Profiles - ProPhoto and sRGB curiosities

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BarkingBeans Coffee

BarkingBeans Coffee

Michael H
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I have been trying to sort out a curiosity and it may be the Color Profile. When I save a jpg in ProPhoto and send it in iMessage it looks quite dark, but if you open it up you see the brighter colors. Could it be that iMessage is showing the sRGB until it's opened? Then I now wonder what happens when I link an image here that is was save in ProPhoto.

So I am posting the recent Flicker image here saved in both color spaces so I can see what happens on my screen. They are quite different with sRGB on top, yet I am seeing the ProPhoto results as well. I was under the impression that would not come through on the web? I am very confused now. The ProPhoto comes from LRc standard I believe.

Help me understand. First image is sRGB. Second is ProPhoto.





In the Develop module, by default, Lightroom renders previews using the ProPhoto RGB color space. ProPhoto RGB contains all colors that digital cameras can capture, making it an excellent choice for editing images.

Library, Map, Book, and Print modules in Lightroom render colors in the Adobe RGB color space. The Adobe RGB gamut includes most colors that digital cameras can capture together with some printable colors (cyans and blues, in particular) that cannot be defined using the smaller, web-friendly sRGB color space.

Lightroom also uses Adobe RGB for:

Lightroom uses sRGB by default for:

  • Slideshow and Web modules
  • Images exported as JPEGs destined for the web and email
  • Uploaded web galleries and PDF slideshows
  • Images published to Facebook and other photo-sharing sites using the the Publish Services panel
  • If you export books as PDF or JPEG from the Book module, you can choose sRGB or a different color profile.
 
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They look quite different to me. Viewed on a Samsung (android) tablet running Opera browser. I believe opera is supposed to be color managed. The second looks coorect. Did you convert to srgb or just use the srgb color space without converting? Converting will map the out of gamut prophoto colors into an srgb colors according to whether you chose perceptual, absolute, etc.

The other issue is whether a browser or application is color managed. Could be the preview in the email or messaging app isn't color managed, but the engine used to open fully is. So you see a prophoto image being treated as an srgb image until it is fully opened.
 
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Bill, yes the second is correct, and I converted to sRGB for posting here. I suspect iMessage is doing what you suggest. It's just new behavior to me and makes things strange as I have to tell people to open the image.
 
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bleirer said:
More browsers and apps are becoming color managed these days, but safest I think is still to convert to jpeg with srgb, which is pretty universal.
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What Bill said. For most predictable results make the jpeg conversion. Otherwise you're at the whim of the conversion being made by an upload site, web page, viewer's device, etc.
 
NorthernFocus said:
What Bill said. For most predictable results make the jpeg conversion. Otherwise you're at the whim of the conversion being made by an upload site, web page, viewer's device, etc.
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I'll just add that jpeg could be other color spaces too, so one has to click that convert to srgb checkbox.
 
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I did convert that jpeg above before I uploaded it. My main issue is iMessage. It's rendering what looks like sRGB in the message thread but in photos or when you click on it, it seems to render the embedded color profile. My ProPhoto versions seem to be showing fine on the web like in this thread.
 
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The sRGB reduced color space was created so as to have better accuracy when customers were making color prints from their P&S cameras. With a much smaller color space the color matching if off was less evident. Cheaper monitors will use the sRGB color space as it reduces the cost of manufacture. The 30" Asus TUF with sRGB sells for $299 as compared to the AOC with 131% of the Adobe RGB color space presented that sells for $1,584. There are other factors involved but the color space fidelity is a key one.

With a reduced color space with JPG files the yellows and reds are the most noticeably off with fewer color buckets available with 8-bit files. This is where one sees plastic looking skin with images of people even with no post noise reduction being applied.

When I evaluate NR applications I start with 12-bit files to determine how much is lost with noise reduction as this affects color fidelity and subtle nuances are lost both with people and with wildlife. I was surprised to see the decrease in IQ when photographing sea lions with JPG versus Raw file capture in terms of color tonality compression.
 
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BarkingBeans Coffee said:
My ProPhoto versions seem to be showing fine on the web like in this thread.
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How non-sRGB photos will render to viewers on the web depend a lot on the browsers they use and whether those browsers support color management. IOW, they may look fine to you when posted in ProPhoto RGB or Adobe RGB or other color spaces but unless you convert your images to sRGB prior to web posting all bets are off in terms of what they look like to the folks viewing your images on a variety of browsers.

Best bet is to always convert web images to sRGB before posting which is very easy to do in the export dialog box in LR or using Convert to Profile in PS or via similar methods in other editing tools. You still can't guarantee folks see the same color rendering you see as different monitors, some color and gamma calibrated and many not calibrated at all will render the same colors, contrast and brightness differently but posting images in sRGB can at least help to reduce big color problems.

In terms of the instagram thing it appears the preview is not color managed but the final image view is color managed. That sounds like an instagram implementation thing.
 
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DRwyoming said:
How non-sRGB photos will render to viewers on the web depend a lot on the browsers they use and whether those browsers support color management. IOW, they may look fine to you when posted in ProPhoto RGB or Adobe RGB or other color spaces but unless you convert your images to sRGB prior to web posting all bets are off in terms of what they look like to the folks viewing your images on a variety of browsers.

Best bet is to always convert web images to sRGB before posting which is very easy to do in the export dialog box in LR or using Convert to Profile in PS or via similar methods in other editing tools. You still can't guarantee folks see the same color rendering you see as different monitors, some color and gamma calibrated and many not calibrated at all will render the same colors, contrast and brightness differently but posting images in sRGB can at least help to reduce big color problems.

