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ProPhoto Color Space

jtangenjtangen Registered Users Posts: 22 Big grins
edited December 29, 2009 in Finishing School
I keep reading about the ProPhoto Color Space and how sRGB is for newbies and/or non pros. However most online print houses only use sRGB for printing anyway and I will probably never invest in a $$$ 44" printer to do it myself, so why would I want to work in a wider colorspace and then have to deal with fixing "out of gamut" stuff when going for print (or web) in sRGB in the end?

Or will Smugmug allow wider color spaces at some future point?

And can a person see a difference in real world prints?

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    arodneyarodney Registered Users Posts: 2,005 Major grins
    edited December 29, 2009
    jtangen wrote:
    I keep reading about the ProPhoto Color Space and how sRGB is for newbies and/or non pros. However most online print houses only use sRGB for printing anyway and I will probably never invest in a $$$ 44" printer to do it myself, so why would I want to work in a wider colorspace and then have to deal with fixing "out of gamut" stuff when going for print (or web) in sRGB in the end?

    Or will Smugmug allow wider color spaces at some future point?

    And can a person see a difference in real world prints?

    As long as you keep the ProPhoto archive for future uses, spin off an iteration in sRGB for those clueless labs that try to make you believe the print sRGB (they don’t, there is no such thing as an sRGB printer), you’re OK.

    This might help:
    http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/phscs2ip_colspace.pdf
    Andrew Rodney
    Author "Color Management for Photographers"
    http://www.digitaldog.net/
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    Dan7312Dan7312 Registered Users Posts: 1,330 Major grins
    edited December 29, 2009
    When I go an make an 8-bit sRGB JPEG file from an image that I maintain in ProPhoto/16-bit RAW/Photoshop, the image often looks a lot different in the jpeg than what it looks like in ProPhoto/16-bit in Photoshop.

    If I am targeting the web and sRGB I guess I don't see what I gain by doing everything in ProPhoto?

    I always keep the original RAW image as a smart object in the PSD file. If I need ProPhoto, say to go to a photo processor that accepted that for input, I can always go back to the raw and change it to ProPhoto and reprocess it for that.


    arodney wrote:
    As long as you keep the ProPhoto archive for future uses, spin off an iteration in sRGB for those clueless labs that try to make you believe the print sRGB (they don’t, there is no such thing as an sRGB printer), you’re OK.

    This might help:
    http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/phscs2ip_colspace.pdf
    Dan

    http://www.danalphotos.com

    http://www.pluralsight.com

    http://twitter.com/d114
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    jtangenjtangen Registered Users Posts: 22 Big grins
    edited December 29, 2009
    Thank you Andrew.

    I read your article. Very insightful. I took interest in the part about banding issues as I've had those lately in files where I have really pushed the post process.

    I see the benefits of ProPhoto if one can output a 16bit Tiff or flattened PSD file for print but if a print house (Smugmug) only accepts Jpegs isn't it a moot point in the end? Or will a Jpeg that originated as 16bit ProPhoto look better than one that was always sRGB? (aside from any banding issues)
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