I came from a graphic design background. We learned RGB (screen) vs. CMYK (print). To add to that, you also have coated (gloss) vs uncoated (matte) paper stocks. Essentially, unless you're using Pantone colors, you're going to get variations. They actually have a pantone swatchbook for converting pantone in rgb / cmyk / hex (web). When I started shooting, I made a conscious decision to shoot, edit, share, and print sRGB.
Michael, I get my prints from Simlab who require sRGB. But with zines, printers like Mixam and ExWhyZed recommend converting colour images to CMYK, which I did for my first colour zine. My chosen images were converted and edited in Affinity Photo, and the zine (PDF) was constructed in Affinty Publisher. Very happy with Mixam and Simlab. (The images in my B&W zines were converted to Grayscale/Greyscale).
Mate I’m desperate to release it but last few weeks I’ve done a lot recording for the KelbyOne Photoshop World Conference and the Lightroom Virtual Summit … this has ultimately meant a slight delay. Next week I will be working on getting it all finished though 👍🏻
Glyn. I have been involved with digital imaging since the mid-'90's (no long stories here but all digital images coming out of the war in Bosnia then and originating from the British Military, came over to the MOD on my Company's kit. I was the M.D.) Of ALL the explanations I have seen/heard about this subject since then... this is THE best Glyn. I have had SO many 'arguments' with SO many photographers on this subject!! (GAH!!!) You have 'nailed' it.
Very helpful and informative as always! Detailed and very easy to understand! I really needed for such information regarding Color Space. Thank you so much and God bless Glyn!
Very interesting contribution once again, Glyn! Excellent guideline to get the most out of the expensive equipment we all have, yet we do not use to its max potential. Can't wait for the LrVS to begin.
That was a cool walk through of what’s going on with the bit depth and colors. Unfortunately I can’t attend - Out photographing birds them days. But keep teaching mate, you are so damn good at it.
I can't believe I've been in the wrong colour space for my Pro1000 printer all this time. Giggy, absolutely GIDDY to put a print through it now. Thanks Glyn. Yeah like Michael below, I grew up in RBY & CMYK spaces with Adobe Illustrator, Freehand & Photoshop. Great video, thanks.
Glyn, thanks for this and your work educating us! Display calibration is critical though (IMHO) in reproducing colors on a printer. On a side note, I was doing name tags for my 50th high school reunion and was using an Avery label template. The colors were horrible until I realized that the template was supplied in CMYK color space and not sRGB. Once I changed that, all was much better.
Late to this video, Glyn, and very appreciative of your tackling this issue. Just a few questions. 1. Was there a reason you kept calling sRGB "Adobe sRGB" - which sounds confusing when there is also an Adobe (a) RGB. Second, (and perhaps a separate video), it would have been equally educational to hear when shooting with a bit depth of 14 is overkill, and the 12 offerened by many cameras as alternative makes more sense. Is more always better, or just fluff at some point you do not see?
Very good video. Unlike a lot of explanations on the subject of color space this was very easy to understand. I have an older Dell U2413 monitor that has display settings for both Adobe RGB and sRGB. I just keep it set at sRGB for my Lightroom and Photoshop edits. I export to sRGB. My photos may be printed by Mpix (which uses sRGB) or just posted to social media. Does this sound corect or should i be using my display's fuller Adobe RGB setting?
Thanks for the video! So if i'm creating a rollup with pictures in it, is it the best to have sRGB photos, not adobe rgb? So i understand correctly! Would be so glad if you could answer today 👏👏
A bit of a quibble. It's not that ProPhotoRGB's color differences are infinitesimal; it's that many of the colors it handles are simply outside the range of human perception, or are 'colors' that cannot actually exist. And a larger gamut colorspace does nothing by itself to reduce or eliminate banding; that's entirely based on the bit depth relative to the size of the gamut (and potentially the capture device's limitations if the issue was created at capture time). A wider gamut colorspace requires more bit depth to avoid creating banding, while smaller gamut spaces can frequently get away with a lower bit-depth. The wide range ProPhotoRGB offers pretty much demands 16-bit at a minimum; even a plain conversion from sRGB in 8 bit can result in banding depending on the source material, even without any tone or color manipulation.
