PS color settings

Wm

7DMKII
Jun 11, 2018
85
9
LA
Related to another thread... I have been reading M evening's books and made some changes and loaded a recommended color profile. Maybe I missing something - when the profile is saved and loaded and I open a cr2 file, shouldn't the link on the bottom of the pic be the new profile? Here is the new profile, 1st screenshot. Then what what is actually showing. Also, maybe related, errors from the color sync utility - not sure what to do with this one???
 

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Another reason to use lightroom, you don't worry about profiles, its pro photo by default. You can really get into way advanced areas quickly with color management. Every type of paper takes color ink differently so a profile is needed, it goes on and on, and on.

The image from your camera, if raw will have 8 bit Adobe RGB embedded. Since you have preserve embedded profiles selected for RGB files, it will keep that. change the box to say convert to 16 bit pro photo. If you check the box that says warn of mismatches, it should warn you. Its not a problem though, the pro photo profile includes all of Adobe RGB and more, but you can't get colors that aren't there in the first place.

When you go to save the image, then you can embed pro photo, but I don't see a point. If you save as a jpeg file, it will likely be SRGB.

Lightroom opens images in the develop module as pro photo, there is no fooling around with color spaces. That's a feature for those editing images for magazines where they have to make sure colors from various cameras all look the same. You can set Photoshop to do what Lightroom does automatically.


Color management is a mystery at first, and maybe later too.

A good primer on color management written by a photographer for photographs can be found on Keith Coopers website. Keith is also a Canon Rumors member and comments occasionally to help us out. Be aware that its a very broad topic and involves calibrating your monitor, calibrating a printer profile that matches your monitor, its a simple idea, but the devil is in the details.

 
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LDS

Sep 14, 2012
1,763
293
"Working spaces" in PS means the default profile - it can be overridden by profiles embedded into images. As you have "preserve embedded profile" set, and "ask when opening" not selected, when PS finds an embedded profile it switches to it automatically, without asking.

RAW images could have their own specific color space, or could use one of the standard ones (it's up to the camera maker). If it's a specific space, ACR (and LR) turn it into one of the standard ones (using its standard camera profiles, or you can create your own for extreme accuracy).

Anyway, in ACR you can set what space the RAW image will be converted to when opening it in Photoshop:


If you want to work in ProPhoto RGB, you should select it in ACR, and not just convert, say, an AdobeRGB image into ProPhoto RGB in PS later. The reason is that as ProPhoto RGB is "larger" than AdobeRGB, some colors could have been clipped when the RAW -> AdobeRGB conversion happened (and cannot be restored later), while RAW -> ProPhoto RGB could have kept them. That depends on the camera capabilities, though, it has to be able to record colors outside AdobeRGB. Many modern cameras can also generate images that won't fit well in 8 bit per color channel.

Still, there are good reasons to work in a larger color space (and higher bit depths, i.e. 16 bit), even when the image is in a smaller one.

When you edit an image, the various pixel values will be shifted. Whenever they fall outside the boundaries, they need to be remapped to the nearest allowable value More edits, more of that, and more unrecoverable losses. The larger the space, less risks of that happening. Of course, a lot depends on how many values in the images are already closer to the boundaries, and how "strong" the edits are. With some images and edits the losses could be quite minimal.

Then, only the "final" image needs to be converted into a smaller space/bit depth - i.e. 8 bit sRGB for web display, or a printer-specific space - so any loss is reduced to the necessary minimum.

The only drawback is images could become a little larger, require some more memory and CPU to be edited - usually not an issue given the size and power of actual systems. Remember, anyway, that while monitors capable to display the full AdobeRGB space do exist, no monitor is able to display ProPhoto RGB - while there are ways to display areas that are falling outside a color space boundaries, it could become impossible to show subtle differences.
 
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Wm

7DMKII
Jun 11, 2018
85
9
LA
Another reason to use lightroom, you don't worry about profiles, its pro photo by default. You can really get into way advanced areas quickly with color management. Every type of paper takes color ink differently so a profile is needed, it goes on and on, and on.

The image from your camera, if raw will have 8 bit Adobe RGB embedded. Since you have preserve embedded profiles selected for RGB files, it will keep that. change the box to say convert to 16 bit pro photo. If you check the box that says warn of mismatches, it should warn you. Its not a problem though, the pro photo profile includes all of Adobe RGB and more, but you can't get colors that aren't there in the first place.

