Colour Space Questions - Camera RAW and LR Printing

[Paul_DS256]

Lightroom Version Number

LR Classic 9.2

Operating System

1. Windows 10

And yes, the 'U' in colour is the proper way to spell it. ;-)

A couple of questions around colour spaces and LR:

• Does the colour space you set in your camera affect the RAW or just the JPG rendering? I ask because supposedly RAW is undeveloped sensor data and colour space does not seem to have an applicability there. When I look at one of my NEF files, I see that the colour space is set to Adobe RGB but not sure if it means anything in relation to RAW.
  
  
• When you print from LR to a printer, allowing LR to manage colour, does it only use the provided ICC profile for the printer+paper combination or is it 'influenced' by the monitor ICC profile the user is using to view the image? In other words, is there something done to make the print as close to what was viewed as possible.

I haven't tried to look these up because I couldn't figure out how to formulate the query.

Thanks

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

For any camera I have seen, the color space setting does not affect the raw other than to record that setting was made in metadata. In Nikon it also changes the file name to prepend an underscore for reasons unclear. It is POSSIBLE that some software from the manufacturer may then look at that setting and decide to default to that space for output, but I have not seen that happen; i.e. the data is available to the post processor but whether it uses it may vary by vendor. Adobe does not pay any attention to it.

I cannot answer the printer question, but I do not think it uses the monitor profile at all.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Raw images do not have a color space, so the setting in the camera only applies to jpeg.
When you print an image, Lightroom converts the image color space to the printer color space. Your monitor color space does not play any part in this. The monitor color profile is only used when images are displayed on the monitor.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

• Does the colour space you set in your camera affect the RAW or just the JPG rendering? I ask because supposedly RAW is undeveloped sensor data and colour space does not seem to have an applicability there. When I look at one of my NEF files, I see that the colour space is set to Adobe RGB but not sure if it means anything in relation to RAW.

The one thing it can make a difference on is the preview on the back of the camera... clipping might be slightly different depending on your colour space, leading you to make different exposure choices.

 

[clee01l]

And yes, the 'U' in colour is the proper way to spell it.

A couple of questions around colour spaces and LR:

• Does the colour space you set in your camera affect the RAW or just the JPG rendering? I ask because supposedly RAW is undeveloped sensor data and colour space does not seem to have an applicability there. When I look at one of my NEF files, I see that the colour space is set to Adobe RGB but not sure if it means anything in relation to RAW.
  
  
• When you print from LR to a printer, allowing LR to manage colour, does it only use the provided ICC profile for the printer+paper combination or is it 'influenced' by the monitor ICC profile the user is using to view the image? In other words, is there something done to make the print as close to what was viewed as possible.

I haven't tried to look these up because I couldn't figure out how to formulate the query.

Thanks

There is no color space in a RAW image as there is not RGB. This is set when the RAW is converted to RGB and a color space is applied. Likewise any income color space setting is applied to the HPRG or the JPEG thumbnail stored in the RAW header and viewed on the camera review panel.

Printing from Lightroom uses the ICC color profile that you choose. Third party printing will (or can) use the icc profile stored in the JPEG file header. It you want to match a reflected (print) color with a transmitted view, you can use the Softproofing feature in Develop. It will imitate the visual appearance of the image as reflected from the paper surface. This works best if you use a calibrated monitor and set the white point (brightness) at a value off the maximum.