Pages: 1 [2]   Go Down

Author Topic: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?  (Read 16527 times)

Rhossydd

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3369
    • http://www.paulholman.com
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #20 on: August 30, 2013, 03:22:12 am »

It's understandable how that would confuse you.
It doesn't confuse me at all, but it's rather inconsistent to complain about someone using one commonly used acronym, then using acronyms yourself.

You routinely shorten sRGB IEC1966-2.1 to sRGB
Logged

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #21 on: August 30, 2013, 03:43:50 am »

It doesn't confuse me at all, but it's rather inconsistent to complain about someone using one commonly used acronym, then using acronyms yourself.

You routinely shorten sRGB IEC1966-2.1 to sRGB

I wasn't complaining.

And there are various sRGB profiles!

sRGB Color Space Profile.icm? sRGB IEC1966-2.1? The few sRGB V4 profiles that are available: sRGB_ICC_v4_appearance_beta_displayclass.icc?

http://www.color.org/srgbprofiles.xalter

Quote
On this page you will find several different types of sRGB profiles, with information about their intended use.

sRGB v4 Preference
sRGB v4 Appearance (beta)
sRGB v2
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

Oldfox

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 82
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #22 on: August 30, 2013, 06:35:14 am »

How about leaving sRGB out of this conversation? The OP's question was about AdobeRGB and ProPhotoRGB.

@andrew: In your video in the last 60 seconds you say something like this: "when moving the slider and you cannot see any change on the screen it means that you have reached the boundary of your screens gamut and you should back up a little."

Now if you have a large gamut screen that has a gamut close to AdobeRGB, then why use ProPhotoRGB? Your edit is in the boundaries of AdobeRGB, isn't it?
Logged

Rhossydd

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3369
    • http://www.paulholman.com
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #23 on: August 30, 2013, 07:19:28 am »

Now if you have a large gamut screen that has a gamut close to AdobeRGB, then why use ProPhotoRGB? Your edit is in the boundaries of AdobeRGB, isn't it?
As the OP is asking about editing for print, restricting the edits to those that can be displayed on screen could be limiting.
Most printers will exceed aRGB (and monitor gamuts) in some areas, so editing in ProPhoto could make sense if you think you need absolutely all the colour gamut possible.
The difficulty will always be having to edit blind without seeing the final result on screen. Test prints will be the only 100% way to evaluate the final results.
Using OOG indicators in LR or PS will only give an indication in a binary way of where you can't see the actual colour on screen, but using a more specific tool like Gamutvision can help by indicating how far the OOG colours are away from being displayed. Knowing that the colours are only just OOG might be helpful.
 
Logged

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #24 on: August 30, 2013, 08:22:17 am »

@andrew: In your video in the last 60 seconds you say something like this: "when moving the slider and you cannot see any change on the screen it means that you have reached the boundary of your screens gamut and you should back up a little."

Now if you have a large gamut screen that has a gamut close to AdobeRGB, then why use ProPhotoRGB? Your edit is in the boundaries of AdobeRGB, isn't it?

Because the source data can be significantly larger than Adobe RGB (1998). Especially for those in raw workflows. For example, if you use Adobe raw processors, the internal color space is using ProPhoto RGB primaries (gamut). Of course the gamut of the scene and device play a role. If you are shooting a field of colorful flowers on a sunny day, very likely that scene and the capture device exceed Adobe RGB (1998). Since there are output devices that also exceed Adobe RGB (1998), you can use that wider gamut data you captured for output. Again, do you limit your data to the lowest common denominator which for many is sRGB and other's Adobe RGB (1998)?
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

Jack Hogan

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 798
    • Hikes -more than strolls- with my dog
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #25 on: August 30, 2013, 09:41:59 am »

Since there are output devices that also exceed Adobe RGB (1998), you can use that wider gamut data you captured for output. Again, do you limit your data to the lowest common denominator which for many is sRGB and other's Adobe RGB (1998)?

Good point.  Since the best working color space is as big as you need but no bigger, the question for the OP then becomes:

1) How big is his camera's native color space? No point having anything bigger than this
2) How big is his fine art paper/printer combo color space? No point having anything bigger than this.