Hi Glyn, Thank you so much for this video. It made understand better the colour space options for monitors. i still have one question, is rather better to invest in a monitor with +95% DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB coverage? or 100% sRGB is well satisfactory for a beginner photographer ? (I am thinking on the long run) Thanks
Withg regards to the monitors and 95%+ Adobe RGB, that certaibnly in the case of BenQ is said as they cannot guarantee that a mass production monitor will always be 100% Adobe RGB. They'll be very close but best to cautious and say 95%+ Adobe RGB and 100% sRGB. I wouldn't be guided by just seeing 100% sRGB If you want top speak more about this just drop me an email or contact through website 👍🏻
Great breakdown of a most confusing topic, Glyn. Uhm, still confusing though. I've never had any luck sending prints out or printing at home in any color space other than sRGB. Which leads to my next question: any recos on top displays/monitors & printers? I was lucky enough to have an Epson 3880 literally fall in my lap. & from what I've read, many photo enthusiasts & even labs still prefer it over its successor, the P900. Your thoughts?
Richard I can't comment on the Epson as I have no experience with it; all I can say is that with the BenQ display I have and the Canon Printers I have and have have had in the past, there's been no issues and the results have been spot on.
If you're shooting in Raw then the Color Space in your camera makes no difference ... it has no color space assigned. Setting it in camera in only for when shooting in Jpeg 👍🏻
I have always wondered how it is that my laptop, presumably an sRGB system, displays colors outside the sRGB color space, that is, as shown in the first color space figure at about 1 minute into this video. How can that be? My guess is that this figure (and the many like it found all over the internet) is to be understood as a conceptual, not literal, representation. Other than that, thank you for pointing out the sloppiness of saying one color space has more colors than another (i.e., for a given bit depth, each has the same number of colors (256^3, for 8 bit), but one of them does have a wider range of colors than the other).
LOVE this video and how easy it is to understand. Thank you! I just calibrated my computer with the Spyder X Pro for the first time.... as a photographer... what proof & color settings should I use in photoshop/Lightroom? The profile the calibration tool created? Or Adobe sRgb? I'm so lost :( I thought calibrating would be SIMPLE, now I'm not sure what to adjust to make sure I'm seeing what I am supposed to. Sharing on the web is my main concern.... after calibrating my monitors they looked NOTHING like my cell phone.....it had me a little worries and now I am more confused than ever :(
Thanks for checking out the video. To answer your questions ... when you calibrate your monitor / display that's nothing to do with Lightroom / Photoshop ... it just now means you have a calibrated display (which is what you want). As for profiles you use in Lighroom, those are the paper profiles you get from the paper manufacturer OR ones you have made (bespoke) When working in Lightroom, the Color Space is ProPhoto RGB. Good practice would be to also set your Color Space in Photoshop to ProPhoto RGB. When you print your own images at home then you won't go wrong using ProPhoto RGB (not converting images to Adobe RGB etc) BUT if sending them to a Lab you might find they ask for them in Adobe sRGB. If you send digital files to someone else then it's safest to send them in sRGB as you don't know / can't control what they will do with them ... view on mobile device , upload to web , print etc ... sRGB is a safe space. Re your phone, it isn't calibrated. However the temp of the device is most likely 6500 Kelvin as this is the industry standard.
Hello Green, in your recent video conversation with a BenQ expert, you seem to have changed this view and suggested using the AdobeRGB system because you can see more colors, corresponding to more colors printed by the printer. But the premise of using AdobeRGB is to have a display that can display AdobeRGB color, if there is no such display, then the work in the adobeRGB space is meaningless, I wonder if my understanding is correct? Thank you！
The BenQ display I use states 99% Adobe RGB but this is conservative from BenQ as they can'tguarantee 100% (which they achieve individually) on mass market displays. ProPhoto RGB does indeed contain the largest colour space (not in all colours) and in the first video this is what I explained. The video with Dr Chris Bai was angled more toward printing and the importance of a consistent workflow from capture (although in Raew that doesn't apply) , Edit and Print. Adobe RGB is ideal for this. No display can currently show the full ProPhoto RGB Colour Space nor any printer is capable of printing it. Also our eyes cannot see the full spectrum. Working in Adobe RGB is not meaningless as you say ... display can and do display it all; ProPhoto however ... not the case
This is an ok video but you've focused mainly on the output profile. Personally, I'm more interested in working profiles and a colour workflow as such. At the moment there is a wide range of choices there (if one does not limit itself to Lightroom which is hardcoded to ProPhoto RGB as a working space). Though they were introduced to the film industry, such colour spaces as rec.2020 and ACEScg gained some ground also in photography. And here is something I don't understand fully - both those spaces are smaller than ProPhoto. While I can understand why ACES A0 may not be recommended for the working space, due to negative values, ProPhoto doesn't have such. What is the benefit of the new, smaller working spaces? Is this because of imaginary colours? How they could affect our work?
