Colorspace Workflow Verification

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nycbird

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Hi LR Community-
I feel like I'm finally getting a handle on color spaces and color profiles, having employed some tips here from Victoria and others and was wondering if a kind soul would verify if this workflow is correct and/or if there is anything I am doing wrong and/or could do more efficiently?

Preliminaries:
A) Shooting Color space: sRGB -- (feel I could be wrong here)
A) Working Color space: Calibrated SpyderExpress profile, but is only working space, otherwise don't need to bother with it

Workflow
1) Upload photos to Lightroom - fine
2) Export to Photoshop in TIFF, ProPhoto RGB, 16bit
3) Edit in Photoshop
4) Softproof my printer's color profile (off site, not my own printer), Convert to Profile in Photoshop
5) Save back to Lightroom
6) Export Full-Sized JPEG from Lightroom as sRGB because my that is format my printer accepts

Edit to add: my printed photos are fairly accurate to my monitor, so at least something is correct, I'm just wondering if this is most correct/efficient method?
 
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I'll first state that I'm not at all up on color management, so don't take this as a criticism so much as a lack of understanding on my part, but you say your printer takes sRGB. Are you soft proofing and converting in Photoshop to sRGB or some other profile, and if the latter then I'm really confused. Why would the printer have one profile but only accept another?
 
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When working in RAW the colour space in the camera doesn't matter. When you are shooting in jpeg it does matter. sRGB is a more limited colour space than Adobe RGB. You need to consider this for your jpeg workflow.

@ccraig profiles and colour spaces are different concepts. A printer may be designed to work in the sRGB colour space but may have many icc profiles for different ink / paper combinations.
 
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Thanks, so much Nik. Since my printer (the only one I use, really) prints in sRGB color space, does it make sense to transition my whole workflow from shooting to editing to exporting to sRGB? Or is there really a greater benefit to shooting and editing in Adobe RGB/ProPhoto and export as sRGB at the end?
 
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Although the differences to the eye between an sRGB and Adobe RGB image are small they are more important during editing. When you are modifying an image in LR / PS etc. the more bits and wider colour gamut you have the better. Foe example if you take an 8bit image in PS it doesn't take much 'pushing' to get it to posterise. A 16 bit image will take way more punishment. The same concept applies to colour spaces.

I always try to work in 16bit ProPhoto where possible even though the final output is often 8bit sRGB. This is where LR helps out and makes the workflow easy. You develop in ProPhoto and 16bit and store these images as TIFFs / RAW and then when you need a copy you export it in the sRGB (or whatever) colour space.

If you work in the biggest spaces / bits you can always reduce quality but you can't go back up !
 
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very, very, very helpful, indeed Nik, I really appreciate it. I should really be shooting in RAW all the time, got to go buy bigger cards. Thanks so much for your input.
 
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[quote author=ccraig link=topic=9359.msg63''1#msg63''1 date=126851'832]
I'll first state that I'm not at all up on color management, so don't take this as a criticism so much as a lack of understanding on my part, but you say your printer takes sRGB. Are you soft proofing and converting in Photoshop to sRGB or some other profile, and if the latter then I'm really confused. Why would the printer have one profile but only accept another?
[/quote]
The print lab only excepts sRGB because the vast bulk of their work comes from cameras that only shoot sRGB and from people who do no post-processing. Their system is set up to handle a large number of print jobs quickly which is facilitated by their RIP assuming that all its input is sRGB and automatically converting it to the printer space. More specialized labs that cater to a professional clientele have a setup that is color managed, i.e. it reads the profile embedded in the image file and performs the conversion to printer space accordingly. Such labs are more expensive.

However, many of the mass consumption labs will supply the profile appropriate for their machine's space for the minority of customers who want to soft proof their images. The profile is only intended for this use and you should not convert to the printer space.
 
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nycbird -
First just a note to correct a mistake in jargon: The term "working color space" refers to those spaces like sRGB or Adobe RGB in which you do your editing (working). They are standardized universal spaces whose profile is built on a mathematical model while monitor, printer or camera profiles define spaces that are unique to an individual device.

Now as to your workflow questions: When you shoot jpgs it makes no sense to convert them from sRGB to ProPhoto RGB. The conversion cannot recreate colors that were not captured by the camera and while it is true that ProPhoto will allow you in editing to saturate colors more (and very likely over-saturate), when you return to sRGB at the end of your workflow not only will those super-saturated colors be lost, you will run the danger of clipping destroying highlight detail that was originally captured.

RAW is a different case. The gamut of the RAW capture is larger than ProPhoto, so you are preserving as much as possible of it by being in that space. But, once again, if your goal is to send out sRGBs for prints, you should keep in mind that if your colors are so saturated that they occupy all the gamut, there will be highlight clipping when you finally do the conversion to sRGB.

If, as you say, your printer requires sRGB images, the supplied printer profile is only for soft-proofing. There is no need to convert to it and then afterwards to do another conversion to sRGB. The redundant conversion will only introduce an opportunity for quantization errors to occur.
 
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tzalman-
Thanks for your advice, that helps clarify a lot. Would you then recommend that I shoot in RAW and edit in ProPhoto? I'm unlikely to upgrade to a fancier printer in the near future, but at least the photos will be ready in the event when I do.
 
