#prophotorgb

Questions

Gamut is the range of colours that a device (camera/computer screen etc.) can show or capture.

A colour space is a set range of colours/tones that are available to display in an image.

Most DSLR cameras offer sRGB and Adobe RGB.

The standard colour space that most computer monitors can display is sRGB.

When switching from sRGB to Adobe RGB, the colours that will be improved are generally the reds and greens.

When the colour space in Photoshop is changed this will modify the way that the colours in the images are displayed.

ProPhoto RGB is a larger colour space than Adobe RGB.

When an image is mapped to a larger colour space, it can mean that soft shadows or subtle changes in colours can become more defined and create lines in the image because of the new tones that are available and displayed.

Import/Output Research

The colour space setting in my camera is found in the 'Shooting Menu' section of the setting menu. In the settings menu, the colour space shows as 'Adobe' on the screen, but not on the camera settings menu when shooting.

To find the colour space in a Photoshop workspace, go to Edit > Colour Settings.

sRGB:

Adobe RGB:

ProPhoto RGB:

Color Space. It took me thousands of post-processed photos to realize there was something wrong with the way the output turned out.

Let's start at the beginning...

I just started challenging myself to shoot raw. This requires me to post-process photos in order to come up with a .JPEG file. I have always used Lightroom for this. I was just getting to terms with the whole export process when I noted a drop-down list box that prompted me to choose the color space for the output; it said, sRGB, Adobe RGB (1998), and ProPhoto. I had no idea what the difference was so I just (mindlessly) chose ProPhoto.

The outputs usually turned out great in my version of Microsoft photo viewer because, apparently, it does something to enhance the photo, so I just went along with it. However, when I use a different computer to check on my photos, they were drab and weren't how they looked on my screen! I attributed it to a problem with the LIghtroom software and my notebook's unrealistic color rendition. That was, until last night, when I was post-processing a batch of portrait photos and was devastated as the skin tone looked grayish. I then thought of, for some reason, changing the color space to sRGB. VOILA! The colors came out just I intended them to be!

Moral lesson? Tweak, research, and experiment. You may not know what you're missing out on.