The answer to 1) is hard to find without advanced tools.  The answer to 2) is probably BetaRGB.  Both of these spaces are (much, much) smaller than ProPhotoRGB and a bit bigger than AdobeRGB (aRGB).

Cheers,
Jack
« Last Edit: August 30, 2013, 09:48:39 am by Jack Hogan »
Logged

afx

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 89
    • AFXImages
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #26 on: August 30, 2013, 09:55:14 am »

1) How big is his camera's native color space? No point having anything bigger than this
A D700 - ProPhoto comparison is in the article I already mentioned, also in my signature.

Quote
2) How big is his fine art paper/printer combo color space? No point having anything bigger than this.
Wrong.

If your source material is bigger then your final output, then by restricting your pipeline at the beginning to the final output you risk clipping in processing.
Always convert to the bottleneck at the end.

Quote
The answer to 1) is hard to find without advanced tools.
I would think this is trivial...
Camera profiles are easy to obtain.

cheers
afx

Jack Hogan

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 798
    • Hikes -more than strolls- with my dog
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #27 on: August 30, 2013, 10:17:52 am »

A D700 - ProPhoto comparison is in the article I already mentioned, also in my signature.
Wrong....I would think this is trivial...
Camera profiles are easy to obtain.

Hi afx,

I wonder if the OP was able to find one for his camera.  I was not for mine.

Quote
If your source material is bigger then your final output, then by restricting your pipeline at the beginning to the final output you risk clipping in processing.
Always convert to the bottleneck at the end.

This is an interesting topic, given three constraints (camera/input, monitor/working, print/output): if your bottleneck is at the output (not always the case), do you convert at the beginning or at the end of the process?

I used to convert at the end, as you seem to suggest.  But I often spent a fair amount of time getting things just right (no clipping in the working color space), and then having to get them just right again when I converted to the final color space at the end (clipping!).  So now I convert at the beginning: this way I only have to get things just right once :)

Cheers,
Jack

« Last Edit: August 30, 2013, 10:23:03 am by Jack Hogan »
Logged

afx

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 89
    • AFXImages
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #28 on: August 30, 2013, 10:48:43 am »

I wonder if the OP was able to find one for his camera.  I was not for mine.
It used to be that Bibble had them as files, nowadays the majority of the commercial converters don't externalize them anymore ;-(
Still, at least anything mainstream like the D700 is easily grabbed from one of the open source converters.

Quote
I used to convert at the end, as you seem to suggest.  But I often spent a fair amount of time getting things just right (no clipping in the working color space), and then having to get them just right again when I converted to the final color space at the end (clipping!).  So now I convert at the beginning: this way I only have to get things just right once :)
I guess the clipping you see initially is not the working space (if it is ProPhoto), but the limits of your monitor. And the final conversion should not clip, but approximate appropriately, but that depends on the CM engine. And yes, sometimes that approximation sucks and can't be visualized properly in soft proofing, but that is typically the minority case.

cheers
afx

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #29 on: August 30, 2013, 06:02:17 pm »

1) How big is his camera's native color space? No point having anything bigger than this
2) How big is his fine art paper/printer combo color space? No point having anything bigger than this.

Couple points to address both 1 & 2. Digital cameras don't really have a color gamut (they do have a color mixing function). There is some assumed internal color space a converter has to start with and only the manufacturer would really know this although with the right equipment one could end up with the spectral sensitivities and get very close. Then there's the internal color space of the converter to process our data.

Building an ICC profile doesn't tell us all that much since the target has a gamut. The data feed to the profiler is output referred (processed).

The scene has a gamut. Point the same capture device at a gray card and a sunlit scene of colorful flowers, you end up with different results.

Bottom line using say an Adobe raw converter is that at some point, we're dealing with ProPhoto RGB primaries and thus a gamut. If you work with Adobe RGB (1998), you will clip colors from some (how many?) captures. I think that's illustrated in the video. It's easy to examine this in ACR too. IF your goal is to render all the possible color, you don't want to select Adobe RGB (1998). IF your goal is to see all the colors on-screen, get a wide gamut display and encode in Adobe RGB (1998).

