Colour issue driving me crazy. Please help!

[tho_mas]

Well, yes - if the only choice would be sRGB, AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB I would definitley use ProPhoto.
But outside the world of ACR/Lightroom (with impressive 4 - in words: four - colour spaces for output) there are more options.
ECI-RGB for example (the preferred prepress working space in Europe) covers all the printers as well.
Camera profiles are much bigger colour spaces than sRGB and AdobeRGB (and ECI-RGB) as well and cover the colour space of any printer easily.
In addition: camera profiles are exactly of a size (gamut) so as to represent the captured colours but at the same time not bigger.
So the real problem you are talking about is the dated design of AdobeRGB.

Schewe: as to the new millenium - maybe the future is just here and I missed it. So please name me one of the modern devices in the world that captures (or prints) a high saturated blue with a Lab value L=0 and without saturation. In my understanding Lab 0/90/-128 is black (but as always in RGB or Lab you can set it as numerical values). I know that this is not that much of a problem in most of the cases if you know how to handle it (especially if you work in RGB).
But what is the upside of working with theoretical colours? And what is the upside of throwing away coding space none will ever use (not even in the next millenium)?
If you are fine with ProPhoto that's okay. I for myself prefer camera profiles.  As I don't use ACR or Lightroom I have the choice.

[neil snape]

Well, yes - if the only choice would be sRGB, AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB I would definitley use ProPhoto.
But outside the world of ACR/Lightroom (with impressive 4 - in words: four - colour spaces for output) there are more options.
ECI-RGB for example (the preferred prepress working space in Europe) covers all the printers as well.
Camera profiles are much bigger colour spaces than sRGB and AdobeRGB (and ECI-RGB) as well and cover the colour space of any printer easily.
In addition: camera profiles are exactly of a size (gamut) so as to represent the captured colours but at the same time not bigger.
So the real problem you are talking about is the dated design of AdobeRGB.

Schewe: as to the new millenium - maybe the future is just here and I missed it. So please name me one of the modern devices in the world that captures (or prints) a high saturated blue with a Lab value L=0 and without saturation. In my understanding Lab 0/90/-128 is black (but as always in RGB or Lab you can set it as numerical values). I know that this not that much a problem in most of the cases if you know how to handle it (especially if you work in RGB).
But what is the upside of working with theoretical colours? And what is the upside of throwing away coding space none will ever use (not even in the next millenium)?
If you are fine with ProPhoto that's okay. I for myself prefer camera profiles.  As I don't use ACR or Lightroom I have the choice.

I have a lot of images for press with Adobe RGB embedded as that was the workflow that suited the destination. Nothing against ECI RGB other than I don't really care for a 5000 K white point for RGB images.
I do not any longer save out images other than some B&W into AdobeRGB. I send out in Adobe RGB, and sometimes sRGB for magazine work as I doubt many are up to date, many not knowing what to do other than sRGB sadly.

Yet being at an art gallery the other day, the owner asked me what I thought of his poster of a large art work ( for which he sold the entire show the night of the opening for a very large amount of money), and I replied uh no there are a lot of colour shifts, and lack of potential compared to what could be done on a modern inkjet.

So you see there are many occasions where capturing and using the larger space is necessary to extract the potential of the originals fullest colour. Adobe RGB or ECI is still decent for press but why restrict input to a reduced space when the new devices will produce a larger part of the encoding space?

I do all my retouching now in ProPhoto, and export from LightRoom to whatever space I choose (unfortunately limited to RGB). The edits then in 16 bit are very useful for future use whatever output devices may exploit that extra colour. I don't think the boundaries of ProPhoto have much to do with image content or their proximity as long as they are in 16 bit. Before Joeseph Holmes created a wonderful space composing of all the colours in a film which was at the time ideal for all scanning and conservation of the total system colour, but with digital capture there have to be boundaries further out to maintain the potential.

If I didn't use LightRoom or ACR, I still would prefer to stay with ProPhoto whenever possible. Camera profiles for me can be useful for transmission , transformation of colour but I don't believe they make an ideal encoding space, nor an archiving space.

