Color management is a huge topic in its own right, but Lightroom handles most of it for you. It’s only when you come to export photos that you need to pick the right color space for your purpose. So, here’s a quick introduction to the subject. If you’d like to learn more, Jeffrey Friedl wrote an excellent article on color spaces, which you will find at: http://www.lrq.me/friedl-colorspace
What is color space?
All photos are made up of pixels, and each pixel has a number value for each of the color channels (red, green and blue). For example, 0-0-0 on an 8-bit scale is pure black and 255-255-255 is pure white. The numbers in between are open to interpretation. Who decides exactly which shade of green 10-190-10 equates to? That’s where color profiles come into play: they define how these numbers should translate to colors.
Some color spaces contain a larger number of colors than others, so we refer to the ‘size’ of the color space. If a color in your photo falls outside of the gamut (area) of your chosen color space, it’s automatically remapped to fit into the smaller gamut.
Lightroom is internally color-managed, so as long as your monitor is properly calibrated, the only times you need to worry about color spaces are when you’re outputting the photos to other programs. This may be passing the data to Photoshop for further editing, passing the data to a printer driver for printing, or exporting the photos for other purposes, such as email or web.
Where do I choose the color space?
There’s a few places you might need to choose a color space for your photo…
In the External Editing Preferences, to determine which color space is used when passing the photo to other software (Lightroom Classic only):
Also in the Export dialog:
Finally in the Print module (Lightroom Classic only):
Which color space should I choose?
Your chosen color space will depend on why the photo is leaving Lightroom. Is it for further editing in other software, or as a finished image?
sRGB is a small color space, but it’s the most widely used. It’s a great choice for screen output, emailing or uploading to the web. It’s also the safest choice if you don’t know where the photos will end up.
Adobe RGB is a slightly larger color space, but it’s a good choice if you’re sending photos for printing at a color managed lab, if your editing software can only handle 8-bit files, or if you’re saving as JPEG.
Display P3 is a wide gamut color space used on the latest Apple devices. It’s a similar size to Adobe RGB, but it’s shifted slightly towards reds/oranges and loses some of the greens/blues. It’s primarily useful when exporting photos for display on the latest Apple devices.
ProPhoto RGB is the largest color space available in Lightroom, so it’s the best choice when transferring photos to Photoshop or other photo editing software (as long as they’re color managed). ProPhoto RGB doesn’t play well with 8-bit though, because you’d be trying to jam a large gamut into a small bit depth. This can can lead to banding. So stick with 16-bit while using ProPhoto RGB. ProPhoto RGB photos look dull and flat in programs that aren’t color managed, such as web browsers.
Other (Lightroom Classic Export/Print only) allows you to select other RGB ICC profiles installed on your system. For example, some professional labs may request that you convert the photos to their own custom ICC profile. To do so, select Other from the Color Space pop-up, add a checkmark next to your custom profile and then press OK. Your custom profile is automatically selected in the pop-up.
Whichever color space you choose to use, always embed the profile. A digital photo is just a collection of numbers, and the profile defines how these numbers should be displayed. If there’s no profile, the program has to guess—and often guesses incorrectly. Lightroom always embeds the profile, but Photoshop offers a checkbox in the Save As dialog, which you need to leave checked.
For extensive information on Lightroom Classic, see Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ.
If you have the Photography Plan, then as well as Classic you have access to the Lightroom cloud ecosystem including the mobile apps and web interface. For more information on these apps, see Adobe Lightroom – Edit on the Go.
Note: purchase of these books includes the first year’s Classic or cloud-based Premium Membership (depending on the book purchased), giving access to download the latest eBook (each time Adobe updates the software), email assistance for the applicable Lightroom version if you hit a problem, and other bonuses.
We also have a special bundle offer for the two books. This includes Premium Membership for the first year as described above for the whole Lightroom family!
Originally posted 13 December 2014, updated March 2021.
I have been using photo mechanic to cull my photos and then importing into Lightroom Classic. The colour of LR vs PM is striking and I’m not sure why. LR is very very dull. My camera shoots in adobeRGB, and PM is set to abobeRGB default, and my understanding is that LR is also adobeRGB by default (library module) so why the difference? Thank you 🙂
Are you shooting raw or jpg?
Very helpful info and discussion, thanks!
Great Article. Thank you. The pictures made me go check what my settings were for transporting files into photoshop
What an amazingly helpful article. Thank you!
Hello,
I thought raw files were anyway not color profiled, so whatever you choose on your camera menu, your raw files is still raw when importing it in LR.
The point for me is rather which profile/develop setting to use when importing. And i regret that LR doesn’t recognize th customer made profile in a Nikon, for instance, as it would be a nice au to try to have a start looking like what you saw on the camera screen..,
I personally created a Develop Setting that I input at import stage, so that all my raw files are as soft as I want them, also close to what I see on my camera screen with my custom profile (based on Neutral, but a bit softer and less contrasted still).
> I thought raw files were anyway not color profiled, so whatever you choose on your camera menu, your raw files is still raw when importing it in LR
That’s right Frederico. In fact, within Lightroom, handles the color management for any file. You only need to worry about color spaces (covered in this article) when sending photos to other applications (like Photoshop) or when exporting them.
Yes yes.. thx for your reply, LRqueen..:-)
I just felt like adding my few bits to the talk as I got into LR CC and struggle with syncing.
All good things!
hello, you did not account for display gamut, while some have pro monitors (but then they don’t need to read this) very few people have even 100% sRGB, so if you are editing in PhotRGB you do not see actual image and real results of your editing…
would not be best then to edit image you are intending to export into sRGB, especially if also your display is only 100% sRGB in sRGB color space? this way you axactly see what you doing? and also grt accurate histograms…? so in Lightroom to develop in softproofing mode set to sRGB for digital output? of course you this way you still edit in photoRGB, which is LR native space, but you see what you edit?
Just because you can’t see the full range on your current screen doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to throw away data. Think about it… when photographers used to edit their photos on greyscale screens many years ago, they didn’t limit themselves to only editing B&W photos.
This post is talking about selecting a color space when sending photos to external editors like Photoshop.
Some people do like to use the Soft Proofing in Lightroom, set to sRGB, if they know they’re only ever going to export to sRGB. That’s fine, because anything you do in Lightroom is automatically done in a wide color space anyway. (It’s not actually ProPhotoRGB, but there are similarities.) It’s only when sending photos outside of Lightroom that you really need to start worrying.
Adobe 1998 and ProPhoto color spaces ONLY offer an advantage when the SCENE being captured contains color information that cannot be found in sRGB.
When working in 16 bits, there is no measurable downside to shooting in a larger color space than the scene requires. BUT, the minute one converts to an 8 bit file in a wider gamut, there will be fewer bits available to describe the actual photo content as many of them will be lost to the regions of the color space that are NOT being utilized in the image. As a result, banding in skies and other large smooth areas might be more visible.
There is no advantage at all to a larger gamut if the scene does not contain anything that requires it. And, there could be some negative issues that are NOT just relating to color aware applications, especially when we finally get to the 8 bit realm.
> Adobe 1998 and ProPhoto color spaces ONLY offer an advantage when the SCENE being captured contains color information that cannot be found in sRGB.
…or when your editing may push colors outside of the sRGB range, which is a more frequent issue.
I definitely agree you want to stick to 16 bit when using a wider gamut like ProPhotoRGB.
You mentioned “there could be some negative issues that are NOT just relating to color aware applications”. Was there something specific you had in mind?