McPoterson — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 18:05:00 +0000

I did not know that (Histo and clip indicators). Thank you.

By: Smokey McPoterson

Smokey McPoterson — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 18:02:00 +0000

Really? Images with no color space are useless for print.

By: Andrew Rodney

Andrew Rodney — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:11:00 +0000

Zack is correct in his analogy although the statement (you can not correctly convert) could be worded better. If you convert from sRGB to Adobe RGB (1998), you gain nothing at all useful, you don’t make that data a larger gamut. The container as he says is bigger but the contents are not gaining more gamut but if you now create new data, or paste Adobe RGB data within this new conversion, that’s fine and necessary for the initial conversion into Adobe RGB (1998). But if you think taking an image in a small color space like sRGB, then converting it to Adobe RGB provides anything useful in of itself, nope. Not a lick. Better do it in high bit too or you end up losing data in the process which is highly questionable.

By: Spy Black

Spy Black — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:25:00 +0000

Nope. The colorspace model is placed on top of the RGB data. The RGB data remains the same. You may have truncated the color, but once you’re in the wider colorspace, you can retrieve it.

By: Andrew Rodney

Andrew Rodney — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 15:10:00 +0000

If you take the image and save as raw, the color space can be anything you wish at export time in LR (or Edit In preferences). Use the largest color space you can at this point for the master image. You can always size down and produce a smaller gamut iteration for sending the image to the web (sRGB). If you’re going to set the camera to raw, might as well set the camera for Adobe RGB as while this will NOT affect the raw data, it does play a role in the big lie the Histogram and clipping indicators have on the camera LCD (see: http://www.digitalphotopro.com/technique/camera-technique/exposing-for-raw.html )