The colour profile pit
Discussion
Hmm, now that I've got a decent camera I've hit the colour profile barrier. Never happened with the Mju300, but now...
The D70 gives me a choice of Ia(sRGB) which is default, II(Adobe RGB) - 'wider gamut - preferred choice for images that will be extensively processed or retouched', and IIIa(sRGB).
So as all my stuff goes through PS CS I chose 'II(Adobe RGB)'. If I preview an image using PicaView it's fine, but if I open it with PS the reds suddenly saturate, and JPG compression makes them hideous. So I looked at the colour profiles in PS - there are about 30 which meant nothing to me whatsoever! Can anyone tell me which is the 'correct' one to choose? Or should I set the D70 to 'Ia sRGB'?
Bewildered of Simpo Towers
Edited to add: At the Helmingham camera show there were only two of the exclusive new D70s. In fact I was 'spotted' by the other owner! Quite a lot of Ferraris though
>>> Edited by simpo two on Monday 2nd August 11:32
The D70 gives me a choice of Ia(sRGB) which is default, II(Adobe RGB) - 'wider gamut - preferred choice for images that will be extensively processed or retouched', and IIIa(sRGB).
So as all my stuff goes through PS CS I chose 'II(Adobe RGB)'. If I preview an image using PicaView it's fine, but if I open it with PS the reds suddenly saturate, and JPG compression makes them hideous. So I looked at the colour profiles in PS - there are about 30 which meant nothing to me whatsoever! Can anyone tell me which is the 'correct' one to choose? Or should I set the D70 to 'Ia sRGB'?
Bewildered of Simpo Towers
Edited to add: At the Helmingham camera show there were only two of the exclusive new D70s. In fact I was 'spotted' by the other owner! Quite a lot of Ferraris though
>>> Edited by simpo two on Monday 2nd August 11:32
Might have the answer for you.
Thanks to Ed Hasler, I'm pretty much there with my colour problems. Looks great in camera, great using ACDsee, rubiish in photoshop, and much adjustment needed to print half decent images.
Ed pointed me to an excellent summary of colour handling within PS...
From another thread...
"As a matter of luck, I just found a couple of articles which might be of use:
Printing in Photoshop
Colour Management
They explain things much better than I can!
" by Ed.
What I found made the saturation differences were the proofing options.
In CS, View > Proof Setup > Windows RGB
Then with a picture open, View > Proof Colours and hey presto, beautiful colours again....and the same as ACDsee.
I'm using sRGB (although this is acknowledged as not the best one to use) in camera, and in Edit > Colour settings too. Also set the programme to ask when there is s colour profile mismatch.
When printing...Print with Preview, use Proof > Proof Setup...so that it prints what you see. In Print Space, choose Printer Colour Management.
I' pretty sure that's what I've set at home, and the prints are looking good now. I'll check and update accordingly.
But the View > Proof Setup, followed by View > Proof colours is definitely correct.
Let us know......and from me to Ed > BIG THANKS.
LB
Thanks to Ed Hasler, I'm pretty much there with my colour problems. Looks great in camera, great using ACDsee, rubiish in photoshop, and much adjustment needed to print half decent images.
Ed pointed me to an excellent summary of colour handling within PS...
From another thread...
"As a matter of luck, I just found a couple of articles which might be of use:
Printing in Photoshop
Colour Management
They explain things much better than I can!
" by Ed. What I found made the saturation differences were the proofing options.
In CS, View > Proof Setup > Windows RGB
Then with a picture open, View > Proof Colours and hey presto, beautiful colours again....and the same as ACDsee.
I'm using sRGB (although this is acknowledged as not the best one to use) in camera, and in Edit > Colour settings too. Also set the programme to ask when there is s colour profile mismatch.
When printing...Print with Preview, use Proof > Proof Setup...so that it prints what you see. In Print Space, choose Printer Colour Management.
I' pretty sure that's what I've set at home, and the prints are looking good now. I'll check and update accordingly.
But the View > Proof Setup, followed by View > Proof colours is definitely correct.
Let us know......and from me to Ed > BIG THANKS.
LB
'In CS, View > Proof Setup > Windows RGB. Then with a picture open, View > Proof Colours and hey presto, beautiful colours again.'
Magic! The lary fluorsecent orange suddenly became red - which is a good job as most of the cars I photgraphed yesterday seem to be red!
Haven't tried printing but that'll do nicely for now
>> Edited by simpo two on Monday 2nd August 11:55
Magic! The lary fluorsecent orange suddenly became red - which is a good job as most of the cars I photgraphed yesterday seem to be red!
Haven't tried printing but that'll do nicely for now
>> Edited by simpo two on Monday 2nd August 11:55
If you're going to do any retouching work, then Adobe RGB (1998) is the working space that most people in the know recommend you go for.
As far as I understand it, sRGB is a colour space aimed at low end consumer products (scanners, photos etc...), and isn't ideal for editing images as it clips certain colours too much. One advantage of Adobe RGB is that it has a larger gamut (range of colours) which is large enough to cover the gamut of most colour printers.
Ideally, you'd configure the camera to either assign the Adobe RGB profile to the image, and configure Photoshop to use Adobe RGB 1998 as it's default working space.
The reason you'd want to work on the image within this type of colour space rather than camera specific ones is that these colour spaces are designed for image editing, and neutral (e.g., equal quanties of R, G and B give a neutral grey colour), and perceptually uniform (tonal change of a specific amount has a predictable result).