When you go to save the image, then you can embed pro photo, but I don't see a point. If you save as a jpeg file, it will likely be SRGB.

Lightroom opens images in the develop module as pro photo, there is no fooling around with color spaces. That's a feature for those editing images for magazines where they have to make sure colors from various cameras all look the same. You can set Photoshop to do what Lightroom does automatically.


Color management is a mystery at first, and maybe later too.

A good primer on color management written by a photographer for photographs can be found on Keith Coopers website. Keith is also a Canon Rumors member and comments occasionally to help us out. Be aware that its a very broad topic and involves calibrating your monitor, calibrating a printer profile that matches your monitor, its a simple idea, but the devil is in the details.

Okay - once again, tks much. I was just following the tips in M evening set up guide. However, being a new user I guess I was not exactly sure what I was changing:unsure:. I thought it was the way the picture would show and I guess it is, but because I had preserve setting on, it was actually showing the embedded file info not what I had changed and saved. Hope I have that right. Anyhow, I didnt even see an explanation of what working spaces and color management policies are - I thought they both referred to the displaying of a picture....
 
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Wm

7DMKII
Jun 11, 2018
85
9
LA
"Working spaces" in PS means the default profile - it can be overridden by profiles embedded into images. As you have "preserve embedded profile" set, and "ask when opening" not selected, when PS finds an embedded profile it switches to it automatically, without asking.

RAW images could have their own specific color space, or could use one of the standard ones (it's up to the camera maker). If it's a specific space, ACR (and LR) turn it into one of the standard ones (using its standard camera profiles, or you can create your own for extreme accuracy).

Anyway, in ACR you can set what space the RAW image will be converted to when opening it in Photoshop:


If you want to work in ProPhoto RGB, you should select it in ACR, and not just convert, say, an AdobeRGB image into ProPhoto RGB in PS later. The reason is that as ProPhoto RGB is "larger" than AdobeRGB, some colors could have been clipped when the RAW -> AdobeRGB conversion happened (and cannot be restored later), while RAW -> ProPhoto RGB could have kept them. That depends on the camera capabilities, though, it has to be able to record colors outside AdobeRGB. Many modern cameras can also generate images that won't fit well in 8 bit per color channel.

Still, there are good reasons to work in a larger color space (and higher bit depths, i.e. 16 bit), even when the image is in a smaller one.

When you edit an image, the various pixel values will be shifted. Whenever they fall outside the boundaries, they need to be remapped to the nearest allowable value More edits, more of that, and more unrecoverable losses. The larger the space, less risks of that happening. Of course, a lot depends on how many values in the images are already closer to the boundaries, and how "strong" the edits are. With some images and edits the losses could be quite minimal.

Then, only the "final" image needs to be converted into a smaller space/bit depth - i.e. 8 bit sRGB for web display, or a printer-specific space - so any loss is reduced to the necessary minimum.

The only drawback is images could become a little larger, require some more memory and CPU to be edited - usually not an issue given the size and power of actual systems. Remember, anyway, that while monitors capable to display the full AdobeRGB space do exist, no monitor is able to display ProPhoto RGB - while there are ways to display areas that are falling outside a color space boundaries, it could become impossible to show subtle differences.
Tks much! I did not realize some of what you pointed out - new to all this..... The write up I was reading from did not point that out. I appreciate the feedback (y)
 
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Wm

7DMKII
Jun 11, 2018
85
9
LA
I guess im not going to worry about the error on the profiles above as Im guessing it won't be an issue unless I try to use them. I did read online where it said to change the permissions to read/write administrator for the files - which I did and they repaired unit I did a re-check and they were not correct again. I did the fix on 1 file only and tested.
 
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LDS

Sep 14, 2012
1,763
293
The first four profiles are for video, the last is for a Japanese standard coated paper - for photo processing you should not need them. Some these errors could not be actually "errors" but just unexpected data ColorSync found - ICC profiles could be quite complex inside.

You could dowload the profiles from https://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/iccprofiles/iccprofiles_mac.html, but I'm sure ColorSync would find the same "errors". Some profiles could be quite old and probably using some older format. The ICC Profile Inspector doesn't report errors to me.

Anyway, instead of changing the file permissions (if they were set that way there could be a good reason), you can run the ColorSync utility with higher privileges (from a terminal window):

sudo /Applications/Utilities/ColorSync\ Utility.app/Contents/MacOS/ColorSync\ Utility
 
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