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Yes, I would definitely recommend RAW and if you can do all the editing you want in LR you are already editing in a variant of ProPhoto RGB. if you want to upload jpgs to a print lab, export sRGB jpgs, send them on their way and then delete them. As long as your catalog data is intact you can always create them again should you need to or export the image in other spaces or formats. If, however, you need to do additional editing in PSCS, I would say to export in ProPhoto RGB and edit in that space. It is imperative when editing in ProPhoto that you do so in 16 bits, so that means exporting a tif or psd. When you have finished editing save and store the tif or psd as your master and when you want a print convert it to 8 bit and write a sRGB jpg.
 
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I see 2 additional questions raised by this discussion.

1) I have an HP698' printer which is a lower middle class photo printer and print with "Application managed color" as the print setting. I shoot RAW and edit in LR2. If I work in ProPhoto RGB, does my printer take advantage of the wider color gamut or does it's internal limitations prevent this? If the printer is limiting, what class or type of printer would I need to be able to take advantage of the wider color space?

2) When sending images to others, I export the final edited version from LR2 in TiFF format with sRGB color profile. I add them to the LR2 cataloge and then open the TIFF file in LR2 to verifiy before sending. At that point, am I seeing the image in sRGB as the customer will see it, or does LR2 convert back to ProPhotoRGB for viewing? Or is there not enough difference to worry about. I.e. when I view the TIFF in LR2 am I seeing it as the customer will see it?

Thanks

jim
 
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Simple rule of thumb (simple is always best, I can remember them that way!) ...

ProPhoto is best quality
Adobe 1998 is good quality
sRGB is lowest quality

Always use the best quality available - you can convert down the way but not up. ie If you shoot or edit an image as sRGB and then convert UP to Adobe or ProPhoto you have gained nothing - Adobe and Prophoto contain more colour information than sRGB, once you discard that information (by converting to sRGB) you can't get it back. If you shoot RAW the shooting part is irrelevant but the rules still apply during the edit & output processes.

To answer your specific question Jim, I don't know about your particular printer but you have nothing to lose by using the highest quality colourspace, the printer will deal with it.
 
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[quote author=Jddolbee link=topic=9359.msg631'6#msg631'6 date=126874358']
I see 2 additional questions raised by this discussion.

1) I have an HP698' printer which is a lower middle class photo printer and print with "Application managed color" as the print setting. I shoot RAW and edit in LR2. If I work in ProPhoto RGB, does my printer take advantage of the wider color gamut or does it's internal limitations prevent this? If the printer is limiting, what class or type of printer would I need to be able to take advantage of the wider color space?

2) When sending images to others, I export the final edited version from LR2 in TiFF format with sRGB color profile. I add them to the LR2 cataloge and then open the TIFF file in LR2 to verifiy before sending. At that point, am I seeing the image in sRGB as the customer will see it, or does LR2 convert back to ProPhotoRGB for viewing? Or is there not enough difference to worry about. I.e. when I view the TIFF in LR2 am I seeing it as the customer will see it?

Thanks

jim
[/quote]

1. No printer has a gamut as wide as ProPhoto RGB. High end printers with 6 or more ink colors may print slightly wider than Adobe RGB. The printer's space is also determined by the paper used, but in general you can say that the more inks, the wider the the gamut.

2.No matter what space the image is in, the LR display is always in your monitor's space. That's what color management is all about; translating the image numbers to the appropriate numbers so that the same color appears on your monitor. However, this can only work if your monitor is calibrated so that LR has data about what your monitor is capable of. And this raises the question, how will the customer view the tifs? Will he view them in a color managed program and on a calibrated monitor? If the answer is yes for both of you, you will see the same thing no matter what space they are in. If no, you cannot really know how they will appear to him, you can only send him sRGB and cross your fingers.
 
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"ProPhoto is best quality
Adobe 1998 is good quality
sRGB is lowest quality"

It is not quite that simple. Think of the color space as a room that you have to cross in a certain number of steps, say 1'' steps. To cross a normal room you would take tiny steps, but to cross a big ballroom you would need bigger strides. The steps are the transitions from tone to adjacent tone in the color space. The number of steps allowed is determined by the bit depth to which it is written. In a jpg the depth is 8 bits, 256 tones. So in an sRGB jpg the tonal transitions (steps) are smaller, in an AdobeRGB jpg they are larger. If the subject does not contain colors that are outside the sRGB gamut (as in a portrait, for instance) there is no advantage to a larger space and unless you are editing in high bit depth (RAW or a 16 bit tif) the bigger the space the greater the danger of posterization.
 
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An interesting academic point, and in technical terms (I like your 'steps across a room' analogy) you are correct. However this ignores the subjective nature of viewing an image - sRGB images appear duller and more lifeless compared to Adobe 1998 or ProPhoto images because they have fewer colours and because the rougher (relatively speaking) colour transitions make the image appear more punchy. The wider gamut of the higher colour spaces gives an image which is richer and more pleasing to the eye, and for me more colours trumps smoother transitions, but that is only a personal (albeit widely held) opinion. Posterisation has never been a problem for me in working with digital images as a professional photographer, although I concede that it is potentially an issue at least in hypothetical terms.

Image quality can never be truly quantified or measured - the human eye is the only judge, not charts & graphs. for that reason I believe my original point is valid.
 
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Thanks for the responses. I think it was a lot easier, 45 years ago, when I was in my dad's basement darkroom printing Tri-X film on Kodak F-1 paper.

Thanks for the help.

jim
 
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Just one thing wans't said: When shooting raw you can shoot with AdobeRGB. Even if this doesn't affect the raw, it will affect the histogram of the preview on the camera and give a better idea for exposure.
 
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