@@glyndewis Please don't feel offended. Your video is certainly enlightening to many. I just seek answers to my questions on the web long enough to treat the information given by you as 'basic'. As I just commented under another of your videos, as far as I understood, the choice of a working profile can have crucial meaning to the outcomes of editing photos. For example, if we perform any kind of colour grading or colour mixing operations in Gimp or Krita (and the like) we will take advantage of working with linear TRC. Wide gamut profiles (in conjunction with floating point high bit-depth) can create a better environment for colour-related computations for our RAW editors and image-editing software. Those wide-gamut profiles preserve also more of the data captured by our cameras. This of course applies only if we sidestep from the Lightroom + Photoshop path. As far as I know, Lightroom is hard-coded to ProPhoto RGB primaries when it comes to working colour profiles anyway. ACES AP0 covers RGB colour values that are negative. Those values are invalid for many computations performed by our software. Hence I understand why ACES AP0 is advised only as an archival colour space but not as a working space. But I don't understand the objections against ProPhoto RGB as a working space that people such as Elle or Aurelien Pierre present. They often give those objections as obvious, and this is not obvious to me. I just guessing this is about the so-called imaginary colours the ProPhoto contains (and that the original ProPhoto is not 100% well-behaved). But I don't understand how this could skew our work. Hence my comment and my questions.
Great video, where does display p3 fall into this. Curious as my new studio display uses this, though I can switch it to srgb. My understanding is it best to edit in widest colour range the monitor can provide ?
Hi Stephen...Take a look at this article from BenQ that will explain that in detail www.benq.eu/en-uk/knowledge-center/knowledge/display-p3-monitor-for-creative-work.html
Thanks for vid! What do you say about the default my camera raw seems to use- Display P3. I'm not sure if this if I should change it it in Camera Raw as my raw file come in? thanks!
Thanks for explaining, I have another question, if I want to print my artwork and photographs on my canon pro - 4100 professional 44 inch printer that uses 11 colors, Do I need to have a monitor display 99.9% Adobe RGB ? If I want to see those colors on the display, Because I have 2 IPS monitors 32 inch , One is Benq 100% SRGB , and the one one is LG ULTRA FINE DCI - P3 95% GAMUT , They are not showing full wide gamut spectrum of adobe RGB 99.5 % as those 2000+ dollars expensive monitors, , basically do I need to buy a IPS 99% Adobe RGB monitor in order for me to print on my printer like that ? Thanks in advance for explaining
@glyndewis many thanks for the explanation. Just wondering if you’d also upload to the web in Adobe RGB or if you’d tell your clients to convert their Adobe RGB to SRGB if they want to use on any websites?
Hi Glyn, I was wondering .........if I work in the prophoto color space at 16 bit, then send out for print, i then should convert to sRGB? and if that is correct, do i need to change it to 8 bit as well?
Glynn Thank you so much that was so easy to understand. Can I please ask for your advice? I have long used ProPhoto RGB for editing but 18 months was advised (by my printer man) to change to Adobe RGB. So for a period of time my images were imported in the Adobe colour space. I flipped back to ProPhoto after seeing it was the recommended setting in Lightroom. As a result I now have a mix of ProPhoto RGB & Adobe RGB images in Lightroom. I'd like to get back to some consistency. I'm wondering if the embedded colour profile is kind of set in concrete (in the RAW file) on importing from the camera? Ive tried converting a file to a new colour profile (from Adobe to Prophoto) but I still get that warning window (advising the embedded vs working colour space) when I open the file in Photoshop. Is there a way... easy or otherwise to fix my mess?
Very useful thanks.....however, i couldn't help but wonder if doing the print to screen comparison with a phone doing auto white balance/color adjustment was intended as a joke or not.
@@glyndewis Well, to be fair, most people haven't spent countless hours trying to white balance terrible cellphone footage like I have. lol. Again, thanks for the video. Very helpful.
This was by far the most stupid question I ever asked. I'm sorry, you must be offended by now. Anyway, I figured it out, I just didn't know about these new improvements. It seems I got stuck in time.
Hello Gly, I just finished watching you on the LR Virtual Summit talking about printing and calibration. My question is, I work on a MacBook Pro, which is a laptop. I was told a laptop can't be calibrated, is that correct? If not, how would I calibrate my computer? Thank you.
so if I'm working on a photo or video for social media it always should be in Adobe sRGB? why do a lot of people advice using rec 709 then if it won't look as good as adobe srgb on youtube for example ?
So many different views on color space while editing and converting for what media you're going to use. When sending your image out to print and using ProPhoto, the house is likely going to convert to Srgb and downgrade what you had on your system. I've subscribe to calibrating your monitor as it will show what your computer system is capable of showing and use that as a your color setting, editing in 14 bit. Determine what color profile is needed for what media will be used, convert the color profile, make your minor adjustments for a better outcome, usually midtones for me.
