Colour Space and ICC profiles explained Vol 1

A must listen for all photographers. Stop losing image quality. Camera and software setting explained. Volume 1

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• photography
• model
• strobe
• camera
• morris
• studios
• david
• lighting
• monolight
• fashion
• photo
• adv

[NewAshaStudio]

Question about scanning photos and color space. I have my scanner set to ProPhoto and use Photoshop to import, also ProPhoto. However, the scan looks very heavy on the reds. If I assign AdobeRGB. the colors look fine. I've tried this on my Vista and XP machine, Photoshop CS5 64bit. Am I doing something wrong?

[morrisstudios]

@NewAshaStudio Part 3

From your explanation it's probable that your monitor is able to convert Adobe RGB to sRGB better then going from ProPhoto RGB. This is very common with PC setups. I'm not dissing PC it's just that most setups have a lower end monitor and most Mac user are laptop based and they have a better quality monitor that will handle a larger colour space.

[morrisstudios]

@NewAshaStudio Part 4

Without knowing more about your setup I would suggest that you scan in ProPhoto and make these your master files. Use a working copy for displaying on your computer in Adobe RGB.

[morrisstudios]

@NewAshaStudio Part 5

The other option is to try Adobe lightroom and set the colour display option to a setting that works with your system. Not sure how to do this in Lightroom, but I use this option in Aperture and helps with showing the correct colour because it's using the Aperture colour engine to adjust the colour which is superior to the computers colour engine.

[NewAshaStudio]

Thanks for the clear explanation. I think at 6:54 you meant to say "set your color space to ProPhoto RGB" talking about the applications. Question, should I use stick with ProPhoto RGB for everything even if I'm importing JPEGs in Adobe RGB? Does it matter? I have Photoshop set to ask me whether to accept embedded or use working space, which is set to ProPhoto.

[morrisstudios]

@NewAshaStudio The advantage of ProPhoto RGB is it maintains the maximum amount of colour in the image. This is usually a good thing but it does require strict work flow for sharing the images.

If you know the images will only be displayed on a computer or TV screen or that they will only be printed for sharing (small prints) then it's actually better to use sRGB or Adobe RGB. This will standardize the image colour on your friends computers and it will avoid odd colour shifts.

[Scuvrip]

Very nice video :) I bought charged tutorials and was desperate after not understanding what this profiles ment. Thanks to your vivid presentaion I know :)

[woopit2011]

OMG, Dude, you could be a D.J. You have a beautiful voice.

[antonioreyes1987]

Great vid! :)

[jh3835]

good video but what if companies like snapfish, adaromapix, shutterfly requires sRGB to print

[morrisstudios]

@NewAshaStudio part2

It's important to understand that colour has 2 parts. The first is the colour information the file contains. The second is the colour information that is reproduced. ProPhoto RGB is the setting for maintaining the maximum amount of colour in the image. The colour display information is dependant on the output device.

[morrisstudios]

@NewAshaStudio The ProPhoto colour space will have more red colour then Adobe RGB. The colour reproduction is dependant on your monitor. Better monitors will have a wider colour space and will use a colour space compression to display images. Not sure how to do it on a PC but you should be able to change the colour space setting for the monitor to help with the conversion.