Does it matter

[William]

In photoshop does it really matter wether the final output for an image when in colour is "Perceptual" or Media intent Colourmetric" If most images are for the web and a printing guy that likes sRGB files ? Bit technical I know but I like to get things right

[Seabee]

Whoa.............thats way beyond my realm, so I will say 'when you start talking english, I will let you know'

But seriously, I will be interested to see what the answers are for this and find out something new to learn

[ameerat42]

It's sounds like a matter of slightly changed terminology for, what, CS6, William? Even for CS2 I couldn't work it out
For me it's still a case of dark matter.

[William]

It's here in any Photoshop from CS2 onwards , Edit> down the bottom to >Convert to Profile, Then you have the output choice, Just wondering if it makes a real difference to the Printed image , These are the choices

[William]

So where did this Profile output come from ?? It's not even on the drop down list ?

[ricktas]

This might assist : http://www.earthboundlight.com/photo...erceptual.html which along with this might put it all together : http://www.earthboundlight.com/photo...ng-intent.html

[OzzieTraveller]

G'day all

I'll join Cindy & AM and wait for the plain-english text to emerge .... please

Regards, Phil

[I @ M]

So where did this Profile output come from ?? It's not even on the drop down list ?

It is there under "rendering intent" -- "media-relative colorimetric" in the exif viewer and that correlates with the PS box of relative colimetric.

The terms are and application are usually ( from my experience ) related to black point application particularly for printing. Some printers ask that it be specified when you submit the file and as far as I know it relates to the way their printing software views and applies blacks.

Ask the question to the person who is printing your image, if they shrug their shoulders and don't know how to answer, find another printer.

[William]

Phew !! Thanks for the links Rick, Better than I found ,

@ Andrew , This is all to do with printing output ? What do you use , I was using Relative Colourimetric but I noticed Dylan was using Perceptual so it got me thinking , Which is the way to go ? Up to the printer I guess and wont make any difference to web viewing I'm hoping

[I @ M]

William, our print output is set to perceptual using black point compression.
That is the way I have been advised to have it for printing from our printers. It may affect web display -- guess -- cos I really concentrate on prints rather than web viewing and haven't investigated it too much but I do know that many/all/most B&W conversions I do that look good printed don't view well on the 'net.
Whether that is my conversion / compression / sizing or the perceptual vs relative is a bit of an unknown quantity for me. I am loathe to muck around with settings once I have them right for printing.

The links that Rick provided are very good for explanation and should be stickied, particularly about the saturation loss with perceptual.

Maybe start a post in the test thread and upload a few images using different settings between relative and perceptual and see what happens with the images.

[William]

Really much appreciated Andrew, Yes I agree it would be a good experiment/Test using the same image with diffrerent settings , I'll do it in the test zone ,But not tonight And I'll be re reading Ricks links again as well , Cheers guys , Hope that left you all thinking more about colour output Keep an eye out for the test Zone test images

[arthurking83]

In photoshop does it really matter wether the final output for an image when in colour is "Perceptual" or Media intent Colourmetric" If most images are for the web and a printing guy that likes sRGB files ? Bit technical I know but I like to get things right

Going by what I think it is that you do William... the answer to your question has to be ... No!, it doesn't matter.

Are converting from one colour space to another?
If not, then the basic answer in plain English (in the links Rick provided) seem to be that you won't see any difference in the files.

You may see a difference if you were converting from one colour space to another.
That difference can be in the form of less saturation in the image if using Perceptual, and banding in the image if using Relative Colormetric.

So I see that you are trying to convert to another colour profile
If you shoot in that profile in the first place, doesn't your image stay in that colour profile anyhow?

ie. why are you trying to convert colour spaces?
(I thought you shoot in sRGB)

What I do, so there is no confusion at my end here:

Of course shoot raw. All raw images are shot in sRGB, as the bulk of my images are all saved for sRGB(ie. basically for web display).
IF(and this is a very rare occurrence) I want to print some thing at high quality(so far two gifts for others), I then 'convert' the raw file to aRGB and re work on that, saving it to a new file(actually not entirely new, as it's just another version of the original file.

Technically speaking, as raw files don't have any colour space defined, you aren't really converting to a new colour space, and so all colour gamut info is preserved 100%.

That's slightly different from converting a raster image such as tiff or jpg, where the colour space has to be defined.

With a raw image, the colour space is not defined any way .. Yes, I know, even tho you may have set it in camera it's still not defined as a set of locked in values .. it's easy to switch from one to the other and no conversion is taking place.

plain English if this helps: Raw file is easy to switch from colour profile to colour profile, as it's only a switch. The raw file is defining the colours here.
In a tiff/jpg file, going from one colour profile to another requires this conversion routine.. not just a simple switch. That is, the conversion routine in the software is defining the colours now, not the image itself.

'Convert' the raw file, and don't worry too much about the intent. Just use the default Perceptual implementation. do this and you should see no difference, other than what the different colour spaces will render due to their peculiarities.
Of course you may need to proper aRGB capable monitor to see this difference too, although you may still see the differences on a lower quality monitor as well.

If you are happy printing in sRGB, then this non issue (of intent), should be of no consequence you you anyhow.