[attack11]

This is the second time I've heard the comment that printers don't "support" AdobeRGB and I'm not sure where this comes from. AFAIK, printer drivers are not hard-wired to a particular color space.

I may be the oddball on this but I'm one of those that creates custom profiles for all my printer+media combinations and I can tell you not only do these printers "support" aRGB, they actually EXCEED aRGB's color gamut in certain areas.

In addition to that, if you're using a RIP (I use ColorBurst and GMG Colorproof) you can generally get better results than simply printing through the manufacturer's drivers.

Bottom line, if you're restricting the rendering and printing of your images to sRGB, then you're simply not taking advantage of the "gamut volume" that both your camera and your printing system is capable of . I can show gamut plots that prove this if anybody is interested.

Regards,
Terry

well that's mostly common knowledge. i'm curious what monitor you have, is it an nec or eizo?

why aren't you using prophoto if the color space matters to your prints?

[tlwyse]

if you edit in a colorspace with hardware that can't display the colorspace, how can you be accurate? don't get me wrong, i think if you have a wide gamut monitor you'd be a fool not to use it to it's full potential, but how many of us have $5-10k invested in their display & have the calibration tools?

Coming from a color management perspective, if you're willing to spend $$$$ on your camera gear but not willing to put even $2K into the system that ultimately determines the outcome of your photographs, I think THAT is a bit silly....and to put your photos into the hands of an outside printing service is even more silly.

Seriously, excellent printers are dirt cheap these days and the color management gear required to create your own custom profiles is VERY reasonable these days....and to not have the ability to custom calibrate/profile you own display is pretty much inexcusable given that the software + colorimeter to do this is less expensive than a cheap lens (<$400 for sure). I don't know, but to me spending all the money on the gear and post-processing software like Photoshop and Lightroom (or whatever) but then to trust the final realization of those images to an outside printing service makes no sense.

But I could be wrong on ALL of this...I know because I was wrong once before.

the largest print lab in the states (millers/mpix) is srgb only for very legit reasons.

The only "legit" reason would be that they need to give acceptable results for the vast majority of folks that haven't a clue about proper color management. sRGB is the safest "lowest common denominator" color space for a commercial printing service. But as advanced amateurs, semi-pros and pros, we should aspire to something better than the lowest common denominator....in my opinion.

Regards,
Terry

[attack11]

Coming from a color management perspective, if you're willing to spend $$$$ on your camera gear but not willing to put even $2K into the system that ultimately determines the outcome of your photographs, I think THAT is a bit silly....and to put your photos into the hands of an outside printing service is even more silly.

Seriously, excellent printers are dirt cheap these days and the color management gear required to create your own custom profiles is VERY reasonable these days....and to not have the ability to custom calibrate/profile you own display is pretty much inexcusable given that the software + colorimeter to do this is less expensive than a cheap lens (<$400 for sure). I don't know, but to me spending all the money on the gear and post-processing software like Photoshop and Lightroom (or whatever) but then to trust the final realization of those images to an outside printing service makes no sense.

But I could be wrong on ALL of this...I know because I was wrong once before.




The only "legit" reason would be that they need to give acceptable results for the vast majority of folks that haven't a clue about proper color management. sRGB is the safest "lowest common denominator" color space for a commercial printing service. But as advanced amateurs, semi-pros and pros, we should aspire to something better than the lowest common denominator....in my opinion.

Regards,
Terry

well, i'm only willing to work on calibrated s-pva lcds these days 'cause wide gamut monitors weren't appealing in size/resolution until recently. since it's not wide gamut, it's hard to get something better.

this is a pentax forum. most people buy into the system for the price point and don't consider wide gamut displays, ever. suggesting argb without the appropriate hardware is asking for random results... especially if 5000k isn't 5000k.

argb/prophoto is only for a fine art work flow.

and... just to justify srgb for me; my camera doesn't exceed it.

[tlwyse]

well that's mostly common knowledge.

Well, I'm a color management consultant by profession and I've never heard the notion that AdobeRGB is "unsupported" by certain printers. If by "unsupported" you mean that a printer will assume sRGB as it's default color space when sending it un-color managed data, there might be some validity there but, again, I can demonstrate that a printer's color space is quite a bit larger than sRGB and even AdobeRGB is certain color regions.

i'm curious what monitor you have, is it an nec or eizo?

why aren't you using prophoto if the color space matters to your prints?

EIZO CG211.....and I actually DO use ProPhotoRGB when I'm rendering DNGs....but I wasn't about to push that "religion" onto someone who is a relative newbie to color management and ICC profiles. ProPhoto can actually do more harm than good if you don't have at least a basic understanding of the principles of color management.

Interestingly, my EIZO CG211 is essentially an sRGB display, albeit a pretty good one. But I don't see that as a major limitation as it's not really what I use as a "reference" in terms of accuracy. For me, the print is *the thing* because I know that it's likely more accurate than my display and it has a wider gamut than my display....and I can always use the *numbers* in the file to tell me if things are clipping rather than relying solely on the display (the "numbers thing" goes back to my CMYK days). It seems silly (to me) to restrict my entire imaging workflow to the color space (sRGB display) that nobody but myself will ever likely view my images on. On the other hand, lots of folks will see the PRINTS I produce and I want to take advantage of my "printing space" as much as possible. And if you don't think there's a difference between a print made using the full color space/gamut that the print system is capable of vs. a print restricted to sRGB, you're wrong. It's easily visable to viewers tuned in to seeing these differences.

