#colourprofile

What is a colour space? 

A colour space is a defined range of colours. It varies for each screen, printer and mobile device. Therefore, colour space is a method of organising and understanding the colour capabilities of a device or file. 

Why do we need it?

Having a colour space can tell us what colours a printer can print, a camera can capture and a monitor can display. It is a mathematical system of categorising colour, and each colour space references a colour model.

When would you use adobe98 or SRGB?

Adobe created Adobe RGB in order to display colours on a screen the way they would appear when printed. Unfortunately this still only displays about 50% of visible colours. This means that while the Adobe RGB colour space the colours will be more vibrant, the RGB colour space will have more subtle tones. 

What is a colour profile?

A colour profile is a way of describing how a system displays colour. Profiles help to control the colours used on certain devices and help to provide the consistency between the devices being used.

When would you use a colour profile?

COLOUR PROFILES 

Colour management is the process in which the characteristics of colours from devices in the imaging chain are known as utilised and precise in the transport of colour.

In terms of the imaging chain, this consists of the device that the image is captured on, the device the image is displayed on and the device that the image is printed on. All of these devices will have a different colour profile and that effects the way that you will see it from start (capture) to finish (Print). To ensure that the finial image produced is to the standards that you wanted to achieve colour profiles are used. Different types of colour profiles will determine how large or small of a colour range you are working with. (Image two) explains the difference in colour range between sRGB and AdobeRGB as both only contain of three colours, however this shows that the scale in AdobeRGB has a larger difference between them which means that photos which are taken in this colour space will appear more vibrant where as sRGB will have more subtile tones among the image.

in certain situations where you are photographing subjects with strong colour tones AdobeRGB would be the more suitable colour space to use  as this will show the colours more accurately compared to sRGB. In comparison AdobeRGB is overall the better of the two, it represents 35% more colour ranges than what sRGB is able to, however this does not mean that it is better for photography as the world works more with sRGB than it does with AdobeRGB. sRGB came first therefore mainly everything on a computer is built around this ( The internet, video games,ect). Most computer monitors can only display about 97% of the sRGB colour space, and even less of AdobeRGB (76%).

Printers have began adapting to the AdobeRGB colour space, which allows more vibrant colours in your prints, better colour consistency than the monitor can even replicate. When shooting in AdobeRGB you can convert it to sRGB at any point without having to worry about any loss of colour in the image, however you can not shoot sRGB and then convert back into AdobeRGB.

sRGB is more suited for images being put on the web and AdobeRGB for images that you will be printing.

ProPhotoRGB offers a larger colour space compared to both sRGB and AdobeRGB (Shown in image three).