The value (or not) of Adobe RGB

Ryadia wrote:

On the premise that a digital camera is capturing the image. A CRT monitor is displaying it and an inkjet (or worse – a colour laser) is the output medium… Only the camera is capable of benefiting from a wide gamut colour space.

My question then, is what value is there of using Adobe RGB as a monitor profile under this scenario?

There is never any value in using the wrong profile for your monitor. AdobeRGB is an abstract working space, not a monitor space.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

Ryadia wrote:

On the premise that a digital camera is capturing the image. A CRT monitor is displaying it and an inkjet (or worse – a colour laser) is the output medium… Only the camera is capable of benefiting from a wide gamut colour space.

I agree with the basic point, but the last sentence is not quite true. Adobe RGB was designed to encompass the purer cyan and yellow colors of CMYK. There is at least one CRT that is capable of displaying this color space directly, and in time this will become routine technology. http://www.dpreview.com/news/0310/03100701nec22adobemon.asp

But these are both quibbles, important to 99% of us. If you want to work with the pure colors of CMYK, you are much better off simply working in CMYK, and the Adobe RGB monitor costs more than some houses do.

My question then, is what value is there of using Adobe RGB as a monitor profile under this scenario?

I’m sure you meant "working space", not "monitor profile".

I presently produce postcards.
I print them on a Xerox ‘Docucolor’ digital print station. Basically this is a high end laser printer. I don’t have a problem with the quality of output, it’s comparable to and often better than alternative printing.

All to the good.

Often I see more detail in shadows on the screen than this printer can reproduce. Sometimes my Epson or HP inkjets can come close to reproducing the full tonal range but not always.

Yes, tonality in deep shadows is particularly difficult to reproduce well.

Yesterday I shot in Adobe RGB mode (Canon 10D camera) but instead of converting the profile to my working space, I preserved it. The contrast range of these pictures was closer to what I’d expect from film, rather than what I’ve come to expect from digital.

I’m surprised.

This inevitably led me to the conclusion that my work flow and colour management of 6 month, might benefit from an overhaul. I’m about to commission my new printer so perhaps it is timely to question my process. Can anyone make some suggestions please?

This is certainly an easy change to make in your workflow, provided your legacy images have their profiles embedded. One downside of using Adobe RGB as your working space is that your images may be interpreted as sRGB by someone down the line, and your image’s colors will then appear dull. I don’t recommend sending Adobe RGB images to a third party unless you are very clear with them on this.

Re why the conversion to your working space wrecks the contrast. Perhaps you have selected Perceptual instead of Relative Colorimetric as your intent in your Color Settings? If this is the case, try changing the intent and see if you still see the difference.

Re your printer’s shadows: since the Docucolor supports PostScript, you may gain better control over the shadows by converting to cmyk, correcting the shadows explicitly via the K channel (CMYK is very good on shadows), saving as eps, and printing the eps file.

As a matter of fact, you may see a general improvement in the quality of your printed laser output if you do your own CMYK separation and correction in Photoshop. Direct control over CMYK is a great way to make your images pop off the page. Take a look at any of Dan Margulis’s books and you may find that a new world will open up.

http://www.technoaussie.com/ryadia

Glad to see you are on the air again!
The wanted poster is a sad testimony.

My best to you.
—

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

FWIW, inkjets cannot reproduce the Adobe RGB 1998 gamut. sRGB provides a more film-like palette and is therefore a better
base color sppace if one plans to ultimately produce prints, etc. Luminous Landscape has a great article on color spaces

"Ryadia" wrote in message

On the premise that a digital camera is capturing the image. A CRT monitor is displaying it and an inkjet (or worse – a colour laser) is the output medium… Only the camera is capable of benefiting from a wide gamut colour space.

My question then, is what value is there of using Adobe RGB as a monitor profile under this scenario? I presently produce postcards. I print them on a Xerox ‘Docucolor’ digital print station. Basically this is a high end laser printer. I don’t have a problem with the quality of output, it’s comparable to and often better than alternative printing.
Often I see more detail in shadows on the screen than this printer can reproduce. Sometimes my Epson or HP inkjets can come close to reproducing the full tonal range but not always.

Yesterday I shot in Adobe RGB mode (Canon 10D camera) but instead of converting the profile to my working space, I preserved it. The contrast range of these pictures was closer to what I’d expect from film, rather than what I’ve come to expect from digital.

This inevitably led me to the conclusion that my work flow and colour management of 6 month, might benefit from an overhaul. I’m about to commission my new printer so perhaps it is timely to question my process. Can anyone make some suggestions please?
http://www.technoaussie.com/ryadia

Ryadia

"Jerry McG" wrote…

FWIW, inkjets cannot reproduce the Adobe RGB 1998 gamut. sRGB provides

a

more film-like palette and is therefore a better
base color sppace if one plans to ultimately produce prints, etc.

Luminous

Landscape has a great article on color spaces

Could you give a source for this info, please.

Frans

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 07:45:50 -0600, "Jerry McG" wrote:

FWIW, inkjets cannot reproduce the Adobe RGB 1998 gamut. sRGB provides a more film-like palette and is therefore a better
base color sppace if one plans to ultimately produce prints, etc. Luminous Landscape has a great article on color spaces

No printers can produce the AdobeRGB colour space. They print in CMYK. The reason for using the AdobeRGB colour space is because it covers more of the CMYK colour space than sRGB.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Ryadia wrote:

On the premise that a digital camera is capturing the image. A CRT monitor is displaying it and an inkjet (or worse – a colour laser) is the output medium… Only the camera is capable of benefiting from a wide gamut colour space.

For example laser based photoprinting (on photographic paper) have larger gamut than the CRT has, even slightly larger than what AdobeRGB has.

My question then, is what value is there of using Adobe RGB as a monitor profile under this scenario?

Using a large gamut RGB working-space is beneficial when you have large gamut input data, that means e.g. linear RAW conversion from digital SLRs. It sometimes happens that in the scene there is some very saturated surface(s), a small gamut capture device would clip the saturated (out-of-gamut) colors so any surface detail or texture this surface had would be wiped out, this can look rather ugly in case the object is large. The same happens also when wide-gamut image data is just converted to to a small gamut working-space.

When you have widegamut data in widegamut RGB working-space you have the option to soft-proof the image (against the small gamut output device profile) and edit the image in such way that the detail will not be lost when you perform the actual profile conversion (or you print it using color-management).

Widegamut working-space is also beneficial when you want to make use of the full gamut of a widegamut ouput device or media e.g. the laser photoprints mentioned abobe, no matter what the gamut of the input device was.

Timo Autiokari http://www.aim-dtp.net