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Author Topic: live in sRGB?  (Read 2614 times)

Athena

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live in sRGB?
« on: April 06, 2011, 09:18:17 am »

I am almost embarrassed to ask this.

I have a great monitor (PA271w) and I know it can do far more than I am even able to understand at the moment.

but

All my images at the moment are either posted on the web or printed from a lab that uses sRGB.
I shoot in sRGB and edit in sRGB for this reason.
Should I also restrict my monitor's colorspace to sRGB with the controls on the front of the panel?

I have been mostly a b&w portrait photographer but want now to move into color and I want to do it well with what I have.  But I've found that color is extremely tricky!  I'm just feeling a bit confused with too many options I think...

~Athena
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louoates

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Re: live in sRGB?
« Reply #1 on: April 06, 2011, 06:50:54 pm »

You'll get lots of opinions on this one. First, I'd never ever shoot in srgb because you are limiting all the information to just that color space. So when you edit much in that space you will be adding noise and artifacts needlessly. Color-wise you get muddier results. Black and white-wise you get more grain.

For me the best work flow is shoot in raw. Always. You will be gaining many more stops in exposure and maximum color space if you use prophoto rgb allowing much more editing, especially when you are converting to b/w -- you'll have many, many more color values to work with. If I'm then converting to b/w I've found that the best way is with Nic's Silver Efex Pro 2. It gives me quick and total control over the conversion process including global and local adjustments. For web use the last step for color is to convert to srgb.

I know you are trying to optimize your process to accommodate outside agencies but I don't see how that's possible without sacrificing much control over the final print. There are fantastic color printers out there for very little cost. Any reason you aren't printing yourself?
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Ken Bennett

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Re: live in sRGB?
« Reply #2 on: April 06, 2011, 07:13:50 pm »

I live in sRGB. As a university staffer, my photos are distributed to a wide range of end users, the vast majority of whom would not know a color profile if it bit them on the leg. My NEC monitor is set to the sRGB color space so I can judge how an image will look on the web and in lab prints (the two most common uses, with web being by far the most common.)

However, I shoot everything in raw, and when working on a high-end offset print project, or when making my own prints for portfolio, etc., I often will go back to the original raw files and process them through a wide gamut space in 16 bits, etc.
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Mark D Segal

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Re: live in sRGB?
« Reply #3 on: April 06, 2011, 07:23:45 pm »

I don't think the OP intended this thread to become a diversion into image capture and processing technique, albeit I agree with the comments about the merits of raw capture and editing. To get to the substance of your question, if your images have an sRGB working space embedded, and the colour space you have selected in Photoshop is sRGB, and you softproof your images with the sRGB colour space chosen as the profile, the colours you see on the display should be limited to that gamut regardless of the monitor's actual capability. I stand to be corrected, but I think I got this right. Key of course is to make sure the display is properly calibrated and profiled with am appropriate colorimeter and software package - either Spectraview 2 or BasicColor 4.x with an NEC i12 Display colorimeter.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Schewe

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Re: live in sRGB?
« Reply #4 on: April 06, 2011, 10:22:59 pm »

I have a great monitor (PA271w) and I know it can do far more than I am even able to understand at the moment.

but

All my images at the moment are either posted on the web or printed from a lab that uses sRGB.
I shoot in sRGB and edit in sRGB for this reason.
Should I also restrict my monitor's colorspace to sRGB with the controls on the front of the panel?

Yes...and why did you buy a wide gamut display since you work in sRGB? The display can be set to be an sRGB gamut, you should prolly do that until you understand the benefits of working in a wider gamut color space and use a wide gamut display.
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Mark D Segal

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Re: live in sRGB?
« Reply #5 on: April 06, 2011, 10:36:22 pm »

Jeff,

If she has an embedded sRGB profile and colour settings in PS done right for sRGB, and softproofs, are you suggesting that unless she also restricts the display to sRGB, the file colours may nonetheless be remapped to a larger gamut and therefore be inaccurate?
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Schewe

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Re: live in sRGB?
« Reply #6 on: April 06, 2011, 10:43:34 pm »

No, I'm suggesting that she wants to exist in the lowest possible common denominator. If she is convinced she want to shoot sRGB, work in sRGB and output in sRGB, then it's pretty silly not to have a display work in sRGB. So, why get a wide gamut display?
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Mark D Segal

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Re: live in sRGB?
« Reply #7 on: April 06, 2011, 11:04:28 pm »

Well, seems like it's a sunk cost - in the sense that she already has it. So at this point it seems she's just looking for help to solve her issue about whether she really needs to restrict its gamut to sRGB, assuming she really insists on an sRGB workflow for her own reasons, regardless of the other valid suggestions in this thread.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Schewe

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Re: live in sRGB?
« Reply #8 on: April 06, 2011, 11:35:58 pm »

Correct...it's a done deal unless she's concerned about producing RGB Masters that will have long term properties.
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Athena

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Re: live in sRGB?
« Reply #9 on: April 07, 2011, 12:40:18 am »

Thank you all so much for you responses. I do shoot in RAW, have for years. And I don't actually use the little jpg file from the camera, in fact I often have it turned off. So I suppose I could indeed go back to the originals and re-edit them in a larger color space later. But right now I come out of ACR into PS in sRGB. And from that point on everything is sRGB. So I was thinking it might be easier (less confusing) to restrict the monitor to that colorspace for now...
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milt

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Re: live in sRGB?
« Reply #10 on: April 07, 2011, 12:04:52 pm »

There's a key point here that seems to need emphasis: if she does any work at all with non-color-managed applications, then she is definitely better off to set the monitor to sRGB.

--Milt--
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bjanes

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Re: live in sRGB?
« Reply #11 on: April 07, 2011, 09:35:58 pm »


All my images at the moment are either posted on the web or printed from a lab that uses sRGB.
I shoot in sRGB and edit in sRGB for this reason.
Should I also restrict my monitor's colorspace to sRGB with the controls on the front of the panel?
~Athena

Athena,

sRGB is not the native color space of any printer, since these are highly non-linear devices. The Fuji Frontier and Noritsus used at Walgreens and Costco assume sRGB if the file has no attached profile and some do not even read the profile if it is present. They then convert from sRGB to the native space of the printer. The better labs will supply you with a custom profile for their printers. Costco has custom profiles posted at Drycreek.com that you can download. You then convert to that profile and tell them to print with no color adjustments. With the latest wide gamut inkjet printers, it makes sense to use ProPhotoRGB and use a profile for that printer.

If you set the controls on your high end monitor to sRGB it will emulate a typical CRT used in 1966. It would be better to buy an economical monitor profiling solution, and create a custom profile for your monitor and use that. Profiling should be repeated periodically, since monitors do change over time.

For the web at present you are pretty much stuck with sRGB, since many browsers are not color managed. Firefox and Safari are color managed, but the latest version of Firefox does not support Ver 4 profiles. The ICC web site does have a test to determine the degree of color management of your system.

Regards,

Bill
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