Lightroom: aRGB or sRGB in camera?

jchin

OK, this might have been asked before and/or this might be considered a dumb question ... but here goes anyway.

I shoot Canon and capture RAW. I then put everything into Lightroom to do basic crop and adjustments. I was recently told to set both my camera and Lightroom to Adobe RGB. Is this the best setting to have?

My intended output is sRGB for both online printing labs (BayPhoto and/or ezPrint) and web sharing.
Thanks.

ABCL

That's the way to do it. Never shoot directly as sRGB, you will loose so much colour. AdobeRGB captures the colours as true as possible without diluting them, converting to sRGB in post will preserve that colour for display on monitors (as monitors will dilute AdobeRGB as they can't display that much Dynamic Range). Use AdobeRGB for prints.

CatOne

jchin wrote:

OK, this might have been asked before and/or this might be considered a dumb question ... but here goes anyway.

I shoot Canon and capture RAW. I then put everything into Lightroom to do basic crop and adjustments. I was recently told to set both my camera and Lightroom to Adobe RGB. Is this the best setting to have?

My intended output is sRGB for both online printing labs (BayPhoto and/or ezPrint) and web sharing.
Thanks.

If you shoot RAW, the color space setting is ignored. It doesn't matter, as RAW files have a larger color space than either. It may affect the JPEG generated in-camera, but the RAW file will not be affected. If you use the camera RGB, histogram to determine clipping, then you should set this to Adobe RGB to ensure you get a "truer" reading on the camera histogram.

If you use Canon's DPP it will use that setting as a "hint," but Lightroom will completely ignore that setting. It will use its own internal color space (MelissaRGB, which is close to ProPhoto RGB).

But, really, it does not matter. This setting really only affects JPEGs.

jchin

CatOne wrote:

But, really, it does not matter. This setting really only affects JPEGs.

Thanks, that is what I thought.

jchin

ABCL wrote:

Use AdobeRGB for prints.

Do you use that with online print labs? Or is that your own printer?
I thought online print labs requires (or assumes) sRGB.

CatOne

jchin wrote:

Do you use that with online print labs? Or is that your own printer?
I thought online print labs requires (or assumes) sRGB.

Ask the print labs. ASK them. Do not assume anything.

ziggy53

I tend to shoot all paying projects in RAW and then process in 16 bit sRGB color space. While Adobe RGB does have a "wider gamut", sRGB tends to have better distribution in those values relating to flesh tones. Likewise, if you process in Adobe RGB and then have to convert to sRGB for printing or Internet usage, any benefit that Adobe RGB might have provided is largely nullified in the conversion.

Just to dwell on the "wider gamut" theme a bit, wider does not always mean "better". The paradox is that whether you use 8 bit or 16 bit processing, you have the same number of values available to either sRGB or Adobe RGB. The smaller gamut of sRGB means that flesh tones, in particular, will have more total representation, meaning an opportunity for smoother gradations in flesh tones using sRGB.

Most of the discussion relating to which is "absolutely" better is esoteric because, while the differences might be measurable, they are largely not visible. An additional complication is that cameras using Bayer imaging chips don't capture representative colors for each photosite. Each photosite is either red or green or blue, with green pixels twice as plentiful as either red or blue. The resulting image has to be"demosaiced" and the capture also needs to be interpolated into the appropriate density for properly representing the original scene.

My recommendation is to use 16 bit sRGB as the workspace unless you are "publishing" the works using CMYK color seperation, then Adobe RGB might have an edge. (Saturated greens on an inkjet printer may also look better in Adobe RGB, for instance.) 16 bit tonal gradations are ultimately more important than either color space so make sure you save intermediate files as 16 bit PSD or 16 bit TIF/TIFF.

Also, it's important to save original RAW files for those images which might have to be processed diferently in the future. (Some color houses prefer to do their own processing and may internally use ProPhoto RGB, for instance. In that case they will use your images (sRGB/Adobe RGB) for guidance in tonality and for cropping, etc.)

In the mean time you might review:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sRGB-AdobeRGB1998.htm
http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-debate.html

pathfinder

I want to thank Ziggy for a good brief discussion of sRGB versus aRGB, and why there is no simple answer to which is the "best" until you know your subject and the desired final output modality.

arodney

pathfinder wrote:

I want to thank Ziggy for a good brief discussion of sRGB versus aRGB, and why there is no simple answer to which is the "best" until you know your subject and the desired final output modality.

If working with raw, with something like LR, its easy enough to export and encode in various output color spaces. If you have a decent amount of pixel editing to do however, best to export in something wide (ProPhoto RGB which is the underlying color space primaries used anyway), then convert an iteration to a smaller space like sRGB if you have a lab that demands that (and be aware, there is no such thing as an sRGB printer, the lab is simply lazy about handling differing working spaces to the output device).

In terms of the sRGB vs. wider for skin tone, its not so much a gamut issue in high bit. In 24 bit (8 bits per color), the granularity between closely adjacent colors is farther apart as the gamut of the editing space grows. Simple to solve, just always export in high bit.

As to the advantages of various RGB working spaces, this primer may help:
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/phscs2ip_colspace.pdf

vdotmatrix

arodney wrote:

If working with raw, with something like LR, its easy enough to export and encode in various output color spaces. If you have a decent amount of pixel editing to do however, best to export in something wide (ProPhoto RGB which is the underlying color space primaries used anyway), then convert an iteration to a smaller space like sRGB if you have a lab that demands that (and be aware, there is no such thing as an sRGB printer, the lab is simply lazy about handling differing working spaces to the output device).

In terms of the sRGB vs. wider for skin tone, its not so much a gamut issue in high bit. In 24 bit (8 bits per color), the granularity between closely adjacent colors is farther apart as the gamut of the editing space grows. Simple to solve, just always export in high bit.

As to the advantages of various RGB working spaces, this primer may help:
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/phscs2ip_colspace.pdf

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1350901

I don't know what to think about colorspace.

CatOne

vdotmatrix wrote:

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1350901

I don't know what to think about colorspace.

http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1373108&postcount=3