NoBs Digital Dogbowl
The NoBs Digital Dogbowl Newsletter:
Keeping you up to date and informed on the latest, coolest, and outrageous happenings inside the world of NoBS Photo Success.
Loaded with Free photography tips, Photoshop tutorials, photo reviews,
and other totally relevant essentials. Be sure to check out the whole thing!
Hungry for more? Visit our digital photography forum.
Photoshop Mechanic by Bill Guy
Adobe vs. sRGB: What They Don't Want To Tell You
As summer approaches, I am sure we will see in the posts on NoBS someone asking what color space is best, sRGB or AdobeRGB or ProColor or LAB Color or CYMK for getting the best looking images. Well, as the saying goes, 'it all depends'.
Here is an image I know you have seen many times that shows of the color range of both sRGB and AdobeRGB.
You can see AdobeRGB is a larger triangle than sRGB, which, to a logical mind, would tell you that because more colors are available it would be best to use AdobeRGB. However, if you take a second look, you will notice that a greater range of colors is available in the blue and green areas, while the reds and yellows are the same. What this means to portrait photographers is that for skin tones and most outfits that subjects wear, it matters little which color space is used. The larger color space is far more useful in commercial photo projects and landscape images. So, am I saying to only shoot in sRGB? Well, it depends. I tend to shoot and save in AdobeRGB just because I want every pixel saved and my lab can print in this format. But, I also shoot a wide variety of things, and, rather than tax my brain by switching back and forth, I just use one color space. So, why not also use an even larger color space like Pro Color or LAB? One very good reason, current labs cannot print in these color spaces and I would have to reduce it down to AdobeRGB. If a new generation of printing machines comes out which can produce prints with these color spaces, then I might change.
If you noticed that I did not mention the commercial printing standard of CYMK, this is because it is a commercial printing standard and not something that we as portrait photographers come in contact with normally. Unless you are also doing commercial print jobs, it is something we are not going to deal with too much.
One other quick note: if you have ever posted an image on our website or just saved an image as a jpeg and noticed that the colors look a little different, this is because jpeg will save as a default sRGB. If your original image was a larger color space, then some clipping may have happened. One way to correct for this is to add an adjustment layer of Hue and Saturation before saving. This adjustment layer should have settings of -4 for hue (for a slightly redder tone) and a bump in the saturation of +5.