I can't really explain why you're getting good results by selecting the monitor profile in print proof though, as all this does is show you how Photoshop predicts the image will print if you tell PS to use the monitor profile to convert the RGB data from the image to the printer!
In fact, as you're selecting "Printer Colour Management", what you see in the soft proof screen isn't related to what prints, as you're not actually doing any converting in PS anyway!
For example, your camera is taking a photo of something red, and it records this as R=255, G=15, B=10 and assigns it the sRGB profile. You then load this image into Photoshop, and decide that you want to work on it in Adobe RGB, so you convert it. PS knows that the shade of red that sRGB thinks is 255,15,10 actually is 250,10,10 in Adobe RGB, so it changes the numbers.
As you've (in an ideal world) calibrated and profiled your monitor, you are now seeing the same shade of red on your screen as that of the object you photographed, as your monitor profile knows what levels of RGB to send out to produce that particular shade of red - this doesn't change anything in the actual image though. Your monitor knows what colours certain RGB levels produce, as when you profile it, a device that sits on the front of the screen measures the colours output when the software flashes colours of certain RGB settings on the screen.
Now, when you come to print the image, you print it either through a printer profile via PS (with colour correction turned off at the printer driver level), which is the preferred method, or you send it directly to the printer and let the printer driver sort it out.
Obviously, if your printer doesn't have any profiles available for it, then you'll have to let it manage colours rather than PS, which is what selecting "Printer Colour Management" does. In this case, PS just sends R=250, G=10 and B=10 to the printer, along with the name of the document profile, and lets it work out what colours to print.
So, my guess is that there is something amiss with your monitor profile or configuration if what you're seeing is very much different to what you print - having read up on this a bit more recently, my guess is that you're monitor either hasn't got a profile selected, or it's using one that's not very good.
Have you checked to see what it's configured with (under the Color Management tab, in the Advanced section of Display settings)? If you've used Adobe Gamma, or any other monitor profiling tool, the profile that you created should be selected. If it isn't, then try selecting the profile that you used in the proof setup screen.
Ideally though, you should at least use Gamma to ensure that your monitor is configured as accurately as possible, as without a good monitor configuration, you're always going to struggle.
Hope this helps (if you're still awake after getting to this point)
As far as I understand it, sRGB is a colour space aimed at low end consumer products (scanners, photos etc...), and isn't ideal for editing images as it clips certain colours too much. One advantage of Adobe RGB is that it has a larger gamut (range of colours) which is large enough to cover the gamut of most colour printers.
Ideally, you'd configure the camera to either assign the Adobe RGB profile to the image, and configure Photoshop to use Adobe RGB 1998 as it's default working space.
The reason you'd want to work on the image within this type of colour space rather than camera specific ones is that these colour spaces are designed for image editing, and neutral (e.g., equal quanties of R, G and B give a neutral grey colour), and perceptually uniform (tonal change of a specific amount has a predictable result).
I can't really explain why you're getting good results by selecting the monitor profile in print proof though, as all this does is show you how Photoshop predicts the image will print if you tell PS to use the monitor profile to convert the RGB data from the image to the printer!
In fact, as you're selecting "Printer Colour Management", what you see in the soft proof screen isn't related to what prints, as you're not actually doing any converting in PS anyway! For example, your camera is taking a photo of something red, and it records this as R=255, G=15, B=10 and assigns it the sRGB profile. You then load this image into Photoshop, and decide that you want to work on it in Adobe RGB, so you convert it. PS knows that the shade of red that sRGB thinks is 255,15,10 actually is 250,10,10 in Adobe RGB, so it changes the numbers.
As you've (in an ideal world) calibrated and profiled your monitor, you are now seeing the same shade of red on your screen as that of the object you photographed, as your monitor profile knows what levels of RGB to send out to produce that particular shade of red - this doesn't change anything in the actual image though. Your monitor knows what colours certain RGB levels produce, as when you profile it, a device that sits on the front of the screen measures the colours output when the software flashes colours of certain RGB settings on the screen.
Now, when you come to print the image, you print it either through a printer profile via PS (with colour correction turned off at the printer driver level), which is the preferred method, or you send it directly to the printer and let the printer driver sort it out.
Obviously, if your printer doesn't have any profiles available for it, then you'll have to let it manage colours rather than PS, which is what selecting "Printer Colour Management" does. In this case, PS just sends R=250, G=10 and B=10 to the printer, along with the name of the document profile, and lets it work out what colours to print.
So, my guess is that there is something amiss with your monitor profile or configuration if what you're seeing is very much different to what you print - having read up on this a bit more recently, my guess is that you're monitor either hasn't got a profile selected, or it's using one that's not very good.
Have you checked to see what it's configured with (under the Color Management tab, in the Advanced section of Display settings)? If you've used Adobe Gamma, or any other monitor profiling tool, the profile that you created should be selected. If it isn't, then try selecting the profile that you used in the proof setup screen.
Ideally though, you should at least use Gamma to ensure that your monitor is configured as accurately as possible, as without a good monitor configuration, you're always going to struggle.
Hope this helps (if you're still awake after getting to this point
)One final point - if you're saving images for the web, it's usually recommended that you convert them to sRGB, as this is designed to be the standard profile for most displays out there, and it will ensure that your images are as accurate as they can be with so many different configurations of software/hardware.
Gassing Station | Photography & Video | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff