ABJanes Loc: Jersey Boy now Virginia

I am getting ready to put my toe in the water with raw and PP with Elements 13. After doing extensive reading, I truly believe I will shot both raw and JPEG selecting a few special shots for more extensive work. Darrell Young in his book "Mastering the Nikon D7100" says on page 107 "In reality, though, it makes no difference which Color space you choose when you shoot in NEF (RAW) mode because the Color space can be changed after the fact in your computer." If I select sRGB for my two scan disks, in camera, it allows me to have a JPEG ready to go for emailing and family printing at wherever they wish and I can change the RAW file to Adobe RGB for my Elements PP-ing for more selective color calibrated pro lab printing. Seems like the best of both worlds. Am I right on or am I missing something in Mr. Young's explanation? Thanks in advance!

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

Correct. The raw file has no color space. That is assigned when you leave the raw converter (Export from LR or Open Image in PS). In Lightroom it is in the sections you make in the Export dialog box and in Photoshop it is in that little link at the bottom of the ACR display. Click on that and you set the color space that will be applied.

ABJanes Loc: Jersey Boy now Virginia

Thank you...... So there is not loss of color or any compression issues vs shooting raw directly in Adobe RGB vs sRGB?

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

You CAN'T shoot raw directly in a color space as raw has no color space. So I guess the answer is no.

Don't overthink this. :-)

ABJanes Loc: Jersey Boy now Virginia

Thanks... I will do what you suggest and not over think it. I will shoot raw and jpeg in sRGB and convert the Raw to Adobe RGB as part of my workflow.

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

Good. Unless you have a late model and probably more expensive monitor, chances are your monitor cannot display the AdobeRGB space. And unless you have one of the high-end printers with 8+ inks, chances very good you cannot print the AdobeRGB 1998 space either.

Most commercial print labs need sRGB files. I asked one of the major labs that accept both sRGB and Adobe RGB what they do when the get an AdobeRGB file...they convert it to sRGB. Now there are some labs that do accept Adobe RGB and will print in that space, but you need to ask as it is not common.

IMO, the Adobe color space is overrated. People that say sRGB is ONLY for the web do not know what they are talking about.

ABJanes Loc: Jersey Boy now Virginia

My goal is what you see is what you print across many platforms (children making prints from my images--grandchildren pics) so sRGB should get me closer to that. I am leery of 8-12 color professional printers and I came from the paper & commercial printing industry "go figure". I do want to calibrate my MacBook Pro Retina Screen mid-2104. So much to learn but I am enjoying it, just have to measure 5 times cut once to prevent extreme GAS. Thanks for the input & feedback.

bobfitz Loc: Kendall-Miami, Florida

I print my own and that takes the lab's prefs out of the equation.