An interesting, I think, observation about color and my laptop screen.

[earlybird]

I opened a few RAW files taken this fall to see if a conversion to Pro Photo RGB would be more effective than the sRGB versions I was familiar with. These particular images featured yellow Aspen leaves and blue skies and the yellow leaves had seemed to be a real challenge to reproduce with a tendency to appear brown or orange.

I was able to appreciate a slight difference in the yellows. The hue seemed clearer and brighter... more yellow. This difference wasn't so great, which I assume is in part a limitation of the generic laptop LCD I am using.

Here is the part I found interesting when I had a Pro Photo RGB and a sRGB example of the same image open in Photoshop; I noticed that if I viewed the screen off axis the Pro Photo version still seemed bright yellow while the sRGB version became noticeably pale and unsaturated. It seemed as if there was information in the ProPhoto file that I couldn't appreciate from a front view but that refused to be subdued when viewed from a side angle.

In the past I have justified remaining with a sRGB workflow because I felt my monitor would not present the extra gamut available in Adobe RGB and Pro Photo RGB.

Somehow, it seems as if the observation of the off axis appearance of my LCD is a strong suggestion that the extra gamut range has more benefit than I could have ever appreciated in the normal front view. I am not in a circumstance where I can set up a permanent photo workstation but I am eager to consider the benefits of the latest wide gamut monitors. I feel like I must be seeing a lot less than I could be.

I'm just wondering if any of this seems crazy or if it makes any sense.

Thank you.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

...I'm just wondering if any of this seems crazy...

Only if you do it in public, i.e., constantly look at it off-axis

[DaveRichardson]

Depending on the color gamut of your LCD screen, you may not see much difference at all. If the monitor gamut includes some colours outside of the sRGB space you may see those change when using prophoto.

However the main reason to consider a change would be to look at what working space can contain the colours available to your printer as well as your monitor, and any future printers/monitors you may use.

My monitor is close to sRGB space and my printer cannot print all the colours on my monitor - but it can print some colours that my monitor cannot display. Hopefully the attached 3D plots which show 3 color spaces around my printer and monitor gamuts (as well as a comparison of my monitor and printer) will help explain what I am trying to say.




Dave

[earlybird]

Thanks for posting the color space diagram.

[DaveRichardson]

You're welcome.
If you want to look at your own profile/colorspace gamuts the tools that produced the 3D diagrams are part of Argyll CMS  "iccgamut" and "viewgam"

Dave

[fdisilvestro]

Just in case, make sure you don't have the option "Desaturate Monitor Colors by: xx%" in Photoshop.

As the description says, it is a way (which I don't recommend) to see gamut differences between profiles.

Go to Edit -> Color settings and you will find it in the Advanced contols section.

I mention it because this option was selected as default when I installed PS on a laptop.

[earlybird]

Thanks Francisco, I do have that option disabled.

I was looking at two psd files side by side in Photoshop. I didn't notice the off axis color on purpose it was just a happen stance as I was walking by the screen and noticed that a difference between the two files was much more obvious when looking at the screen from an unintended position.