problems saving as sRGB
shuttersteph
Registered Users Posts: 40 Big grins
Ok, I have a problem that has me completely perplexed. If someone can please help, I would be so appreciative. First off I'm using Windows Vista, PS CS3, a Pantone Huey Pro calibrator. I know SmugMug wants the files in sRGB so that is what I'm trying to do. I shoot with a 40D in RAW with the color space in the camera on sRGB. While I'm working in PS, in the image window in the top left corner it gives the image name and then it says (RGB/8). I'm assuming this means the image is in RGB color space. So I go to Edit>color settings and it says the working space is sRGB so I click ok and continue on. Well, after I save it, according to Bridge the color mode is RGB. So I have tried going to Edit>Convert to Profile and it says source space is sRGB and Destination Space is sRGB so I click ok then save and still it is RGB! What the heck! Am I doing somehting wrong? Is there some setting in my computer that I need to change or is the callibrator doing it or what? I'm really confused. Am I not converting it right? Also, I have downloaded the EZprints profile, now should I save the file in that profile or just work in that profile and then change it over to sRGB before sending to Smug Mug? Thanks in Advance:dunno
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Your working space is more specific: sRGB.
Smugmug will automatically convert images to sRGB if you upload something else. I work in Adobe RGB and upload without converting; images get converted just fine.
Unless smugmug has changed its recommendations recently, images tagged as Adobe RGB and uploaded to smugmug, will have the ICC file stripped, and the image will appear slightly flat in tonality. See here - http://smugmug.com/help/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-1998
It is better to use Edit>Convert to Profile >sRGB before uploading to smugmug. That is what I do, and you can see the colors in my galleries here - http://pathfinder.smugmug.com/galleries All images in sRGB!
It is true that 8 or 12 ink inkjet printers can print slightly larger gamuts than portions of sRGB, but they cannot be displayed on the web properly on monitors or in browsers like Internet Explorer.
So if EZPrints is going to print the image for you from your gallery on smugmug, it MUST be in sRGB, not in Adobe RGB. It will look fine also, I have lots of images from EZprints, and they compare very nicely to prints I print myself with my Epson 3800 .
The EZPrints profile is provided solely for soft proofing the image - that is attempting to display on your monitor in Photoshop, what the image will look like on paper when printed. But the file must be tagged sRGB, not with the icc profile for EZ Prints. The EZ Prints profile is ONLY for soft proofing, nothing more.
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
No, most modern Ink Jets have a significantly larger gamut than even Adobe RGB (1998). And the new HDR Ultrachrome inks from Epson far more. And no, there are quite a few, pretty affordable wide gamut displays that approach (in the mid to high 90%) or exceed Adobe RGB gamut. With a color managed web browser, they display as they should.
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Tell me, what percentage of existing monitors being used everyday on the web, are able to display gamuts significantly larger than sRGB? I know there are new monitors that have wider gamuts, but what percentage are they of the totality of monitors currently used on the web? Less than 1% perhaps?
I suspect that those folks who invest the funds for newer wider display gamuts, are not the majority of our readers here yet. Do Apples Cinema Displays have a gamut significantly larger than sRGB?
Higher gamut printers abound as you say, but existing online printing is still based around sRGB is it not?
You say most modern inkjets, but you are really referring to, pro level modern 8 or 12 ink inkjets, aren't you? I doubt 4 ink inkjets have the gamuts you are describing. Hence, you are referring to printers priced over $ 1K or so aren't you, like my Epson 3800?
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
I have no idea. There are a good half dozen or more such displays one can purchase. And no one would purchase them solely for viewing images on the web, they are intended for initial editing of images for all nature of output, including all the devices that exceed sRGB.
First, unless you've got the data, its just an assumption I personally wouldn't take on.
2nd, the cost for such displays isn't much more than a non sRGB display of the same size. That said, the smallest such unit I know of is 24". No Apple displays are built to exceed sRGB at this time. No LCD display is truly an sRGB display! That spec is based on a circa 1993 CRT display.
On line printing DOES exceed sRGB! I've got profiles to prove it. Depending on the technology, they may not exceed it a lot although lots of other devices do. The reason people on line ask for sRGB is simply laziness. They don't want to deal with proper color management whereby the supply profiles that actually define device behavior and allow users to convert using such profiles based on a preferred rendering intent which also forbids any post color space editing. There is no such thing as an sRGB printer. There are printing workflows that assume anything sent to the printer is in sRGB. Fact is, the output device is nothing like sRGB (unless that output device is a very old, CRT display with P22 phosphors).
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Andrew, I am not trying to :deadhorse :deadhorse
I look forward to monitors with larger gamuts, and printers with the same, but many of us have to work with what we have presently. It is true that one can get prints with larger gamuts, as via Ultrachrome HD, but those images are not able to be displayed accurately on the web for the vast majority of viewers.
My personal images that I print on my Epson 3800 are printed from LR2 in 16 bit, ProPhoto, but my images that are stored on smugmug, are all sRGB tagged 8 bit files. If they are printed by EZ Prints, that is the file sent to the printer. I have some prints due from EZprints, I will be eager to compare them and see if I can truly see the difference in typical indoor home lighting, rather than in my print viewing station.
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
Here is the relevant smugmug page. Click on "Does Colorspace Matter?"
http://www.smugmug.com/help/upload-photos
"If your photo is in the Adobe RGB (1998), CMYK, or Prophoto color space, we convert it to sRGB. Your viewers will thank you."
JD
Sure they can. You simply can't view out of gamut colors. Everything in gamut can be "accurately" previewed if you're using the right browser.
