Originally posted by brofkand There is only one way to ensure your photograph looks the same to all that view it, in terms of visuals:
Print it, frame it, light it absolutely evenly across all edges, and make sure that everyone that passes by can see the same color gamut (ie, isn't colorblind).
Well yes, but color blindness is a whole other can of worms. By that logic, one could say that color management is a waste of time altogether since so many people perceive colors differently. The whole point of color management is to _render_ the colors consistently. So converting to sRGB for viewing on web browsers at least ensures that all web browsers will render the colors the same (that's the hope, anyways). Things like other people's monitor calibration or color blindness are beyond my ability to control.
Originally posted by brofkand aRGB, sRGB, doesn't really matter that much. Most of the time sRGB just oversaturates colors in my experience.
I think this depends a lot of how the sRGB colorspace was achieved. If colors were just outright clipped, then the result can be noticeable. But if they're appropriately mapped to a close equivalent, the difference can be barely perceptible. Take the following for example (I seem to be generating a lot of "examples" lately, but I do these to see the results for myself more than anything else):
The left picture is the sRGB JPG version straight from the camera. The right picture is the Adobe RGB JPG picture from the camera, opened in Photoshop in Adobe RGB working space, and converted to sRGB using relative colorimetric intent with black point compensation and dithering enabled.
There's a very slight difference between the two, the file that was converted to sRGB is slightly more saturated, but you'd only notice it if the pictures were layered over each other and you flipped between the two. When I did the conversion, there was absolutely no perceptible difference on-screen. I did "undo" and "redo" a bunch of times while looking closely, and nothing changed at all. Is one more accurate than the other? I can't tell. Is one "better"? That's debatable.
The following were made using the camera's RAW file in Photoshop CS2. The left one was assigned sRGB right away. The right one was assigned Adobe RGB, then converted to sRGB afterwards using relative colorimetric intent with black point compensation and dithering enabled.
The two images are completely identical. There is no perceivable difference at all.
To me, all this proves is that the camera assigns colors differently than Photoshop does. Maybe the "intent" is different in the camera (absolute colorimetric, perceptual, etc.) Or maybe the color engines just give different results. But assuming that an Adobe RGB image converted to sRGB will become more saturated isn't necessarily true. In this particular case, it changed nothing at all.
(of course, this could also mean that my choice of subject just doesn't have any colors that require Adobe RGB to render).