Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Adobe RGB vs. sRGB

Background info:

Instead of attempting to recreate some very time intensive reviews of Adobe RGB vs. sRGB, I will simply direct you to a few that I have found to be particularly useful:

sRGB vs. ADOBE RGB 1998
The Great sRGB Versus Adobe RGB Debate


Real World Mistake :(

I recently did a photoshoot with Chris Simons & Alyssa (more about that within the coming week), and was wondering why the photos that I uploaded to my portfolio site didn't look the same as they did in Photoshop.

Here's what I mean:

The first photo is what appeared on the website (as well as the "Save for Web" feature in Photoshop) while the second photo is what I saw in Photoshop.

So what gives? By default my camera shoots in AdobeRGB, while web pages view photos in sRGB. I simply failed to convert my photos from AdobeRGB to sRGB. The photos look unsaturated because the wider gamut of the Adobe RGB was expressed as sRGB. The web sticks to the lowest common demoninator (if you will) and thus uses sRGB.


So why do shoot I AdobeRGB? I want the widest color gamut that my sensor can capture. The 12 bits from my camera allow for relatively fine gradations (much more so than an 8 bit). The conversion process is painless and has just become part of my workflow.

So how do you convert to sRGB? Simple, if you use the Save for Web feature, just click "Convert to sRGB" under the Optimize Menu flyout tab. Alternatively, you can convert to sRGB at any time by Edit>Convert To Profile>sRGB (amongst many other choices). This option will let you choose the rendering engine as well as many other choices in the conversion process.

I'm just wondering how many photos I've slaughtered now... Please don't make the same mistake I did.

A few other samples from the photoshoot for your viewing pleasure. For kicks, both versions are included. 1st = aRGB unconverted, 2nd = aRGB converted.
































1 comment:

Jesse said...

I'm not so sure you want the widest color gamut possible... perhaps you do, as you tend to be a man who thinks things all the way through, but it doesn't necessarily give you the most colors. In fact - because the information you camera can produce (probably 14 bit) is finite and set, all the color spaces will give you the same information. With a wider gamut the extremes may be further apart, but that means you have larger gaps between tones in the middle. This can more quickly lead to posterization etc.