There's a big disconnect in the shape of RGB working spaces and output spaces so keep that in mind. There are vastly wider gamut that can be defined in something like ProPhoto RGB than you could possibly output, true. But we have to live with a disconnect between the simple shapes of RGB working space and the more complex shapes of output color spaces to the point we're trying to fit round pegs in square holes. To do this, you need a much larger square hole. Simple matrix profiles of RGB working spaces when plotted 3 dimensionally illustrate that they reach their maximum saturation at high luminance levels. The opposite is seen with print (output) color spaces. Printers produce color by adding ink or some colorant, working space profiles are based on building more saturation by adding more light due to the differences in subtractive and additive color models. To counter this, you need a really big RGB working space like ProPhoto RGB, again due to the simple size and to fit the round peg in the bigger square hole. Their shapes are simple and predictable. Then there is the issue of very dark colors of intense saturation which do occur in nature and we can capture with many devices. Many of these colors fall outside Adobe RGB (1998) and when you encode into such a space, you clip the colors to the degree that smooth gradations become solid blobs in print, again due to the dissimilar shapes and differences in how the two spaces relate to luminance.

The gamut of the output device you aim for today, and what you might aim for tomorrow is unknown. So again, why encode in a working space that limits this?
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

AFairley

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1486
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #30 on: August 30, 2013, 08:22:43 pm »

There could still be colors outside gamut prior to you even moving the sliders. Probably are depending on the image and color space. The idea is that what you see changing as you move the slider should be within display gamut (you see it). But if you move too far, the colors are changing but it's not visible so here's where you want to be kind of careful.

Doesn't LR let you display both print and display out of gamut areas at the same time?  At least you would know when you were in the zone between display gamut and printer gamut, though you wouldn't be able to tell what the actual color was.  Never mind....
Logged

Tim_Smith

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #31 on: August 31, 2013, 09:37:46 am »

I remember thinking I was at the top of the heap when I owned my Sony Artisan monitor. A few years later, my current display is significantly better (by a factor of 10?). It seems that every year that goes by, slivers of improved accuracy and output are built into displays and printers. Knowing that there might be a "someday" when equipment will allow accurate reproduction of ANY color space motivates me to do my current editing in the largest available color space.
Logged

Jack Hogan

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 798
    • Hikes -more than strolls- with my dog
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #32 on: August 31, 2013, 12:07:56 pm »

Thanks for your feedback, Andrew, noted.

@Tim_Smith:  I hear you, but there isn't an old image I open that I do not wish to tweak with all the latest and greatest.

Cheers,
Jack
Logged

Tim Lookingbill

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2436
Re: How to edit RAW images in the ProPhoto color space?
« Reply #33 on: August 31, 2013, 12:27:02 pm »

Thanks for your feedback, Andrew, noted.

@Tim_Smith:  I hear you, but there isn't an old image I open that I do not wish to tweak with all the latest and greatest.

Cheers,
Jack

Same here. You would not believe what varying black point levels between old and new display's does to your perception editing role off shadow detail into black.

Just bought me an LG 27ea63 at Best Buy recently that was factory calibrated with a very expensive high end Color Analyzer (come a long way at least 5 years back finding that at Best Buy). The Colormunki Display didn't have to do much work after the calibration.

I go back to images I edited on the Dell 2209WA which wasn't factory calibrated and where I had to calibrate it with the old original i1Display with i1Match software which made the black levels seem kind of washed out. Now my images viewed on the newer LG seem a bit more contrasty and clammy looking.

Also for some strange reason the Clarity slider editing on the LG behaves noticeably different from what I remember editing on the Dell. It's not as harsh like a High Pass filter effect I used to get with the Dell.

Guess it pays to have a truly linear display. It's just now it doesn't have to cost so much.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2013, 12:29:05 pm by Tim Lookingbill »
Logged
Pages: 1 [2]   Go Up