Colour Managed Workflow, Am i doing it correctly ?

[Paul80]

Hi Guys

First of all an apology for yet another colour profiling/Calibration question but.

I will admit to not being the brightest lamp in the pack when it comes to computers and the technology behind digital photography, so I am just looking for some advice as to if I am doing it correctly.

My Digital Workflow is Images taken in RAW, Process in Photoshop or Lightroom with the final images either displayed on my Monitor or Printed on my Epson printer.

My dilemma is that everything I have read on the subject says I should set my camera to the widest colour Gamut which with my cameras is adobe 1998 and Photoshop and Lightroom should be set to either Adobe1998 or ProPhoto.

I know that as I shoot in RAW the setting in Camera is immaterial, but its the PS/LR setting that I have concerns over and here is why.

I know from the profiling that both my monitors only support sRGB and the printer I use is an Epson 1500w which is a 6 colour Dye Ink printer that also only just prints to sRGB as well.

So to my thinking if my printer and monitor can only display and print sRGB should I also be setting PS & LR to sRGB as well, otherwise I will never know what the Monitor and Printer are missing, does that sound correct.

Thanks for any help with this

Paul

 

[mcasan]

First you should calibrate your monitor using a product like Spyder 4 Elite or a Colormunki, or other calibration hardware and software package. You calibrate your monitor to the color space for which it is designed. The majority of monitors are sRGB. For more money you can get monitors that are the wider gamut of AdobeRGB.

Always shoot in the widest gamut your camera can capture using a raw format. There is no reason not to capture colors as accurate as possible. Then keep all the post processing tools using the widest gamut they can handle which should be Pro RGB or Adobe RGB. If you printing via a service they should tell you want gamut to use to save/send the file. Usually it will be in sRGB. If you print with your own printer you will most likely also print to sRGB and in the LR print module you tell LR how to handle the change from a wide gamut file to a narrow gamut printer. That is the line that starts Intent and give two choices on how to deal with any color that is outside the sRGB gamut limit of your printer.

 

[Paul80]

Hi

Thanks for the reply

I do use the Spyder4Elite for my Monitor calibration and that was how I found out my Monitors only just showed sRGB, I also use the Spyder Print System to profile my printer.

What I was trying to ask and probably failing was whats the point in setting the colour space in PS or LR to Adobe1998 or Prophoto if my Monitor and Printer can only display/print sRGB, as I would have no way of knowing what colours are not being displayed or printed correctly.

Also regarding intent, Datacolor recommend that I use the saturation setting when using profiles produced by their spyder system and although this option is supported in Photoshop its not in lightroom, although thats not an issue for me as I don't like the LR print module and send everything to Photoshop for printing.

As for capture colour space it was my understanding that as I shoot in RAW it didn't matter was colour space I set as RAW ignored it. This I understood to mean that if at a later date I got a better monitor and a Better Printer I could just change the setting in PS/LR to AdobeRGB/ProPhoto and just re open the original images.

Like I said at the top, I am not very bright with this sort of thing which was why I was asking what many must regard a Stupid question.

Paul

 

[David A]

The camera setting doesn't affect the RAW files but it will affect what you see in your viewfinder/camera screen. Set it to either and forget it. I have my camera set to Adobe RGB.

You want LR and PS to both do their processing in ProPhoto. It's the widest colour space and will make use of the maximum amount of data in your files during processing. When you export a file as a JPEG or send it to the printer, the colour space will then be reduced to whatever you wish to specify for that action. I don't print but I have my settings for export to JPEG set to sRGB because my files end up being viewed on screens that can only handle that. For printing, the printer profile determines the colour range so, unless you make your own profiles, you don't have to worry about it. Just use the profile for your specific printer.

You can select a profile, either one of the 2 RGB profiles or a printer profile, when using soft proofing and LR will then show you which colours are out of the colour space gamut/profile so you can then make adjustments to bring those colours into profile if you wish. I don't use PS but I would expect that it has a similar soft proofing feature.

Monitor calibration does not affect the colour space used by an application. What it does is ensure that your display renders colours as accurately as it can, as well as setting the display's contrast and brightness settings to appropriate levels.