[tho_mas]

Camera profiles for me can be useful for transmission , transformation of colour but I don't believe they make an ideal encoding space, nor an archiving space.

what is wrong about editing or storing in a colour space that represents (more or less) exactly the colour capabilites of a certain camera (and not more!)?
Editing in Capture One and processing with the camera profile embeded to 16bitTIF... is actually a 1:1 copy of the RAW in the TIF format. I do not see any disadvantages here (well, maybe the aditional 260KB file size of the table based profile), only advantages. The camera profiles created by Phase One are edited so that they have a neutral grey axis (so further editing in Photoshop and further conversions to other colour sapces are really accurate). Really have no idea why I should convert to any other colour space at the stage of the RAW processing (when working with Capture One). If needed, I convert my file in the camera profile in Photoshop to ECI-RGB, AdobeRGB, sRGB or any RGB or CMYK printer profile - just as the purposes are. And here I have all the great tools such as gamut warning before I convert to any other colour space. Or I load my 16bit TIF in the camera profile into Chromix ColourThink and compare it to the designated printer colour space. All in all that works perfectly.

[Jonathan Wienke]

what is wrong about editing or storing in a colour space that represents (more or less) exactly the colour capabilites of a certain camera (and not more!)?
Editing in Capture One and processing with the camera profile embeded to 16bitTIF... is actually a 1:1 copy of the RAW in the TIF format. I do not see any disadvantages here (well, maybe the aditional 260KB file size of the table based profile), only advantages. The camera profiles created by Phase One are edited so that they have a neutral grey axis (so further editing in Photoshop and further conversions to other colour sapces are really accurate).

No. Device-based profile (camera profiles, etc) are by definition not going to have a neutral gray axis (where R=G=B values are neutral); no real-world device is perfect in this regard. That is one of the main points of editing spaces--eliminating the quirks of specific devices and converting to a more mathematically well-behaved RGB color space. The camera profiles may be close, but will not be exact in this regard. If the space you're converting to has a non-linear gamma or has been gray-neutralized, it is no longer a "camera profile" but is simply another synthetic RGB color space.

Really have no idea why I should convert to any other colour space at the stage of the RAW processing (when working with Capture One).

Because you have to convert spaces--you certainly aren't editing anything in the camera'a native linear-gamma color space. You're no worse off converting to ProPhoto than to some non-standard camera-specific space.

[tho_mas]

The camera profiles may be close, but will not be exact in this regard. If the space you're converting to has a non-linear gamma or has been gray-neutralized, it is no longer a "camera profile" but is simply another synthetic RGB color space.

True. The camera profiles in C1 are certainly a mixture of device behavior and the target to achieve a certain colour reproduction (or "look") and therefore do not exactly describe device behaviour. But even with its neutralized grey axis and the TRC edited they are much closer to the real device behavior than any other colour space. Especially a colour space with imaginary colours.

Because you have to convert spaces--you certainly aren't editing anything in the camera'a native linear-gamma color space

Again seen through the Adobe-glasses. Capture One does not convert to the camera profile - the camera profile (as an input profile) is assigned.

[Schewe]

what is wrong about editing or storing in a colour space that represents (more or less) exactly the colour capabilites of a certain camera (and not more!)?

Jonathan is quite right when he indicates that using an input profile (a camera specific profile) as a working space for editing is not a good idea...you would be better off opening them in Photoshop and converting from the camera color to ProPhoto RGB for editing.

And don't kid yourself that a tif in your "camera color space" is 1:1 with your raw file. Capture One has already processed the real camera colors into the colors of the profile the moment it processes the image. And unless the profile you are using has a linear gamma, the tif has undergone a gamma conversion as well. Your tiff out of Capture One is a far cry from the raw file bud.

But what is the upside of working with theoretical colours? And what is the upside of throwing away coding space none will ever use (not even in the next millenium)?