In terms of the instagram thing it appears the preview is not color managed but the final image view is color managed. That sounds like an instagram implementation thing.
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Thanks Dave - it's not Instagram though. It's iMessage which is really surprising to me.
 
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BarkingBeans Coffee said:
Thanks Dave - it's not Instagram though. It's iMessage which is really surprising to me.
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Sorry, should have read more carefully. Same answer though, it appears they don't apply color management for the previews but do for the final viewed images.

Bottom line is folks view online images through a lot of browsers and apps including email programs and web standard color space is sRGB so if you want a large assortment of viewers using a wide variety of viewing tools to see your images it's really best to post any images on the web or on social media platforms in sRGB and save wider gamut color spaces for editing or sometimes for sending images to photo editors or print houses that support those color spaces.
 
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Right so I will consider that going forward. PS has a soft proofing capability that I have never used. Will be good to try it out on see how my images might change going to sRGB.
 
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BarkingBeans Coffee said:
Right so I will consider that going forward. PS has a soft proofing capability that I have never used. Will be good to try it out on see how my images might change going to sRGB.
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Yeah, soft proofing is a good tool when contemplating color space conversions including working with print houses that provide downloadable print process .icc profiles. It can show you where colors in your image fall outside the available process profile.

Don't forget that if you use a wide gamut monitor for photo editing and posting that many if not most viewers (who by and large haven't invested in wide gamut photo processing monitors) will see some gamut clipping if your images do utilize the extremes of wider gamut color spaces. IOW, even if you post to a platform that supports wider gamut color spaces like ProPhoto RGB if your viewers see those images on typical monitors they still won't see the colors towards to extreme edges of the wider gamut. That's one of the reasons sRGB is the default web standard, even though many non-graphics oriented monitors do not even reproduce 100% of the sRGB gamut they'll do a better job of that than of trying to reproduce 100% of something like the wider ProPhoto RGB or Adobe RGB 1998 color range.

The good news is that many images don't actually span the full extent of those wider color spaces so if the image itself doesn't contain a lot of color out towards the edges of the wider gamut then the issues of gamut clipping on typical monitors or when converting to sRGB aren't really a big deal.
 
What he says makes sense, except what if you are making more extreme edits where you would draw the colors back into the visible range. Plus, I've seen demonstrations where part of prophoto is printable and also viewable on some monitors when set to the "native" panel.

That said my last step before saving a version for printing is to convert to Adobe RGB and final tweaks like output sharpening, so probably not too much advantage to Prophoto if any.
 
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Does anyone know of a monitor that specifically supports ProPhoto RGB? I know some Eizo monitors support NTSC but I can’t recall ever seeing one support ProPhoto RGB. It may seem counterintuitive but less is currently more when it comes to ICC profiles. Use sRGB if you are sharing your images and want your viewers to see reasonably accurate color.
 
Jack McEwan said:
Does anyone know of a monitor that specifically supports ProPhoto RGB? I know some Eizo monitors support NTSC but I can’t recall ever seeing one support ProPhoto RGB. It may seem counterintuitive but less is currently more when it comes to ICC profiles. Use sRGB if you are sharing your images and want your viewers to see reasonably accurate color.
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The biggest I've seen are those that handle P3 or 100% Adobe RGB. Personally I think it's better to work big and save that then convert to srgb or whatever is needed for each output.
 
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bleirer said:
The biggest I've seen are those that handle P3 or 100% Adobe RGB. Personally I think it's better to work big and save that then convert to srgb or whatever is needed for each output.
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Attached are gamuts for DCI-P3 and ProPhoto RGB. It would be great to be able to display ProPhoto RGB accurately on most monitors, but the vast majority of monitors only support sRGB with a few supporting 99% of Adobe RGB. I’ll likely continue to use sRGB for now until it becomes apparent that the wider gamut of ProPhoto RGB becomes a practical advantage. https://www.google.com/gasearch?q=dci-p3%20vs%20adobe%20rgb&tbm=&source=sh/x/gs/m2/5#vhid=ocmCyj4hgkaeZM&vssid=l
 
One can work in a larger color space, save the file, then convert as needed to output to a smaller color space. If doing a lot of adjustments it could be beneficial because out of visible gamut colors can be brought into visible as you are adjusting. Apple is often P3, and Adobe rgb monitors are common among photographers.
 
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bleirer said:
One can work in a larger color space, save the file, then convert as needed to output to a smaller color space. If doing a lot of adjustments it could be beneficial because out of visible gamut colors can be brought into visible as you are adjusting. Apple is often P3, and Adobe rgb monitors are common among photographers.
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I use a calibrated Adobe RGB monitor and shared your philosophy until approximately two months ago. I had a large collection of ProPhoto RGB images which looked fine on my monitor. I would generally convert to sRGB if the image was destined for Facebook or other social media application. I viewed some images on my 65” Sony tv and the color of the ProPhoto images was horrible. I converted the images to sRGB which solved the problem in the Google TV app for viewing photos. This brings up an interesting question - other than a potential future use, what good is storing images in the ProPhoto RGB profile if there are few if any devices capable of utilizing this profile? Would it not be better to store images in a profile that can be almost universally utilized? I converted approximately 500 ProPhoto images into sRGB and sadly saw subtle improvements in many cases on my NEC monitor. I really didn’t expect this to be the case. That said, I do like the color accuracy of the ProPhoto profile and wish there was hardware that could fully utilize the wider gamut this profile has to offer.
 
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