sRGB or Adobe 1998 colour profiles.

[yak.h'cir]

I've just read in a photo mag that you shouldn't use sRGB because its a lot lower quality then other formats. Infact some people apparently refer to it as stupid RGB. The adobe profile is supposed to allow for a lot more colours in the picture. I never really knew anything about the colour profiles so of course everything was defaulted to sRGB.

So I thought I'd draw attention to this as I imagine that a lot of people might have their equipment set to sRGB.

The mag seemed to make a big deal about it, I haven't taken any pictures in the new profile yet so i dont know myself if there is really a difference. I have my doubts that it makes a big difference becuase I would have probably heard something about it before. Anyone else have any experience changing profiles?

 

[SDK^]

AdobeRGB offers a wider range of green and blue - see the colour range image below
It can make a small difference when used with a printer supporting Adobe RGB profiles but generally speaking 99% of people wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

By the way - Lab Colour range is even wider than AdobeRGB but if devices don't support it then it's useless

 

[growse]

It depends on what you're using your photos for. If you're outputting to a calibrated device, printer, calibrated monitor etc; then Adobe RGB is probably a better bet as the gamut is bigger and allows for more colours. If you're publishing to web, where most people viewing don't have calibrated monitors, you'll want sRGB as this is the default colourspace of most computers. Because web browsers aren't colourspace-aware, they won't do any translation from the AdobeRGB to whatever profile the monitor is using. Or something.

 

[Scam]

I shoot in Adobe RGB simply because my D50's manual it says:

Photographs in this setting are adapted to Adobe RGB color space. This color space is capable of expressing wider gamut of colours than sRGB, making it the preferred choice for images that will be extensively processed or retouched.

 

[FranchiseJuan]

The colour space you use will depend greatly on what colour space you can capture in. If you are capturing in sRGB, then there is no benifit to working in Adobe RGB in the rest of your workflow. There are exceptions to this though where HDR is used, and you can create more tones after the fact.

Also for web displaying, and for printing, you will need to convert the photo to other profiles, and often you loose some of that wider gamet of colour. Also it is qestionable if there is any real benifit to Adobe RGB if you are outputting to anything other then the new 8 or 12 colour printers, as the 6 or 3 colour printers can't really reproduce the wider colour range (from what I have seen).