If your monitor can only display sRGB colors, then you can't see everything in you image, so you're working partially blind. The first is the capability of your monitor. There are two main questions to consider. If you don't anticipate the problems that may occur during conversion, then you may be surprised at the results. The best solution is to understand the ramifications and limitations of your choice. You can always convert to a smaller color space at a later time.įrom my perspective, neither approach is always right. The other school of thought is to use a very large color space, such as ProPhoto, so that you're not needlessly throwing away color information too early in the process. One school of thought is to choose sRGB (the smallest color space) so that you're reasonably assured that your monitor can correctly display all of the colors in your image, and you can't edit what you can't see.
At best, it seems that most tutorials gloss over the issue and suggest one of two approaches. As a photographer, you can choose to work in any of the available color spaces, so you can choose to include more colors in your photos if you want.Ĭhoosing a working color space is an area that's often overlooked. Most commercial photo printers can only print in the sRGB color space, but modern ink jet printers can usually print most or all of the larger Adobe RGB 1998 color space. Most monitors can only display sRGB colors, so it's a good match. The most commonly used color space is sRGB, especially on the web.
The color values in your image only have meaning relative to the color space being used to interpret and display them. When you're working with digital photos, you are working within a color space. But, even the most vivid red in ProPhoto RGB is still less vivid than the most vivid red we can see. Of the three, sRGB is the smallest, meaning that its most vivid red will be less vivid than either of the other two. The three most common color spaces are sRGB, Adobe RGB 1998 and ProPhoto RGB. The color space (or profile) defines the limits of the space's various colors relative to the visible spectrum. The spectrum of colors we can see is well beyond most devices abilities to display.Ĭolor scientists have addressed this issue by creating standard color spaces, and also the ability for individual devices to have their own custom color profile. Even if your monitor is giving you "as much red as it can" it's not going to be more red than you can see. To further complicate the problem, we can see colors well beyond the range that most devices can display. So, what you see as a result can be quite different. Some monitors can display a lot of red, where others might be very limited. Those values are telling the display device, such as your monitor, to display "as much red as you can." The problem starts there, because "as much red as you can" will be different on different devices. You'll also often times see it expressed as 255 red, 0 green and 0 blue, but it's still really a percentage. For instance, imagine a pure red color, expressed as 100% red, 0% green and 0% blue. Instead, they represent a percentage of the color. Colors are represented as values of red, green and blue where each component is expressed as a number. The problem is that colors aren't always the same - especially in the world of digital imaging.
Sometimes things look great in Lightroom, but don't look so great when you export a JPEG to post on the web or send to your printer. Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop are great tools for adjusting the colors, brightness and contrast of a photo, but there is a hidden gotcha - color space conversion.
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