sRGB and Adobe RGB

cdhames

I had a question about smugmugs conversion of adobe rgb to sRGB, and i'm not sure where else to post this. How does smugmug retain the vibrancy of images throughout the conversion? I typically work in Adobe RGB and when I upload here, I noticed my photos do not appear washed out after the conversion. When I convert files in photoshop to sRGB, my files get washed out and I have to adjust for the lost saturation of colors. So how does smugmug get away with it?

jfriend

Use Edit/Convert to Profile, NOT Edit/Assign Profile

cdhames wrote:

I had a question about smugmugs conversion of adobe rgb to sRGB, and i'm not sure where else to post this. How does smugmug retain the vibrancy of images throughout the conversion? I typically work in Adobe RGB and when I upload here, I noticed my photos do not appear washed out after the conversion. When I convert files in photoshop to sRGB, my files get washed out and I have to adjust for the lost saturation of colors. So how does smugmug get away with it?

If your photos look washed out after converting them in Photoshop, then you are probably not converting them to sRGB properly.

In Photoshop, make sure you are using Edit/Convert to Profile, and NOT Edit/Assign Profile. If you use Assign, your images will look washed out. If you use Convert your images should look nearly identical after converting. The only thing you might notice after converting to sRGB would be if your image contains extreme colors that are not possible in sRGB, but are possible in aRGB, then those colors will get mapped to something close in sRGB.

Here's a bit more explanation. Converting to a Profile takes the actual R, G and B values in your aRGB image and changes them to match the nearest color in the sRGB color space. The algorithms that do this try to find the best match possible in the new color space so there is no visible difference at all and so subsequent applications that display the image in the new color space will display it the same. The only time you don't get a near perfect match is when your image contains colors in aRGB that are not present in sRGB. This can happen, though it's not that common and even when it does, the impossible colors are matched to something as close as possible in the new color space.

Assigning to a Profile (instead of converting to a profile) does not change the R, G and B values in your image at all. It just tells Photoshop to relabel the image as sRGB and now take the existing R, G and B values in the image and display them using the sRGB colors. Since they came from the camera as aRGB colors and they would then be displayed as sRGB colors, you get a big and visible color shift. Because the aRGB colorspace is larger than the sRGB colorspace, vibrant colors in aRGB get displayed as less vibrant colors in sRGB, leading to the "washed-out" look.

cdhames

huh. that's exactly how i've been "converting" my files. no wonder they've always come out washed out. thanks for the correction and the indepth explanation. clears it up nicely.

Andy

Jfriend to the resqu000!

Thanks John!

agunther

soft proof
I recommend using the Adobe Engine and Intent: Perceptual for best results.
I do most of my editing with ProPhoto RGB colorspace anyways.

Download the ezprints profile (I think smugmug has icc profiles for download too, I am new to the site, so it will take some time until I know my way around).
Then use the profile to soft-proof your images:
View -> Proof Setup -> Custom (select the ezprints.icc profile)
Then go to
View -> Proof Colors
Now you will see the colors EXACTLY how they are printed.
Go to View -> Gamut Warning to see if you have any out of Gamut Colors (colors that exceed the colorspace of printing)
The latter is the reason for me to do my editing in ProPhoto RGB. If you use that colorspace and convert to sRGB (with Perceptual) you will almost never get out of Gamut warnings (simply try it out). I choose ProPhoto RGB for the conversion from RAW to TIFF. You can then boost the colors much more and eventually convert it to sRGB. If you try to boost your colors while you are working in sRGB or even Adobe RGB you will often get out of gamut colors (results in posterization during printing).

For the soft proofing to work, you need to get your monitor calibrated:
Calibration with the Spyder 2
(I wrote that, let me know if it is unclear)
Alternatively you can get a testprint from ezprints and tune your monitor with the Adobe Gamma tool (in your control panel). However this will not result in optimum results. I always recommend to calibrate your monitor, since this is the only way to be sure of the results.

Let me know if you have any question. This whole color profiling stuff can be a little intimidating at first.