You've got a capture device that can easily capture more than sRGB or for that matter Adobe RGB (1998). You've got all kinds of output devices that can as well. There's only one real use for sRGB, that's for web presentation for users not working with color managed browsers. I've yet to see any other output device that doesn't exceed sRGB in some areas. Some by a huge margin.
So, if your goal is to present such images on the web, by all means, save a copy in sRGB. For any other output device, you're simply throwing away data you can use. The bigger issue is, there's all kinds of reasons to work with the biggest color space you can and simply covert a copy to sRGB at the end of the process for this one output (the web), not at the beginning of the process. Once the colors outside of sRGB are gone, they are gone forever. Your point about "8 or 12 ink inkjet printers can print slightly larger gamuts than portions of sRGB" is far off the mark, they are far from slightly larger in terms of possible color gamut.
The site with the link you provide is not only unclear, it could be considered incorrect:
Broader? The encoding color space of both color spaces does max out at 255/255/255. The fact is, G255 is a totally different color and of a wider gamut within the color space of human vision in Adobe RGB versus sRGB. The sentence mixes up to differing issues here, the gamut of the max green versus the number of levels between each value. Its trying (unsuccessfully) to lump bit depth and color gamut into one sentence and give the user the idea that one doesn't contain more reproducible colors.
They looked washed out not because there's anything wrong with any other color space but because the workflow the lab uses is weak in terms of color management.
Got nothing to do with ink spraying! They do have a wider gamut color space.
The sentence talks about vibrancy which I would consider saturation of colors, something this workflow sacrifices. It has nothing to do with "accuracy". This entire article is technically soft, and for newer users, probably confusing and written to justify which is basically a workflow using a color space based on the labs ability to crank out prints, not the best possible quality prints from users data.
The sentence should read "But for most photos of people printed at commercial printers, sRGB is a better choice for us, not necessarily you, the customer". But that's not going to fly very well. So the article is really a puff piece in terms of color management that tries to make it seem otherwise. They've failed to prove that sRGB is a better choice for the quality of the output!
No, they want to output colors they've captured and that the output device can actually produce. "We don't want to deal with attached ICC profiles" they should really say. So "we demand you dumb down the process, send everything in sRGB so we can make more prints per hour".
BTW, there are all kinds of labs, using the same equipment, that don't demand this of their customers, who do supply actual output profiles that truly define device behavior and are perfectly happy to have users apply them to their data for printing.
The same paper and chemicals are used for a custom C print and a machine print. There's a big difference in quality (and to be fair) price. But if a lab making machine prints wrote such an article, and actually tried to tie this to the chemistry, instead of the workflow (how the actual prints were made), I'd be equally critical of such an article.
The article isn't necessary. One sentence could have said "we require data in sRGB". The article tries to justify this and does a poor job because there's no justification other than the ease for the lab. Oh, I guess they could say "we do this to make it easier for you too since you probably don't want to understand color management". But that's a HUGE assumption. Instead, they could just say "use this workflow if you don't want any more work and are OK with a limited color gamut". No need for such an article.
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
-joel (who really wants to understand this whole issue better...)
Link to my Smugmug site
Then I'd give this a gander....
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/phscs2ip_colspace.pdf
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
-joel
Link to my Smugmug site
What browser are you viewing them with? If you are not using a color-managed browser, the colors will be off when on the web even if the images are prepared perfectly and there is nothing you can or should do about it. Safari (all versions, all platforms) and Firefox 3 with color management turned on (it's off by default) are the ones I know of that offer color managed display. IE (all versions) does not. Firefox 2 does not. While I haven't switched to Safari full time (largely because of add-ons in Firefox), I keep it around and use it anytime I want to make sure I have accurate color display.
How much your image's colors are off with a non-color-managed browser depends upon how much your native monitor display differs from whatever colorspace the image is in. Ironically, today's wider gamut LCD displays are actually making non-color-managed display of sRGB images look worse because the wider native gamut is now further from sRGB than it used to be. I consider the wider gamut a good thing, but it has this undesirable side effect with non-color-managed software. Those very same monitors are more capable when used with color-managed software though. Hopefully this means that more and more software will become color-managed and this issue will die out over time.
Not looking good in print is another issue. That points to either preparing the images for the web wrong (losing colorspace, assigning colorspace instead of converting, etc...) or perhaps your own system is not profiled properly so it is not displaying accurate color and what your system thinks looks good doesn't look good when displayed or printed on a properly calibrated and profiled system/printer.
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I'm curious about your complaints with Addons though. I like my addons, Flashblock, and Exif viewer are valuable tools to me. On the other hand, I'm puzzled why some addons seemingly can't be uninstalled. Perhaps that's your gripe too.
Regarding printing, I have calibrated my monitor with an Eye-One Display 2. Of course, I've replaced my CPU since then, so I need to do it again (duh). On the other hand, it wasn't that far off when I did calibrate it, so I'm not sure how much difference it makes for me. But I will give it another go when I get a moment. BTW, it's not necessarily that the colors are off. It's just that my pictures look very flat.
I keep seeing references to printer profiles and the like, and have no clue about them, whether I need one or what. I generally print from CS3 and figured it took care of all that. The printer (Canon Pro 9000) driver has all these checkboxes for Vibrant colors and other such nonsense that I always leave unchecked. I'm assuming I don't want Canon dorking with my colors, although maybe that's not the best assumption.
Thanks and regards,
-joel
Link to my Smugmug site
My issue with add-ons in Firefox 3 is that the SmugBrowser add-on that helps you mass change gallery settings has had all sorts of issues with Firefox 3. At first it wouldn't run at all, then somebody started working on it and the last time I tried, it had all sorts of errors. Since I need SmugBrowser more than I need FF3, I'm still using FF2 on my photo computer (I have FF3 on other computers).
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