U got me confuse about u said in minute 8:14 because right that time u mention"I will always send them in Adobe SRGB" what did u mean with that? If I capture on raw adobe RGB I could edit the photos and it will keep the colors and look after I upload it to any social media or sent it to any client? ---- I need kind of help, I bought my Sony A6500 and I took the advice from some content creators on RU-vid to set my camera to capture on RAW-SRGB-4K-10BITS , but once I export the files from my camera to my macOS or windows pc system automatically colored my photos (Also I set the camera to capture photos with flat colors to be able to edit them in photoshop but not matter what system apply kind of bad color grading to my photos and even reducing the quality it looks from the camera in comparison with the result PC system is showing me. Then after all I found this video and I don't know if I got it correctly but I understand I would have to capture in ADOBERGB instead SRGB and it won't give me any issue? Please someone could give me a hand?
ProPhoto RGB isn’t an colour space option for monitors so ideally you need to set it to the largest colour space it has. For BenQ displays this would be ‘Panel Native’.
Tim I do a custom calibration and store that in one of the Calibration tabs for quick access. Doing this means it makes use of as much of the display capabilities (Gamut) as possible rather than restricting to a specific sRGB. , Adobe RGB etc...
@@glyndewis Thank your for taking time to replie. So Are you using your Palette master software or your Calbration software, Speaking to Benq at the photography show and saying how differant my RGB and SrGB Looked on my Benq monitor they advised using the the pallette master software profile for RGB then Profile for SrGB. I wish you would do a from calibrate Monitor to calibrate print youtube Glyn.
I don't understand that you print in prophoto rgb, because there is not a printer that can handle this colorspace. If you print prophoto rgb you get a colorshift in the print. Can you explain this? A printer prints at the max Adobe RGB colors.
I still didn't understood that. Can Someone explain it to me ? I just share photos in internet and using BenQ sw271c. I calibrate monitor sRGB and using like that.
I usually respond as mad_cat channel, this is a new one for my future designs. What I've been told of the bit depth, which is a minute detail here, but Ps is incapable of 16-bit depth, and it is actually 15-bit. So instead of 281 Trillion, it is 35 Trillion. Based on your video, is that information correct or have I missed something? BTW, I did the math on that. Based on 15-bit depth, that is 2 million colors for every one 8-bit depth color.
you're using ProPhotoRGB in Lightroom? - as you can't change what colorspace you're working in Lightroom (unlike Photoshop).... does this mean Adobe have stopped using MelissaRGB in Lightroom now?
But your camera captures only in AdobeRgb (the biggest space), then you edit in ProPhoto but how you find this information from the moment the camera didn't get it initially?
The camera captures in its own hardware+software defined 'colorspace'. If you're shooting JPEG, you can usually tell it to make the JPEG file as sRGB or AdobeRGB, but they're both converting from the native color. Raw files aren't converted, and are kept in their native form, which isn't technically a colorspace at all. But you've identified a key element, if only peripherally. If the SCENE doesn't contain colors outside of [sRGB|AdobeRGB], there's no benefit to using ProPhotoRGB. There might be a benefit in using 16-bit color, but if the color is outside the gamut of the colorspace or device used, it's going to be lost. (If you're using Lightroom, though, using ProPhotoRGB from start to almost finish makes sense, as that's mostly how it behaves internally.)
@@glyndewis Exactly, so you have set the a7r4 to capture in Adobe RGB, afterwards how you edit the file in Prophoto RGB from the moment it is bigger space and thus you don’t have the data from the raw file (the raw was in Adobe RGB colorspace)…. I don’t know if you can understand what I’m trying to tell you… Isn’t it better to capture Adobe RGB, edit Adobe RGB, print Adobe RGB or share in sRGB?
@@photokiakotos81 If you are shooting RAW you can edit in any color space you choose without losing any quality while you are working in your RAW editor. Pick the color space that meets your needs best.
I’m still kind of confused about these colorspace debates. I keep reading and hearing that adobe or other colorspace have more color information and how picking the right colorspace is important and yet all these sources never fail to mention the difference is most of the time barely noticeable. How noticeable is it then really ? I mean, if you’re gonna work with something else than sRGB, you’ll need a monitor that can display these additional colors and most often than not these monitors are really expensive. If a professional photographer claims it can work and even print high res images for public exibit, who actually needs the extra step and how significant is it, really ? I mean, are colorspace a tool that will make a real difference in a photographer’s work or is it a commercial high-tech gadget that’s just pushed forward by the photography industry to sell devices ?
You can improve on your workflow by working in 16-bit sRGG and then only in the very end convert to 8-bit sRGB. Like that, you avoid banding, yet you see the image similar to what it is.
