Colorspace

I'm curious to know how y'all handle colorspace, because I've found it to be a bit confusing lately.

My normal modus operandi is to shoot in aRGB-jpegs with my 20D because aRGB is supposed to produce more robust prints. However, I'm told by a number of folks that presenting aRGB photos on the web will produce dull colors.

I use two pieces of software for my viewing/editing, and those are BreezeBrowser (aka, BB) and PS2.

In order to attempt to resolve this question myself, I did a small experiment. First, BB requires that you manually assign the colorspace since apparently it cannot read the EXIF; this is something I hadn't been doing until now. I assigned a group of photos to the aRGB colorspace and made a web gallery that can be seen here: http://www.dhvp.net/unchanged/index.htm

Second, I set up BB to convert all of my now registered aRGB photos to sRGB via the PROOF function; no other alterations were made. This resulted in a fairly significant color change... the reds are definitely brighter (although not obvious in this selection of photos) and the overall scene is "punchier." I created another web gallery for these which can be seen here: http://www.dhvp.net/breeze/index.htm

Third, I opened up the original files in PS2 and converted them all to sRGB. There was pretty much no perceptible color change when I did this action. I created a third web gallery which can be viewed here: http://www.dhvp.net/photoshop/index.htm. For the record, I see no difference between this group and the one to which I did nothing at all.

I imagine most of you shoot RAW. I would too, if I were either more serious about it or trying to make some money off prints, but the fact is I'm just a hack who likes the ease of shooting jpegs. So, what colorspace do you use for printing? web display? I look forward to the discussion!

JC:

It is all voodoo for sure, and you will get many answers. I shoot RAW and convert into ProPhoto colorspace, then convert into JHolmesChromeSpace100 (soon to be a new one), then assign one of Joe's chroma variants as needed. When I am going to the web I convert to sRGB as a final step. Since the web is not color managed - nor are about 90% of the monitors in use calibrated - no telling what the images are going to look like on any given monitor. All you can do is get it right on your calibrated monitor, save to sRGB, and let it go...

As you might imagine, my workflow very closely resembles Tims' above (RAW -> ProPhoto -> JHolmesChromeSpace100). Lately, though, I've been experimenting with proofing web output using the MonitorRGB profile. I sometimes see significant color shift when just converting to sRGB and saving as JPG. I adjust the MonitorRGB proof as much as I need (hue/saturation usually, but sometimes it's more complicated) in order to match the original before using Save for Web - at least the final product seems to then match what my browser will display.

I dont understand why you want to go to a color space that is that much larger than your outsource. It seems like when you are ready to print it you would have to lose some of those colors?

If you're talking to me, then my response is that I'd like to shoot in a wide colorspace (aRGB) which is more suitable for printing, but at the same time I want to be able to show decent quality color on screen by converting to sRGB also. Of course, RAW would be the best option, but jpegs are so much more convenient. Converting aRGB jpegs to sRGB jpegs is so much faster than converting RAW to each colorspace.

Well I was really refering to the other wider color spaces. the aRGB seems closer to the print colorspace.

I think this thread has fallen off the radar though.