Slight confusion over colour spaces.
thebigsky
Registered Users Posts: 1,052 Major grins
I've learnt that the sRGB colourspace is best for images that are for display on screen and for best printing results AdobeRGB is preferable.
However I'm a tad confused about RAW images, do they have any colourspace associated with them, or are they simply RAW files that you apply a colourspace to during conversion?
However I'm a tad confused about RAW images, do they have any colourspace associated with them, or are they simply RAW files that you apply a colourspace to during conversion?
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2) RAW files don't have a color space assigned until you tell them. Either in the camera, or in the RAW converter. You can process a RAW file in sRGB today, and then in Prophoto or Adobe RGB tomorrow
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Charlie
Is that just an initial color space to use in the initial processing, but later I can process it in a different color space if I choose to?
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you attach a color profile to an image so its colors has a meaning. like if i tell you my camera costs 1,000 it doesn't mean any thing untill i tell you it's in Euro currency or in GBP or in USD. in the image, say, if a pixel has a RGB value of 0,15,200 you would say it's quite blue, but how blue is it? can't tell untill you attach a profile to it.
the color space on the other hand is what you put your images in to work with. imagine you have a million dollars and you want to put it in your purse. the purse is too small to contain all of them, so you must throw some money away. but if you have a huge duffle bag, then it's more than enough to carry all of your money. in the case of the RAW file, it's the capture from your camera (like your money) so if you output it to a small space like sRGB, you'll throw some color away, but if you output it to a larger spaces, like prophotoRGB or adobeRGB chances are you'll retain most of the colors.
when you want to output your file to print it's actually better to keep it in its large space and either convert it to printer's space or let the printer do the job however unfortunately for the sake of simplicity most print lab always assume your image files are in sRGB (has sRGB attached to them) so it's better to convert them to sRGB before sending to lab. this is why i prefer to print myself.
@chet: the color space settings on the camera is for JPG capture. it's the profiles the camera will use to internally process raw datas and output to jpg files.
I think you just mis-read me. You CAN set the colorspace, for the in-camera files - typically today's cameras will have a setting for sRGB and aRGB. Files shot in either of these spaces will be tagged as such (the JPGs) and the RAW files will be able to be tagged with either (and others, based on your RAW converter).
Clear as mud?
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If your photo has a lot of bold colors it may very well look better with aRGB colors, but what if the colors are muted in your photo? What if the photo is a portrait and you want to see all those very subtle colors between the highlights and the shadows? In that case the sRGB may be what you want.