As far as ProPhotoRGB vs. other working spaces, I have my issues as well with this space and I think the choice or reasons for using AdobeRGB, or even sRGB, over ProPhoto are legitimate ones. I've even had friendly arguments with colleagues over ProPhoto vs. AdobeRGB where I was arguing for NOT using ProPhoto. For me, what it came down to is that I'd rather have the END of my imaging workflow be the restricting factor and not the BEGINNING (the rendering space). I've analyzed enough images to know that, while it's extremely rare than an image will "push" the envelope of the ProPhoto color space, I've also seen enough images where AdobeRGB would've resulted in clipping, that I decided ProPhoto is the safest bet IF you want to try and grab everything your photographic system has to offer. Personally, I'd rather have the option of rendering into a color space of my choice that is slightly larger than AdobeRGB but not the monstrosity color space of ProPhoto (my own preference is a working space profile called "eciRGBv2")....but since Adobe in their infinite wisdom doesn't allow one to (easily) render RAW files into the space of the users choice, we're stuck with few choices, basically sRGB, AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB.

This is a very interesting discussion to me since I rarely hear color management discussed in any kind of depth in photography forums even though it is arguably one of the most critical elements in the workflow. If it's all about the images we produce, then color management clearly has it's place in this discussion.

Regards,
Terry

[attack11]

if i mentioned unsupported, i mean literally "will change to srgb before printing" as in the print lab.

[tlwyse]

You think the 24 patch ColorChecker is a fair representation of the entire color gamut your camera is capable of? The patches on that chart have a relatively low chroma (saturation) value and wouldn't come near pushing the color envelope of your system. In fact, I'd bet the ColorChecker is well within the vast majority of CMYK color spaces as well (believe it or not, CMYK can quite handily exceed even AdobeRGB in certain color regions).

Looking at your Lab a/b plot, all it's really showing is that your camera is not "accurate" compared to the ColorChecker but to know whether these colors are out-of-gamut vs. your camera, you'd have to know where color clipping is occuring. This plot doesn't satisfy that in my opinion.

Regards,
Terry

[attack11]

you know how hard it'd be TO satisfy your opinion, so i'm not gonna try. i'm more than confident in the lack of qa in the pentax software department

[Wheatfield]

The only "legit" reason would be that they need to give acceptable results for the vast majority of folks that haven't a clue about proper color management. sRGB is the safest "lowest common denominator" color space for a commercial printing service. But as advanced amateurs, semi-pros and pros, we should aspire to something better than the lowest common denominator....in my opinion.

Regards,
Terry

The other legit reason is because colour photographic paper fits inside the sRGB colour space, so there is no advantage (and probably some disadvantages relating to clipping) to using a wider gamut colour space.

[tlwyse]

argb doesn't even contain all of the colors of pro printers, so it's a totally moot argument.

How does that make it moot exactly? Seems to me that's an argument FOR proper characterization/profiling of these printers to take advantage of it's capabilities instead of artificially limiting them to sRGB.

the majority of high end will be srgb, except the odd / niche / extremely high end printer; and color correction + monitor is in the 30k range for that.

Do you consider an Epson Stylus Pro 4800 a high-end/niche printer?
Better yet, do you consider the <$300 Epson Stylus Photo 1400 high-end/niche?
Given the right media, either of these printers can exceed sRGB. So I guess consumer-grade and advanced amateur inkjet printers are the new "high-end"?

I think there's the misconception that achieve these "better than sRGB" results requires a huge investment in expensive gear. I'd be willing to bet that I've invested less in my EIZO CG211, Epson 7800, 4800, 4000 and 1400 than many on this list have invested in their camera gear. Takes less $$ than what you might think.

Regards,
Terry

[tlwyse]

if i mentioned unsupported, i mean literally "will change to srgb before printing" as in the print lab.

If you're talking specifically about an outside print lab, I'm clueless what might be happening there since I never use them.

Regards,
Terry

[attack11]

How does that make it moot exactly? Seems to me that's an argument FOR proper characterization/profiling of these printers to take advantage of it's capabilities instead of artificially limiting them to sRGB.



Do you consider an Epson Stylus Pro 4800 a high-end/niche printer?
Better yet, do you consider the <$300 Epson Stylus Photo 1400 high-end/niche?
Given the right media, either of these printers can exceed sRGB. So I guess consumer-grade and advanced amateur inkjet printers are the new "high-end"?

I think there's the misconception that achieve these "better than sRGB" results requires a huge investment in expensive gear. I'd be willing to bet that I've invested less in my EIZO CG211, Epson 7800, 4800, 4000 and 1400 than many on this list have invested in their camera gear. Takes less $$ than what you might think.

Regards,
Terry

no i don't. that's home business class, but on par with what i'd expect from someone selling prints they create. nice setup btw, if i had space... i'd love to get into home production.

[davemdsn]

if you edit in a colorspace with hardware that can't display the colorspace, how can you be accurate? don't get me wrong, i think if you have a wide gamut monitor you'd be a fool not to use it to it's full potential, but how many of us have $5-10k invested in their display & have the calibration tools?

the largest print lab in the states (millers/mpix) is srgb only for very legit reasons.

I don't recall using the term accurate. I also didn't mention seeing the difference on screen. I wasn't talking about monitors at all. I was talking about prints. Real photos on real paper. I can see the difference where it really matters - the final print.

[attack11]

I don't recall using the term accurate. I also didn't mention seeing the difference on screen. I wasn't talking about monitors at all. I was talking about prints. Real photos on real paper. I can see the difference where it really matters - the final print.

random is so awesome.