Forum: Photography


Subject: Color Settings In Photoshop

Michelle A. opened this issue on Jul 23, 2003 ยท 16 posts


DHolman posted Wed, 23 July 2003 at 11:26 PM

Yea, I'm AdobeRGB all the way. There are wider gamuts, but Adobe suits me pretty fine. When you save your image to the web, are you just doing that (doing "Save for Web") and nothing else or are you converting it. If you just switch to another workspace or just do "save for web" the software simply throws information away, which is why it doesn't look the way you'd think. I do all my editing/correcting while in the AdobeRGB colorspace. Once it looks right, I save that to a .TIF file (Zip mode). This one I can now output to higher gamut devices like printers. I then convert the image to sRGB for web use. Go to IMAGE > MODE > CONVERT TO PROFILE. The "Source Space" should say AdobeRGB(1998) or whichever one you use. Now set the "Destination Space" profile to sRGB IEC6..blah blah blah (forget all the numbers). Under conversion options, most of the time you should have the engine set to Adobe (ACE) and black point compression selected. The intent is up to you. Most people say use "relative colorimetric" and for something things I do, but I sometimes feel Perceptual is better for what we do (will talk about that in a bit). Depending on the colors in your image, you may see a slight change in the image, but it won't be a huge amount as the gamut is converted. Remember, only go in this direction. Going back the other way is like going from 16-bit/channel to 8-bit and then back to 16-bit. You don't gain anything back. Most of what I say above is the default and you should just be able to choose sRGB on the conversion and go. Just to throw a little more into it, here's what the different Intent settings do (remember that you can pretty much interchange the words gamut and colorspace/color workspace): Perceptual - This is the one I think fits more with what we do. This mode basically renders the stuff that would be out-of-gamut so that all the colors maintain the same visual relationship. Sort of like shrinking the gamut down to fit so that visually it looks the same as before you switched it. Saturation - Preserves the saturation of the colors, but it does it by sacrificing the hue and lightness. So your colors are nice and bold, but the rest well ... depends on the colorspaces and colors in the image. I once read that this is good for doing presentations where bright colors are more important than color correctness. Relative Colorimetric - the default; it maps the colors that are out-of-gamut to the nearest in-gamut color. Because of that, you can get slight shifts in color like I mention above because it's not concerned with the visual perception, but a straight mathematical relationship. Absolute Colorimetric - maps gamut to the other directly without making any adjustments to black or white points. Good for design stuff, but will screw with a photographic image. Hope that helps and hopefully not too much tech-speak. Lemme know if I confused or was unclear. -=>Donald