Posted by Ken Atkinson on June 16, 2008 at 10:10 AM
I am working with a Canon 20D, PS Elements 5, a calibrated monitor and a HP deskjet printer for around the house stuff. I tag my Raw images in the camera with Adobe RGB, process and save the final files as Tiffs, still with Adobe RGB. If the file is going to be for Web display, I convert a copy to sRGB.
I recently sent several files to a new well known lab to be printed, but I missed the fact they wanted the input as sRGB. When the prints came back, I was impressed that the colors seemed to have more pop than the files I sent out. I e-mailed them a question about that, and the reply was that they prefer sRGB as a color space. I am assuming they converted the files themselves.
Yesterday I took a file and converted a copy to sRGB. I then printed both the sRGB file and the Adobe RGB file. When I viewed both images on the monitor side by side and both prints side by side, both of the sRGB images displayed more vibrant colors than the Adobe RGB images.
All along I have read here and other places that Adobe RGB was wider than sRGB and should provide more available colors. So why do the sRGB images look better?
When you say you viewed them on the monitor, what application were you using and was it colorspace-aware?
Guy
Posted by Ken Atkinson on June 16, 2008 at 10:35 AM
I like to use ACDSee as my image browser. Color space aware, I believe I checked off to recognize and use the imbedded color space, but I am not in front of it now to check. The monitor result matched what I saw on the prints.
Ken - This is largely speculation...but here goes...
"More" colors doesn't necessarily mean more "vibrant" colors in an image or print. I can think of a couple of ways this could happen.
One problem here might be how the colors are converted from sRGB to Adobe RGB, or vice-versa. Just because Adobe RGB is a wider colorspace, that doesn't mean that colors will automatically be more vibrant in Adobe RGB. For instance, if you take have an image that easily fits in sRGB, and map it properly to Adobe RGB, it should be pretty much identical. If you have an image that just barely fits into Adobe RGB, and map it to sRGB, colors may be clipped, and at sRGB's max saturation.
This is largely depends on the rendering intent - perceptual will maintain the relative color differences, while relative colorimetric will clip colors that are out of gamut. Is it possible that you have colors out of gamut that are being clipped in sRGB, and are therefore at max saturation? The printer could be overdoing these making the print look more "vibrant".
Something else to looks at is can you soft-proof? If you can (and Elements 5 can't, I don't think, but if you have something like Qimage, you might be able to), is your soft proofing coming out looking like the prints do? The other possiblity is that you have a mediocre profile somewhere, and that sRGB is just better utilized by the bad profile - Or that the profiles aren't being applied correctly.
One thing to remember is that the profile/calibration system isn't set up to give you the brightest or most vibrant prints. It's not even set up to get the print to necessarily match the screen (particularly since the screen can't show all the colors in Adobe RGB, unless it's very high end). Really, the profile/calibration system is set up to most closely match a certain baseline established by the color spaces and capabilities of the printer; To most closely match what's stored in the file.
Discussion
3 repliesI recently sent several files to a new well known lab to be printed, but I missed the fact they wanted the input as sRGB. When the prints came back, I was impressed that the colors seemed to have more pop than the files I sent out. I e-mailed them a question about that, and the reply was that they prefer sRGB as a color space. I am assuming they converted the files themselves.
Yesterday I took a file and converted a copy to sRGB. I then printed both the sRGB file and the Adobe RGB file. When I viewed both images on the monitor side by side and both prints side by side, both of the sRGB images displayed more vibrant colors than the Adobe RGB images.
All along I have read here and other places that Adobe RGB was wider than sRGB and should provide more available colors. So why do the sRGB images look better?
Thanks for the info.
Ken
Guy
Ken
"More" colors doesn't necessarily mean more "vibrant" colors in an image or print. I can think of a couple of ways this could happen.
One problem here might be how the colors are converted from sRGB to Adobe RGB, or vice-versa. Just because Adobe RGB is a wider colorspace, that doesn't mean that colors will automatically be more vibrant in Adobe RGB. For instance, if you take have an image that easily fits in sRGB, and map it properly to Adobe RGB, it should be pretty much identical. If you have an image that just barely fits into Adobe RGB, and map it to sRGB, colors may be clipped, and at sRGB's max saturation.
This is largely depends on the rendering intent - perceptual will maintain the relative color differences, while relative colorimetric will clip colors that are out of gamut. Is it possible that you have colors out of gamut that are being clipped in sRGB, and are therefore at max saturation? The printer could be overdoing these making the print look more "vibrant".
Something else to looks at is can you soft-proof? If you can (and Elements 5 can't, I don't think, but if you have something like Qimage, you might be able to), is your soft proofing coming out looking like the prints do? The other possiblity is that you have a mediocre profile somewhere, and that sRGB is just better utilized by the bad profile - Or that the profiles aren't being applied correctly.
One thing to remember is that the profile/calibration system isn't set up to give you the brightest or most vibrant prints. It's not even set up to get the print to necessarily match the screen (particularly since the screen can't show all the colors in Adobe RGB, unless it's very high end). Really, the profile/calibration system is set up to most closely match a certain baseline established by the color spaces and capabilities of the printer; To most closely match what's stored in the file.