L*, a*, b* while it represents the human color vision system also has colors that don't appear in nature and some implementations of Lab (such as Adobe's) also has some color space boundary issues (blues) that can cause color problems in color space transforms...so, is L*, a*, b* a "theoretical color space"? They are ALL "theoretical" bud including your camera profile (which is prolly using Lab as its interchange color space).

As far as "throwing away coding space" uh...you aren't throwing anything away by using ProPhoto RGB (which is the whole purpose of using a large color space" and in fact there is no inefficiency in the data distribution in a 16 bit (well, 15 bit +1 level) file in Photoshop unless you consider that the tools in Photoshop were designed for working on 8 bit images and thus can lead to crude and less refined moves in the color/tone corrections made in Photoshop. But that same downside applies to any 16 bit file regardless of the color space.

If you have some evidence (other than parroting other people's arguments) that there are real and specific problems with editing in ProPhoto RGB, bring them on. I really would love to hear them and if they are a result of the way Photoshop (or Camera Raw/Lightroom use ProPhoto RGB) I can prolly get the engineers to take a listen and go about getting it fixed in upcoming updates. Otherwise, it would be useful to contain yourself to characterizing ProPhoto RGB as just another color space, one that you don't use, and leave it at that.

:~)

[Jonathan Wienke]

Capture One does not convert to the camera profile - the camera profile (as an input profile) is assigned.

Seen through color-magement-complete-ignorance glasses... So what? You're converting the RAW to some flavor of RGB, not just tagging the RAW with a camera profile and sending it to the client. If you use the camera profile as the output space, then you are by definition converting to that space. And that's just stupid.

Regarding the "imaginary colors" red herring: all RGB color spaces are triangular in shape because they are defined by 3 primaries, red, green, and blue. The location of the primaries are the points of the triangle in 3-d color space. Since the range of human-viewable colors does not form not a perfect triangle, if you want to cover the majority of the range of viewable colors with a triangle, you have to move the corners of the triangle outside the viewable range to make the triangle big enough to cover most of the viewable range of colors.

Since ProPhoto is designed to cover the maximum range of viewable colors, its primaries have to fall outside the range of viewable colors. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. It is why ProPhoto contains more real and viewable colors than any other RGB color space in common use.

[tho_mas]

using an input profile (a camera specific profile) as a working space for editing is not a good idea

why? (when the grey axis is neutral)

you would be better off opening them in Photoshop and converting from the camera color to ProPhoto RGB for editing

why? what do I gain? The camera profile is already "big enough". Too, when converting to ProPhoto this is necessarily processed relcol. So the Lab values remain the same - I just change the colour space (and then have an overhead in the colour profile I will never need).
This is a profile of an Epson 11880 with Ultrachrome Ink and Innova Fiba Ultrasmooth. Not the biggest printer colour space in the world but let me take it as a reference.
[attachment=13860:csp.jpg]
The Printer profile is the wire frame.
Outside the grey shade is ProPhoto.
The coloured profile is a camera profile (in this case a Sony Camera).
Why should I convert to ProPhoto to match the printer gamut better? Or to edit colours that are higher saturated as they are already in that (huge) camera profile?

And don't kid yourself that a tif in your "camera color space" is 1:1 with your raw file.

Yes, I know. True. See my answer to Jonathan.

[tho_mas]

all RGB color spaces are triangular in shape because they are defined by 3 primaries, red, green, and blue.

this applies only to matrix profiles. And this is why matrix profiles must be that "big" to match certain printer profiles. With LUT profiles things change (see for example this very interessting project: http://www.colormanagement.de/index.php/re...t-medium-gamut/ )

[Jonathan Wienke]

Why should I convert to ProPhoto to match the printer gamut better? Or to edit colours that are higher saturated as they are already in that (huge) camera profile?

You're still translating the linear-gamma RAW RGB values to a neutral-balanced non-linear-gamma RGB color space that, despite what you call it, is NOT an actual camera profile. Why not convert to an industry-standard, wide-gamut space that is already capable of holding all capturable or printable colors from pretty much any device ever made or likely to be made anytime soon? The plot you show indicates that there are printable colors that are outside the camera profile, but within ProPhoto. You aren't gaining quality by converting to your faux camera profile, but you are losing the ability to print any printable color that falls outside your camera profile. If you convert your RAWs to ProPhoto instead, you can use those colors if you choose to.

