lovesscrapn Loc: Wisconsin North of Milwaukee

When I am working in Lightroom 4 and I do an external edit in Photoshop CS4 the photo that opens in Photoshop does not match the view I am seeing in Lightroom - the colors all change. Can someone explain to me what is happening. I don't recall this happening in the past and I am not sure if I was being stupid and changed a setting somewhere that I should not have. These are RAW photos. Do I need to change the color space? Match the color space? What color space should it be - prophoto RGB, AdobeRGB (1998) - 16bit or 8 bit.
Any help would be greatly appreciated :D))

RMM Loc: Suburban New York

It sounds like your camera is shooting in one color space, and LR4 and CS4 are set to different color spaces. All of them should match. Which one you choose is up to you. sRGB is widely used, but not necessarily the best. Do a search, there have been recent discussions on color space here at UHH, so you can choose what works best.

Squint Loc: Stockton, CA

Yep - different color space settings. I recommend Adobe RGB for the wider gamut. You can always export to sRGB when posting or sending to a printer. I don't think going from sRGB to Adobe RGB works very well if at all.

Jamers Loc: Michigan

I can sympathize with you. I admittedly...not to computer wise, have been told if I am printing at home, the RGB is the way to go. I just use Photoshop CS4, but if I intend on having prints made at Walgreens/Office Max for example, then I should use sRGB color spaceing. Except for Bayphoto, when presenting this question to the technician at the other aforementioned locations, I get that "Deer in the headlights" look. Sooo, I shoot Adobe RGB, 8 bits and I'm happy, and so are the people I shoot for, and some of them have an extremely critical eye.

tulsimm

sRGB is the newest color profile.
YOu need to get the proper printer profile for your printer hopefully sRGB. I am assuming, wag (you know what that means), you use the newest profile that your printer has .

It is my understanding, with the proper printer setup, you pass the edited photo file to the printer to manage. At least that is how I'm set up with Raw-Lightroom4- Epson R2880 printer.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Go to the preferences in LR4 and External Editing to select the color space,(AdobeRGB, ProPhotoRGB,sRGB), 8bit 16bit ppi settings etc. Everybody is different and so it depends on how involved you want to be in your work flow and if you really want to take advantage of all the data in an image or not. Your 'editing' color space is like comparing three cubes - one a little larger than the other. The largest cube fits more color than the medium size cube and the small cube. Filling the cubes with pebbles compared to large rocks is the difference between 8bit and 16bit. The pepples are the many different shades of each color (16bit) and the rocks much fewer shade of each color(8bit). Now imagine a soft rubber ball that you smash into the small cube. A lot of the ball protrudes out the top of the small cube and a little less on each of the larger cubes. The ball is what colors the printer can print in shades of color. All images have some color that 'no' printer can print. But the largest cube with pebbles will allow the printer so use more color than the smaller cubes. When saving any image as a jpg, it is automatically converted to 8bit. To get the most out of you images, all your editing should be done in the largest cube or medium cube, and as a last step before printing saved as a jpg. That way you aren't throwing away any color data. When uploading images to the internet or sending in an email, you should convert to sRGB or the small cube.

ProPhotoRGB = large cube
AdobeRGB = medium cube
sRGB = small cube
icc printer profile = rubber ball

tulsimm

Article
on Colorspace information
http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/prophoto-rgb.html
more reference articles at bottom.

lovesscrapn Loc: Wisconsin North of Milwaukee

Thanks everyone for your help!