easystreets1 wrote:
Friends, I'm about to lose my mind with color management. I shoot RAW with Adobe RBG colorspace, process in Adobe LR and PS. After I export to a jpg at the highest quality, the image's color looks screwed up. I'm attaching a screenshot which shows Adobe PS with the correctly balanced blue sky in one image at right, the Windows File Explorer preview at center, and the Windows Photo Viewer at left. The blue is radically different across the board. While I expect a little variation, this seems excessive. What might be the problem and how can I rectify it? How do I ensure the color is "locked in" to display as I intended when I upload to a service like Facebook or Flickr or submit it for a competition?
Friends, I'm about to lose my mind with color mana... (
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First of all, raw files have color spaces unique to each camera model. That is why it takes Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, etc. a few weeks or months to release a color profile update for a new camera.
Raw is a data file, not really an image. Think of it being a color negative... The moment you start converting it to something you can see, you are limiting it in some way.
Open a raw file in Lightroom's Develop Module. It gets converted from the camera profile to a 16-bit image in a wide-gamut space like ProPhoto RGB. As you adjust it, it is being converted from ProPhoto RGB to your 8-bit or 10-bit monitor profile, so you can SEE it. When you export it, you convert it to 8-bit sRGB JPEGs for the Internet, or 8-bit sRGB JPEGs for most photo labs, or MAYBE 16-bit Adobe RGB TIFFs for some commercial CMYK printers.
Adobe RGB and sRGB apply ONLY to JPEG, TIFF, and other IMAGE formats. Raw files are just "potential images" that require a camera-specific profile for conversion to something useful.
If you set a camera to Adobe RGB, it will save the JPEG preview image for the raw file in Adobe RGB, and any JPEG file image will be saved in Adobe RGB color space. It will tag the JPEG file with Adobe RGB.
If you set a camera to sRGB, it will save the JPEG preview image for the raw file in sRGB, and any JPEG file image will be saved in sRGB color space. It will tag the JPEG with sRGB.
Unless you are using some sort of "closed loop" system that you understand and control, OR, you are working with a commercial printer that specifically requests it, it is probably not a great idea to use Adobe RGB, unless your workflow is JPEG or TIFF only. If you do work with Adobe RGB, you need a monitor that can display 100% of that color space, and it must be calibrated and profiled correctly.
If you are working with raw images, and printing your own output, you can print directly from Lightroom or other PP software and convert from Lightroom's ProPhoto or Melissa RGB directly to the paper/printer profile you need, on the fly. That maximizes the potential for "what you see is what you get" color, assuming your monitor is properly calibrated and profiled. That's how top-end pros and art museums print their finest work.The high end Epsons usually can print more color gamut than your monitor can display.
When you get your calibration kit, pay particular attention to the setting of black point, white point, color temperature, and gamma. These are good starting points for a photo printing environment:
Black point 0.5 cd/m^2
White point 85 to 120 cd/m^2
Color temperature 6500K
Gamma 2.2