[tho_mas]

You're still translating the linear-gamma RAW RGB values to a neutral-balanced non-linear-gamma RGB color space that, despite what you call it, is NOT an actual camera profile.

like it or not: all (good) camera profiles are edited in some way. To which extend is a different question. As already mentioned above, yes, the camera profiles in Capture One are not strictly device characterizing. The contrary: they have a neutral grey axis. Within this restriction they work consistent (as any profile with a neutral grey axis).

The plot you show indicates that there are printable colors that are outside the camera profile, but within ProPhoto.

neither in the camera profile nor in ProPhoto - this is just a mismatch of the white points (unfortunately not switchable in the ColorThink non pro version for gamut comparisions). The camera profile easily matches the printer profile (all printer profiles I've ever seen).

Look: in Capture One you always set any "camera profile" (in quote signs if you like) as input profile. There is a set of profiles or at least a generic profile for each camera. Of course you can create profiles by yourself if you like to. But there is no way to set none.
Povided that this is the staring point you can choose wheter you convert to any colour space on your system (all the RGB profiles and CMYK profiles as well) or to adjourn the conversion and just embed the "camera profile" in the TIF. That having said it's absolutely irrelevant whether I convert to ProPhotoRGB straight from C1 or later on in Photoshop - the results are exactly the same. The same apllies to all the other colour spaces. And the same applies to all printer colour spaces as well, of course.
I am doing it strictly like that since 2 years or maybe longer (output in camera profile and editing on layers in Photoshop) and I have never had any mismatch when I convert from the source (camera) to the printer profile. Nor did I have any odd behavior when editing the files. (well, I had a lot of user errors... but that's not the problem of the profiles). ProPhotoRGB doesn't help me not a bit (nor AdobeRGB or ECI-RGB do) - the results are basically the same, just the shape of the colour spaces is different.

[Graham Mitchell]

Someone suggested that my monitor profile must be corrupt, so I made a new one but that didn't help.

Any other ideas?

[tho_mas]

Someone suggested that my monitor profile must be corrupt, so I made a new one but that didn't help.
Any other ideas?

Again: are you 100% sure that under "view"->"proof"  the option "monitor rgb" is deactivated?

[Graham Mitchell]

Again: are you 100% sure that under "view"->"proof"  the option "monitor rgb" is deactivated?

Yes.

[tho_mas]

Yes.

and no hidden alpha chanel in the file? and the original file is profiled (in AdobeRGB or sRGB or whatever)? Colour Sync shows up the right monitor profile and Photoshop as well?
Trash Photoshop and re-install it.

[Graham Mitchell]

and no hidden alpha chanel in the file? and the original file is profiled (in AdobeRGB or sRGB or whatever)? Colour Sync shows up the right monitor profile and Photoshop as well?
Trash Photoshop and re-install it.

Yes to all the above. I had similar issues with CS3 so I rate reinstallation as extremely unlikely to fix the problem. If it were something so easy I wouldn't be posting it here

[tho_mas]

I had similar issues with CS3 so I rate reinstallation as extremely unlikely to fix the problem.

So trash your OSX and reinstall it :-)
If everything is parameterized correctly ... it has to work.
I don't care about the "safe to web"-tool... I'd just say use "safe as". But you did and even herewith the original file in Photoshop looks wrong while the sRGB looks right. So there is definitely something wrong with Photoshops conversion to the monitor profile.
Did you install AdobeCMM recently or any colour software?

[Graham Mitchell]

Did you install AdobeCMM recently or any colour software?

No, never on this machine.

[tho_mas]

No, never on this machine.

which calibration software do you use? what kind of profile do you store (matrix/LUT, V2/V4)

[Graham Mitchell]

which calibration software do you use? what kind of profile do you store (matrix/LUT, V2/V4)

I'm using a standard colorsync profile created via the OS. Does this help?