Photoshop creating flat images?

[John King]

Gidday Joel

The reason the colour space is showing as ProPhotoRGB in the save as dialog box is because this is the colour space you have assigned when processing the RAW file in ACR.

For all sorts of reasons, use aRGB colour space and 16 bit processing for the safest and best results. This advice is based on you using an aRGB, calibrated monitor.

As I wrote above, I always use ProPhotoRGB -16, but I also understand what I am doing, and only extremely rarely do colour adjustments.

Colour and colour spaces are very complex topics. They have even determined my choice of cameras, as Olympus get the colour filter array (CFA) about as close to neutral as I have seen, and that's what I want for my photography.

ProPhotoRGB -16 images will look really ghastly on any monitor that can only display exactly an sRGB colour space. Many 'sRGB' panels are also only 6 bit, which doesn't help ...

[R1Joel]

I don't go through ACR (Adobe Camera Raw?), I edit the photos in Lightroom then choose to open the files as layers in Photoshop. Is there a setting I should have checked in Lightroom somewhere before opening in PS?

[Hawthy]

Joel, I may be howled down for this... but I find the best way to save photos for display on the internet is to use the Save For Web option in Photoshop. I subscribe to Photoshop Creative Cloud 2015 and it is a "legacy" feature there. It will convert your photos to SRGB quite nicely (IMHO). Cheers.

[John King]

Joel, when you open any RAW file, it must be demosaiced and translated by a RAW converter into an image file. The RAW file conversion parameters are set somewhere in LR - it also uses ACR, just as Photoshop does. I use Bridge and CS6, not LR.

In PS6, the RAW file automatically opens in ACR. The colour space and bit depth are set using the parameters in the bottom centre of the screen, just under the image preview. Setting these assigns these values to the resulting image file.

[Mark L]

I don't go through ACR (Adobe Camera Raw?), I edit the photos in Lightroom then choose to open the files as layers in Photoshop. Is there a setting I should have checked in Lightroom somewhere before opening in PS?

I don't use LR but think the setting you have to change is to sRGB before you start editing in LR?? Gives you what you see before going to PS.

[R1Joel]

Thanks guys for the replies. I think I have it worked out now what I have to do.

[John King]

Gidday Rick

sRGB is a truly warped, horrible colour space.

Yes, the web runs on it.

However it is both defective and deficient. Defective because of its tiny size (small colour gamut) and the colour axes are not symmetrical, and deficient because the green axis is shorter than the red axis, which is shorter than the blue axis.

aRGB has a reasonably large gamut and the colour axes are equal.

I always use a 16 bit ProPhotoRGB colour space for all editing and printing. I only ever save to 8 bit, sRGB JPEGs for the web and similar non-critical uses.

Which interestingly brings in other issues, in that there are not many monitors that can display 100% of AdobeRGB and none that can display 100% of ProPhotoRGB (yet). And printing brings in its own issues again with printers not being able to render the full colourspaces.

So, can I ask why you are using a colourspace that you cannot accurately render, on screen or in print, at this point in tech development?

My ASUS PA246 monitors can display 98% of an aRGB colour space. They use a 12 bit colour lookup table and 10 bit P-IPS panel made by LG (?). This panel appears to be the same one used in various Eizo, HP and Dell monitors, and probably others. How many makers of 10 bit, aRGB, P-IPS, 1920x1200, 24.6" panels are there in the world? Not many, I would guess! It must be connected with an HDMI cable to use more than 8 bits. I only very rarely do colour corrections (other than WB), so rely on the (excellent) choice of colour filter array frequencies and curve shapes made by the Olympus optical engineers. I really like the way their choices render natural, neutral colours. For some, colour accuracy is not important. It is for me.

My Epson R3880 can print most of a ProPhotoRGB colour space. The colour lookup table in this printer was redesigned from that in the R3800. By also changing the magenta inks, it achieves a wider gamut than aRGB, particularly with saturated reds and yellows. This very wide gamut makes a big difference in some of my prints.

For example, I have printed the following image dozens of times using sRGB-8, sRGB-16, aRGB-8, aRGB-16 and ProPhotoRGB-16 (ProPhotoRGB is a very bad colour space to use with 8 bit processing). The differences are stark. Both sRGB print sets show insufficient ink being laid down to give any kind of accurate colour match. This almost certainly arises from the green channel being grossly deficient in the "pure red" parts of the image! Using either sRGB colour spaces also causes the blacks not to print as as pure blacks. The reflector areas are also not correct. There is a spot of sap on the leading edge of the bonnet next to the top left of the grill and I have used that as a reference point for measurement throughout, measuring just below and to the right of the spot. The colour numbers are all but identical over a (relatively) large area here, making minor cursor placement errors irrelevant. The colour numbers are relatively similar for aRGB and PPRGB, but dramatically different for sRGB. The green channel decreases to almost zero. This is with no PP other than conversion from RAW to the relevant colour bit depth and gamut, then printed.

Of course, this image has been converted to sRGB for web display, but when printed from an sRGB image the colour differences are very bad compared with either aRGB or PPRGB. My touchstone is to take a test print and put it on the part of the car photographed. The differences should not be such that I feel sick ... With sRGB prints, I feel sick!

Cars are as close to Pantone colours as we commonly see in the real world. Of course, the paints used are Pantone colours ...



With these wide gamut colour spaces, 16 bit processing gives greater editing and representational latitude without noticeable loss of data. This has been documented by Schewe and Fraser in "Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS5" at p.12 Figure 1-7 "Color spaces and clipping". A comparison of colour spaces below, from Blatner and Fraser "Real World Adobe Photoshop CS" p.179 Figure 5-13,



I think that SWOP CMYK is referencing the colour space of 4 colour printing rather than the far more modern 8 colour CMYK (C LC M LM Y K LK LLK) used in books these days. The latter printing colour space has patently got a far richer and wider gamut than the old four colour process.

I agree that sRGB is deficient, but as most monitors and printers are limited to sRGB, then really we are seeing zero benefit in using anything else with a wider gamut, if we cannot see that extra gamut anyway.

Almost all printers with two blacks and three colours will print an aRGB colour space IME. The Epson Rx880 series extend this considerably.

An aRGB monitor does not cost thousands these days. My first PA246Q cost me about $730 and the second about two years later only about $530. This monitor is no longer available, but Asus has made a replacement aRGB monitor (can't recall the model off the top of my head ... ), and it is not hugely expensive either. One needs to be careful when buying, as all but one Asus monitor only display sRGB.

Sorry for the long winded reply, but as I mentioned earlier, colour and colour spaces are very complex subjects when one digs a bit. I have done quite a bit of digging!

[John King]

^ modern version of my PA246Q is the Asus PA279Q, details here:

https://www.asus.com/au/Monitors/PA279Q/

Looks as if it has pretty nice specs to me ... .