Help with color profiles

Jamesbjenkins · April 16, 2012

Ok, hopefully someone can help me wrap my head around these color profile issues.

I use smugmug (specifically, Bay Photo) to print my images and deliver them to customers. I recently ordered some pictures for family and sent them to myself so I could personally hand them out. To my horror, the colors were all wrong, desaturated, etc.

Silly me, until this issue, I'd never given a single thought to the color profile I was working in. Before I started using Lightroom 3 (and now 4), I exclusively used sRGB in Photoshop and for my printing. Never had any errors with my prints. However, ever since I switched my color space to ProPhoto for use in Lightroom, it seems my prints have been badly off. I went out and bought a hardware calibration tool (i1 display 2) and set the profile, so my monitor isn't a part of the problem anymore.

I got really upset when those prints turned out badly, so I tried to just convert my whole workflow to sRGB so I wouldn't have to worry about the color space at all. However, Lightroom HATES sRGB, and every picture in sRGB looks like crap in Lightroom, even though the exact same file looks perfectly fine in Photoshop. I'm confused!

I've read a few dozen articles on color management throughout the workflow, but I've got to missing something. Here are my questions, I'd appreciate the community's help:

1. What's the best way to do all my work in the ProPhoto RGB color space so Lightroom doesn't freak out, but then convert it to sRGB for when I need to upload to my website or for printing?

2. I completely don't understand the difference between working RGB space and embedded RGB space. How are they different?

3. If the web standard color space is sRGB, and almost every printing lab using only sRGB, then why do our editing programs have so many options for color space? Why use ProPhoto in the workflow if you can't upload or print in ProPhoto?

4. Can someone explain why proofing in Photoshop using the standard "monitor sRGB" proofing make every picture look terrible??? The picture is already in sRGB!!!!! Why does it look different?

5. Is there a bottom line best practice for getting the correct color out of Lightroom and Photoshop, while still delivering the correct color to the web and the photo lab? I don't understand why this has to be so difficult.

Thanks for your time!

Peano · April 17, 2012

My advice is to stick with sRGB. You don't need ProphotoRGB.

arodney · April 17, 2012

Do you need ProPhoto? In a raw workflow yes! In fact, with an Adobe raw converter, that is what is being used for processing. For good reason. Anything smaller in gamut than ProPhoto just means you are throwing away colors you captured and processed and can probably use if not now, in the future. This may help explain why:
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/phscs2ip_colspace.pdf

Now to answer your questions (don’t use is an easy post yet I disagree):

1. Lightroom will always be processing your raw data in ProPhoto (well a similar variant but with the same large gamut). You can export the data in any color space you desire. IF all you are going to do is send the files off to print AND the shop demands sRGB (which is silly but a reality), then just export in sRGB and be done. If you end up having to edit the image in say Photoshop, AND you will be printing out to other devices, export ProPhoto and let that be your master archive image. Convert to sRGB for those labs that simply can’t implement a full color managed workflow, send that and keep the ProPhoto Master for more demanding output (your own ink jet or a lab’s ink jet that can use the wider gamut).

2. Working RGB is the color space used for editing and that should be embedded into any image. RGB values without a profile are undefined colors. RGB mystery meat. The embedded profile defines the numbers. IOW, R234/G98/B78 is a different color in sRGB than it is in ProPhoto RGB. Without the profile, the numbers are the same. Just like if I tell you the distance from your office to mine is 789, you have no idea what I’m talking about. But if I define the scale (miles, feet, etc), now the numbers have a meaning, a scale. You always want to embed the correct profile to the associated numbers in an image document. LR does this for you.

3. The web has no standard color space per say. Most people are viewing web images on non color managed browsers using a display that may or may not be calibrated and behaves more or less as an sRGB device. Unless you are like me and have one of then newer wide gamut displays. Anyway, the few web browsers that are color managed will work just fine with any color space. ProPhoto, sRGB, you name it. An ICC aware browser will operate just like Photoshop or LR. the numbers and the embedded profile provide a correct preview. The problem is, the vast majority of people looking at images on the web don’t have ICC aware browsers so we upload to the lowest common dominator which is sRGB and hope for the best. Because this is a non color managed affair, nothing is guaranteed to visually match as it does in ICC aware applications like Photoshop or Lightroom.

4. That features shows you how your images will look outside an ICC aware application with your display profile. Isn’t all that useful. It attempts to show you sRGB on your system without using an ICC color managed path (send the numbers directly to the display).

Jamesbjenkins · April 17, 2012

Great PDF link! Thanks.

Pure Energy · April 21, 2012

I've heard that one can upload files to SmugMug in Adobe RGB and they'll just convert it to sRGB for you. Perhaps they do the same with ProPhoto. Seems like our problem is solved then if that's true. No more having to work in sRGB.

Help with color profiles

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