[nichpr]

Is there any reason not to set my D80 color mode to AdobeRGB if I do all my post processing in Photoshop?

- Paul

[P-E]

I will be interested to hear any comments on this one too Paul

[Dabhand16]

I always use Adobe colour mode. Some members convert to sRGB when preparing images for posting, but I have to say that I usually forget to convert, or just don't bother!

There was a fairly detailed thread on this a while back, but can't remember where it is.

[Sonsey]

There's a few threads on this subject Paul if you do a search for sRGB, here's a couple to get you started

saying hello with a printing prob
sRGB or Adobe 1998
Colour Management

[Dave Canon]

If you intend printing, then you should use Adobe RGB (1998) as colour space on your camera and set it as the working space in PhotoShop or Elements. sRGB is intended for web and consumer devices such as digital projectors and is a smaller colour gamut than Adobe RGB (1998). You can always convert to sRGB for web output.

[ChrisCarr]

Originally Posted by Dave Canon

If you intend printing, then you should use Adobe RGB (1998) as colour space on your camera and set it as the working space in PhotoShop or Elements. sRGB is intended for web and consumer devices such as digital projectors and is a smaller colour gamut than Adobe RGB (1998). You can always convert to sRGB for web output.

I have to chime in on this one, it's one of my specialties... but I will keep it brief. I agree in theory... but not always in practice for one simple reason, all printers don't follow the rules. The biggest problem I see out there is that a lot of companies don't pay much attention to profiling and just go for the mass consumer solution.

Personally, I tend to be a cheap guy so I look for the highest quality for the cheapest price. I use a mass market printer, they are basically using excellent equipment these days but set to complete auto pilot mode. In doing so, most are set to assume a sRGB profile is being used. For 90%+ of the market... it is.

Yes, if you are using a professional developer (and even some more consumer oriented developers), they will recognize that you have used (and should have embedded) an Adobe 1998 profile giving you a better quality print. On that note, there are better profiles out there than Adobe 1998... but I am not going there.

With all of this in mind, some desktop printers are set up the same way, sRGB is expected, prints will look better if printed after being converted to sRGB. Is this professional? No... Is your desktop printer professional? Even if it is a professional grade printer, are you using the internal rip or a separate rip solution? For the most part, the internal rips are terrible...

To keep it simple, you camera should be set to Adobe 1998, but you HAVE to process your images. Simply converting them to sRGB for screen is needed. Play with what prints better... technical excellence doesn't always make for the best print.

I will finish with what I use on a daily basis.

A: Xerox color copy for quick previews... sRGB works better, the color isn't great no matter what! sRGB works out well without a whole lot of tinkering with the internal rip settings. (Which I had did... until my co-works needed me to explain why they had to set up every document they printed differently then they had for years to get the same quality they were used to before I 'improved' the printer)

B: HP5500 with external rip... only Adobe 1998 or CMYK SWOP v2.

C: Sending out work to a Lambda (continuous tone printer)... I only use the Adobe 1998 profile or better.

[nichpr]

I'd like to thank everyone who chipped into this thread. I thought I had it pretty well figured out until Chis introduced internal and external rips.
Chris can you help me understand what rips are and the role they play in all this?
Thanks
- Paul

[ChrisCarr]

RIP - Raster Image Processor

A color profile is a document describing a particular color space. Each piece of equipment should have it's color described by a color profile. You want to assign the document to large unrestrained color profile such as Adobe RGB 1998. Then you view that document translated with your monitor profile. The key is VIEW.

A lot of peoples first mistake is to convert or assign the monitor profile to the document.
The monitor profile is constrained to describe the portion of the full color space that you are able to see, so bad idea. We do not want to constrain the actual recorded information.

So now you have a nice clean processed image living in Adobe RGB 1998. This image is fed to a printer. The printer has to translate Adobe RGB 1998 color to the inks that are being used. This system is your RIP. A lot of desktop printers use your computer to translate the color via a software rip on your machine. Some have this built right in. For example, printers that have card readers have to process the RGB images straight from the card and print with no computer in the loop, these tend not to be the best software systems on the market.

There are a lot of tutorials out there on how to use Photoshop to manipulate your processing of color and use the Adobe engine to translate the profile information. Here is the kicker... Even the basic desktop printers can be controlled a lot better if you use a secondary rip system. Great color control comes with a price tag so most opt to stick with Photoshop or your systems software solution.

Here are 2 tips...
1: You want to translate your images as few times as possible. Once when captured then once out to viewing (that being on screen or print).
2: Find the profiles for the paper you are printing to. Epson has 'canned' profiles available for each of it's papers on each of its printers. If those aren't looking great, search the net and you might find something better... Why bother with different profiles for different paper? Each paper has a different absorption rate and white point. The profile is built to adjust for those variables.

End with a story for those who stuck in with yet another long post (Sorry...):
I was one of those suckers who jumped and bought the Epson 2000p. I say suckers because they had a metamerism problem with the inks. The job I was working had a full profiling equipment set-up so I went ahead and built a new profile with a Max Black separation. This uses only black to build the gray tones, this was a little 'gritty' but fixed the problem for me. A few months later Epson released the 'patch'... the same solution... Max black profile for all there papers. At least it filled in the missing profiles of the papers I hadn't had time to build the profiles for. That printer is still collecting dust on my shelf...

[erick]

I am using Adobe RGB , but 2 color space in photoshop CS2, adobe RGB for prinying and sRGB for the web