What Color Space you use?

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Nando

Nando

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Been noticing some banding in some of my landscapes images, especially on the sky, even when I barely do any type of editing in lightroom/photoshop.

The Color Space I have selected on my Z6 II is sRGB. I wonder if it's better to choose AdobeRGB instead.
Just shot some images to test the differences, and it's night time right now, not the best time, and took some pics of my cat indoors with normal home lighting.

We can see a clear difference in terms of color saturation between sRGB (more saturated color) and Adobe RGB (less saturated colors). Nothing that once we move to the development mode in Lightroom isn't fixed, but I lift shadows, blacks, and highlights and on the screen, I can't really see any difference, but I guess nothing like sunlight to really see the difference?

So I wonder if changing the 2 different Color Space options available can create such difference where some banding might be generated.

I know if images are to be viewed on screens, sRGB is preferable, but if we are printing, the Adobe RGB should be the one to be selected. This alone seems to say that if we set in the camera Adobe RGB we will be able to get a wider color spectrum, but... I'm confused at this point.
Can anyone share some light on this? Does it really matter which Color Space we select on the camera?

Thank you.
Fernando
 
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I set Adobe RGB in my Nikon cameras. In my RAW processor I use DXO Wide Gamut. When I make a Jpeg, I usually do not change the color space unless I know I must do it like for a particular printer.

I never have used sRGB for images shown on the Internet although I recognize that this is the usual advice offered.
 
If you are shooting raw the color space in camera has no bearing. Raw is assigned the color space after it is run through the raw converter. For example lightroom in the develop module automatically assigns the largest color space, their version of prophoto. You can't change it until you export a file like a tiff or a jpg, then you can set the output color space.

If sending to photoshop you can tell lightroom what color space to use in the lightroom preferences. I send prophoto tiff files and set photoshop to 16 bit. After editing and saving the master I use convert to profile for my output color space and change back to 8 bit before Saving a separate copy as a jpeg or whatever is needed.

If shooting jpg set it to Adobe rgb in camera but convert it to srgb when exporting a copy after editing if you need it for the web.
 
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Adobe RGB in camera -- even when shooting RAW AND then ProPhoto RGB or Hasselblad RGB*L both are the largest one can use in the software -- output colour space depends on where and how it is to be used -- if on the WEB then sRGB, if printed then one has to fit within the colour management solution of your printer (in my case this is a guy who accepts TIF files in ProPhoto RGB and his work process colour manages to best fit).
The most important work-process step is to Soft Proof and, if using PhotoShop, to check the colours View Gamut Warning and Proof colors
 
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If you're shooting RAW, sRGB is fine in camera. The chances are, the LCD isn't capable of showing full Adobe RBG anyway. Additionally, this setting only applies to the embedded JPEG anyway - the RAW file always has all the data the camera can give it. Once in Lightroom, you can specify your color space for the RAW file and I recommend ProPhoto RBG since it's the largest.

As for the banding, that can also be caused by bit depth. At lower zoom ratios, Adobe doesn't use the full bit depth of the image. So, at 50% or under, you may see banding but when you zoom in you'll see it isn't actually there.
 
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Nando said:
Been noticing some banding in some of my landscapes images, especially on the sky, even when I barely do any type of editing in lightroom/photoshop.

We can see a clear difference in terms of color saturation between sRGB (more saturated color) and Adobe RGB (less saturated colors). Nothing that once we move to the development mode in Lightroom isn't fixed, but I lift shadows, blacks, and highlights and on the screen, I can't really see any difference, but I guess nothing like sunlight to really see the difference?

Fernando
Click to expand...

With proper color management images in sRGB and Adobe RGB should look the same if the sRGB gamut is not exceeded. Afterall, this is the purpose of color management. If the sRGB gamut is exceeded in an image in Adobe RGB, you would likely see no difference unless you have a wide gamut display. Since sRGB is a smaller color space than AdobeRGB, for the same chroma the color numbers will be higher with sRGB and the image will appear oversaturated if the sRGB image is displayed on an AdobeRGB monitor without color management. Conversely, If an image in Adobe RGB appears to be unsaturated when viewed on an sRGB device, this points to unmanaged color. The situation is even more dramatic if you send an image in ProphotoRGB to an unmanaged screen that is essentially sRGB--the image will look even more unsaturated. This is the opposite of the first case.

A couple of years ago this latter situation occurred in a competition at my local camera club when a photographer submitted an image of a bright red cardinal in ProphotoRBG and the image was shown with a projector having only an sRBG gamut. The bird appeared very unsaturated. It turned out that our software was not color managed and the problem was solved when color management was implemented in the competition software.

Bill
 
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