Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Colour Management => Topic started by: Michael Erlewine on February 10, 2015, 04:35:36 pm

Title: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Michael Erlewine on February 10, 2015, 04:35:36 pm
Is there any free viewer that would allow me to show an album of photos to folks in ProPhoto RGB format?
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: howardm on February 10, 2015, 05:37:09 pm
it'd be helpful to know if it's Mac or Windows.

Do you realize that ProPhoto is an editing colorspace which is HUGE and no device is actually capable of displaying it all?
A color-managed application will read the images in ProPhoto and translate it to the display colorspace.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Michael Erlewine on February 10, 2015, 05:42:21 pm
I do realize it is huge, but I confess that I don't quite understand how to harness. ProPhoto RGB outside of LR and PS.

I am on a PC. What I would like to do is find something short of PS or LR that could accept and "album" of photos in ProPhoto RGB that I could send to others, who then could see my photos in ProPhoto RGB. This would not be for the web, but for computers, in this case PC. Since PS and LR can show these, it would be great to have a small, free appliction that could show this color space. I assume PDF won't work, right?
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: digitaldog on February 10, 2015, 05:50:18 pm
I do realize it is huge, but I confess that I don't quite understand how to harness. ProPhoto RGB outside of LR and PS.
You just need an ICC aware application, then it will preview just like ProPhoto RGB inside of LR and PS. It could be a browser.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: howardm on February 10, 2015, 05:51:03 pm
maybe check out 'irfanview'
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on February 10, 2015, 05:54:47 pm
maybe check out 'irfanview'

Exactly what I was about to suggest, although it offers way more than just a colormanagement aware viewer.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Michael Erlewine on February 10, 2015, 06:02:29 pm
Looking at Irfanview, I don't see ProPhoto RGB supported, and looking at files that it does not work.

Can anyone name a free Viewer that might display ProPhoto RGB?

Also, does anyone know whether Adobe Acrobat PDF can be made to do this?

With so many of us working in ProPHoto RGB, it would seem that a image viewer that could display a PDF with ProPhoto RGB files in it, like an album, would be very useful.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on February 10, 2015, 06:03:50 pm
... What I would like to do is find something short of PS or LR that could accept and "album" of photos in ProPhoto RGB that I could send to others, who then could see my photos in ProPhoto RGB. This would not be for the web, but for computers, in this case PC. Since PS and LR can show these, it would be great to have a small, free appliction that could show this color space.

Pardon my ignorance, but I am not sure one can say they (or PS and LR) can actually see ProPhoto space. PS, LR, and color-managed browsers can work with ProPhoto, but what you will see is something much closer to sRGB (on a standard monitor) or Adobe RGB (on a wide-gamut monitor) after conversion from ProPhoto.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Michael Erlewine on February 10, 2015, 06:11:27 pm
I understand, but what I am asking here also is understandable. I have thousands of photos in PS and LR stored in ProPhoto RGB, but cannot show them to anyone who does not have these apps. Apparently no one knows the answer to these questions that I keep repeating"

What is a free color-managed viewer, if you know?

What about PDF and color-management.

I would appreciate any information on these question. And thanks for the info everyone provided so far.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on February 10, 2015, 06:11:44 pm
Looking at Irfanview, I don't see ProPhoto RGB supported, and looking at files that it does not work.

Hi Michael,

You need to set the preferences to use colormanagement.
Options | Properties/settings | Zoom/Colormanagement | Enable  and there also set the monitor color profile to convert to.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on February 10, 2015, 06:31:07 pm
I understand, but what I am asking here also is understandable. I have thousands of photos in PS and LR stored in ProPhoto RGB, but cannot show them to anyone who does not have these apps...

To show them, you'd have to export them out of PS or LR. During export, one of the questions is in which color space you'd like to export them. Choosing sRGB is the safest option if the intention is web use. Anything else, like AdobeRGB, would require either a color-aware browser, separate viewer app, or a wide-gamut monitor. I really do not see the reason to insist on sending them as ProPhoto RGB.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Michael Erlewine on February 10, 2015, 07:02:15 pm
The reason is that ProPhoto RGB looks very much better in LR or PS than does sRGB, does it not. Certainly ProPhoto RGB looks better than .JPG.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: howardm on February 10, 2015, 07:09:06 pm
You're really quite confused about this whole thing.

Take a browse through this........
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/color-management-printing.htm
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on February 10, 2015, 07:16:53 pm
The reason is that ProPhoto RGB looks very much better in LR or PS than does sRGB, does it not. Certainly ProPhoto RGB looks better than .JPG.

It does not, on both counts.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: howardm on February 10, 2015, 07:21:18 pm
Riddle me this.......

so if you do all this and then your aunt Mabel launches the album w/ her old computer and mediocre sRGB (maybe) monitor, would your images 'look better' simply because of ProPhoto?  Or would the viewer map ProPhoto to the monitor's colorspace?
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Michael Erlewine on February 10, 2015, 07:24:47 pm
Ok. I will go study and see if the light dawns. I agree that I am ignorant, and thanks to you folks for trying to steer me clear of my ignorance.

ProPhoto Tiffs look better than sRGB .JPGs. That much I know. I also understand that ProPhoto can't be shown on most monitors, certainly not mine, in full value.

The rest I will try to study up. What I wish I could do is make a PDF album that contained ProPhoto RGB images rather than sRGB .jpgs, which is what I have to do now. I would like to create albums that can be sent over the internet to be viewed on a PC, and that would show some of what I see in LR when I edit. The moment I send them to sRGB .jpg, it looks worse.

howardm: I am sure you all are correct. What I don't understand is why there does not seems to be some format that will look better than sRGB JPG images in a PDF file.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on February 10, 2015, 07:30:28 pm
... why there does not seems to be some format that will look better than sRGB JPG images in a PDF file.

