Request to trust the photographer and not forcibly convert to sRGB
skibum4
Registered Users Posts: 59 Big grins
I'm requesting that you don't forcibly insist that you know better than the user and stop auto-converting all images to sRGB gamut. IMO it's never a good thing to ever decided you know better than the user.
Smugmug seems to mostly about giving everyone all the flexibility they could want and yet when it comes to gamut choice we are locked into sRGB.
I know you have a link extolling the reasons why sRGB is the only way to go. However, the link seems rather circa 2004 with talk of the Canon 20D and zero color-managed browsers for Windows. It's 2010 now and IE for Windows is THE only browser with no color-management and even that will change shortly with the new release of IE upcoming which will add color management.
IMO, forcing sRGB is living in 2005. Anyone who want to these days can easily use a fully managed browser and certainly photographers, at least, should be capable of pulling that off.
Plus don't forget that in a non-managed browser sRGB images won't look perfect anyway since most monitors don't match sRGB primaries exactly and most people calibrate to gamma 2.2 and not the actual sRGB tone curve so shadows will look too dark from that alone when viewed with say IE on windows or the others with management turned off.
Sure, for most photos sRGB does still make more sense since there is no reason to waste the limited bits of jpg on a large colorspace if you won't use it and many photos have little to no beyond sRGB content but there are some very common cases where sRGB simply is not giving the whole picture to viewers. Take sunsets/sunrises for one. A VERY common subject and one in which the difference between viewing in AdobeRGB vs. sRGB can be a pretty large at times, lots of the really intense glowing orange/red/pink highlights turn into faded out dull colors in sRGB. Sometimes entire patterns in the clouds go away in sRGB as the little bit sticking out and catching more sun blend away. So even with 8bit jpg AdobeRGB is often well worth it for such photos, if not always.
Flower shots fairly often look better in AdobeRGB as well. In some cases, say deep purple petunias, purple-pink lupines, super dark and saturated Japanese maples sometimes even going to ProphotRGB is necessary to come close to a realistic look.
Sometimes ocean shots featuring intense deep blue-green or green-cyan water look better too as well as the odd shot of who knows what that happens to have crazy wild saturation.
And don't forget that the forced change means you are taking an 8bit per channel AdobeRGB and using that to create sRGB which is doing extra damage and not giving the extra shades.
It's a shame to not be able to create some wide gamut galleries to share images as they really should look. Wide gamut monitors may not yet be common, but they are growing, especially among photographers. And what does it hurt anyway to allow it? If a user wants to set up mark some galleries as wide gamut why not allow us to? Who does that hurt?
(One thing that also misleads people is the standard view presented of AdobeRGB vs. sRGB where they just show a single slice of the actual 3D gamut which makes it seem like only hyper saturated greens and cyans are different when the reality is that AdobeRGB actually adds tons of new reds/magentas/pinks/deep purples too.)
I was really hoping to start up some wide gamut galleries and I've been frustrated by how little is available from others to look at yet that takes advantage of wide gamut monitors. And because of the policy I can neither create my own now have a chance to see any such galleries from anyone else who uses smugmug. The only choice would be to turn to some other host.
Anyway I hope you reconsider and don't baby the customer and insist you know better. Pop up a warning maybe asking if you want things converted, fine, but don't force it.
Thanks.
Smugmug seems to mostly about giving everyone all the flexibility they could want and yet when it comes to gamut choice we are locked into sRGB.
I know you have a link extolling the reasons why sRGB is the only way to go. However, the link seems rather circa 2004 with talk of the Canon 20D and zero color-managed browsers for Windows. It's 2010 now and IE for Windows is THE only browser with no color-management and even that will change shortly with the new release of IE upcoming which will add color management.
IMO, forcing sRGB is living in 2005. Anyone who want to these days can easily use a fully managed browser and certainly photographers, at least, should be capable of pulling that off.
Plus don't forget that in a non-managed browser sRGB images won't look perfect anyway since most monitors don't match sRGB primaries exactly and most people calibrate to gamma 2.2 and not the actual sRGB tone curve so shadows will look too dark from that alone when viewed with say IE on windows or the others with management turned off.
Sure, for most photos sRGB does still make more sense since there is no reason to waste the limited bits of jpg on a large colorspace if you won't use it and many photos have little to no beyond sRGB content but there are some very common cases where sRGB simply is not giving the whole picture to viewers. Take sunsets/sunrises for one. A VERY common subject and one in which the difference between viewing in AdobeRGB vs. sRGB can be a pretty large at times, lots of the really intense glowing orange/red/pink highlights turn into faded out dull colors in sRGB. Sometimes entire patterns in the clouds go away in sRGB as the little bit sticking out and catching more sun blend away. So even with 8bit jpg AdobeRGB is often well worth it for such photos, if not always.
Flower shots fairly often look better in AdobeRGB as well. In some cases, say deep purple petunias, purple-pink lupines, super dark and saturated Japanese maples sometimes even going to ProphotRGB is necessary to come close to a realistic look.
Sometimes ocean shots featuring intense deep blue-green or green-cyan water look better too as well as the odd shot of who knows what that happens to have crazy wild saturation.
And don't forget that the forced change means you are taking an 8bit per channel AdobeRGB and using that to create sRGB which is doing extra damage and not giving the extra shades.
It's a shame to not be able to create some wide gamut galleries to share images as they really should look. Wide gamut monitors may not yet be common, but they are growing, especially among photographers. And what does it hurt anyway to allow it? If a user wants to set up mark some galleries as wide gamut why not allow us to? Who does that hurt?
(One thing that also misleads people is the standard view presented of AdobeRGB vs. sRGB where they just show a single slice of the actual 3D gamut which makes it seem like only hyper saturated greens and cyans are different when the reality is that AdobeRGB actually adds tons of new reds/magentas/pinks/deep purples too.)
I was really hoping to start up some wide gamut galleries and I've been frustrated by how little is available from others to look at yet that takes advantage of wide gamut monitors. And because of the policy I can neither create my own now have a chance to see any such galleries from anyone else who uses smugmug. The only choice would be to turn to some other host.
Anyway I hope you reconsider and don't baby the customer and insist you know better. Pop up a warning maybe asking if you want things converted, fine, but don't force it.
Thanks.
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