Unless one has a wide-gamut monitor, the answer is: because monitors are very similar to sRGB, so nothing that is "better" than sRGB can be seen on them anyway.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Michael Erlewine on February 10, 2015, 07:38:23 pm
OK. I get it. Sorry for the confusion, but that is how we learn.  What are your thoughts about sRGB Tiff files (not lossy) as compared to sRGB JPG (lossy) files ?
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: digitaldog on February 10, 2015, 07:39:44 pm
What about PDF and color-management.
That can work too if Acrobat is setup properly for the PDF.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: howardm on February 10, 2015, 07:40:06 pm
have you explored some of Lightroom's 'publishing' features ?
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: fdisilvestro on February 10, 2015, 07:44:49 pm
What are your thoughts about sRGB Tiff files (not lossy) as compared to sRGB JPG (lossy) files ?

In order to give a better answer you should specify if the Tiff is 16  or 8 bits and the compression level of the JPG

If it is a final product (meaning that you will not perform further edits) and you are going to view it on a monitor, then I would say there are no differences (unless you compress the jpg using a ridiculously low quality value)

If your are going to perform further edits, then the Tiff 16 bits is preferred.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on February 10, 2015, 07:47:28 pm
... What are your thoughts about sRGB Tiff files (not lossy) as compared to sRGB JPG (lossy) files ?

There were some tests done to show that jpegs above 75% quality level are visually indistinguishable from those with higher quality. For web viewing, there will be no difference between tiffs and jpegs at or above 75%. Heck, I even send my files for printing as jpegs, not tiffs (though I do that at 100% quality level).

Tiffs are superior to jpegs when it comes to further post processing, not web viewing or even printing.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Michael Erlewine on February 10, 2015, 07:50:30 pm
Does anyone know how to set up a PDF for the best color-management?


I haven't checked out the publishing features for a long time.

I admit I am looking here for the (I hate the phrase) Low-Hanging Fruit, because I am in the midst of sorting through almost 500,000 photos, not counting their XMP files. What a Job!... since I was lazy in adding keywords, and do a lot of focus-stacking, which leaves me with TIF files, without EXIF data, etc.


I finally got a new computer that is fast enough to process a hundred 250MB Tiff files (layers) to make a single stacked image in not-too-long, and one thing I have found is that I am glad I hung onto all the layers because re-processing the layers, in the time since I first did them, has produced much better final photos (delivery format: Tiff) that when they first were processed.

I like TIff files for publishing in the work I do.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Michael Erlewine on February 10, 2015, 07:53:58 pm
I always use 16-bit Tiff, not 8-bit.

I do a lot of photography work, but I am negligent in publishing. I have yet to print out a single photo for printer, but I also know the lack of quality on the web. I was trying to get a PC app that would help people see photos better. But I did not understand that most monitors will just blow through it and not see the difference. I use a NEC PA 302W, which is pretty decent.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: fdisilvestro on February 10, 2015, 08:03:05 pm
I have checked a few applications on windows 7 with images in ProPhoto RGB

Applications that handle correctly the images:

- Windows Live Photo Gallery
- Windows Photo viewer

Another option is to use a color managed browser, such as Firefox, and the add-on "slide show viewer"

Out of the few applications I have, the one that was not able to handle the colors properly was MS-Paint
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Michael Erlewine on February 10, 2015, 08:07:51 pm
Thanks much for the application suggestions.

I use Chrome, but I have Firefox also. Would this work:

I make a PDF file with ProPhoto RGB images in it. I send it to someone. They use the Firefox browser AND have a monitor that can handle it.

Will that do it?
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: Simon Garrett on February 11, 2015, 10:11:18 am
Thanks much for the application suggestions.

I use Chrome, but I have Firefox also. Would this work:

I make a PDF file with ProPhoto RGB images in it. I send it to someone. They use the Firefox browser AND have a monitor that can handle it.

Will that do it?

Except that there aren't any monitors that can handle ProPhoto RGB, as was mentioned in an earlier post.  Wide-gamut monitors typically have a gamut approximately the same as Adobe RGB, plus or minus a bit.  But nothing even close to ProPhoto RGB. 

There are many ways of creating PDF files, and I suspect that most of them don't do colour management properly.  In theory, PDFs can contain images in any colour space with embedded profiles, I'll bet most don't.  Either the image won't have an embedded profile, or it will be converted to sRGB.  So first thing to check is that your method of creating a PDF does correctly embed profiles in images, and doesn't convert them to sRGB.

Next, person viewing the PDF needs have a wide-gamut monitor, and they need to have it profiled and calibrated with a hardware colorimiter (ColorMunki, i1, Spyder etc).  And they need to open the PDF file with a colour-managed reader.  I understand the current Adobe Reader is colour managed, but older versions may not be. 
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: digitaldog on February 11, 2015, 10:38:57 am
Except that there aren't any monitors that can handle ProPhoto RGB, as was mentioned in an earlier post. 
I don't think the OP cares. Most of us don't either. No such display will ever exist either that can do this.
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: fetish on April 29, 2015, 04:04:07 pm
I don't think the OP cares. Most of us don't either. No such display will ever exist either that can do this.

We probably need to evolve a bit more too if we really wanna go that direction. maybe add a few more types of cones in our eyes. genetic engineering anyone? lol
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: digitaldog on April 29, 2015, 04:05:50 pm
We probably need to evolve a bit more too if we really wanna go that direction. maybe add a few more types of cones in our eyes. genetic engineering anyone? lol
The super being (baby) in 2001 A Space Odyssey?
Title: Re: ProPhoto RGB Viewer
Post by: affu933 on May 05, 2015, 07:11:05 am
i think Canon 5DIII will be a great choice for you