Color space inquiry

I am interested in getting into the photography business at some point, however for now I just shoot for fun and for practice and occasionally do free shoots for family and friends. This may be considered a beginner question but I am just trying to increase my knowledge and get better, so everyone please take it easy on me.

From a standpoint of giving digital copies to clients, what color space is generally used for the photos your clients get? I have read about the different color spaces quite a bit and it has created some confusion for me about what color space I should be using. My dilemma is, I know sRGB is best for photos that will be put online and feel like most digital copies will be used for posting to facebook, instagram, etc, however if I want a client to also have the ability to print high quality prints it is best to use Adobe RGB. Adobe will turn dull if posted to Facebook as the page will compress the colors to sRGB and I also dont want disappointment due to the quality of image posted (plus it doesnt make you as a photographer look good when dull images are posted online). Should I create sRGB images for posting and also provide Adobe RGB files for printing to clients?

Also, I shoot in RAW, and use Luminar and/or lightroom for editing. My camera is currently set to Adobe RGB color space. What is the practical settings for your camera for color space? Should I just shoot in sRGB, export in sRGB and not worry about the Adobe color space for printing? Again this may be considered a dumb question but I am only here to learn and get better so that one day maybe I can develop into a skilled photographer.

Most of the time, you will want to stick to the RGB color model. Indeed, for on-line posting you probably want to use the "Save for Web and Devices", but the critical thing is to use the camera RAW as the "digital negative", so to speak, to preserve as much information as is consistent with your purpose. Don't get obsessed with particular color models, especially insofar as these affect display in one medium or another.

Other color spaces are useful for various purposes -for example, if you are directly controlling printing CMYK, may be appropriate.

see Color space - Wikipedia

Just for fun, here's a whole book on LAB color

Dan Margulis

Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace

I would stay in adobe rgb 16bit through all of your editing phase then convert down to 8bit sRGB for delivery

Unless you are working with a designer who is specifically requesting the 16bit file

My dilemma is, I know sRGB is best for photos that will be put online and feel like most digital copies will be used for posting to facebook, instagram, etc, however if I want a client to also have the ability to print high quality prints it is best to use Adobe RGB.

Personally, I'd do just about everything in sRGB. Even shooting, IF: the lighting quality is good, spectrally, and you are able to set a manual white balance in the camera, and get the exposure really close. Otherwise your raw images should help save things for you.

If you're doing fairly straightforward portrait work, I think you'll find that not too many colors get out of the sRGB gamut. And if this is the case, and if you are not gonna push and pull colors around in editing there will be very little benefit to going beyond sRGB.

I've done quite a lot of experimentation in this realm, and when I run good-sized prints shot in raw, then printed to a high-quality printer (such as a Durst Theta RA-4 system) that can readily print outside of the sRGB gamut, then in software limit the color gamut back down to sRGB and reprint, I've seen very little difference. With the prints side-by-side in a color booth, and looking specifically at fabric colors that ARE outside of the sRGB gamut, the differences have been slight. You would only see them with the prints side-by-side, and looking carefully. Without prior knowledge of what specific colors were different, you would have a very hard time finding them. Again, I'm speaking of colors that show up in typical studio portraits, including the clothes. If you do a lot of outdoor work, with certain foliage this MIGHT change the situation.

Essentially what I'm saying is don't underestimate sRGB for portrait work. Typical fabric colors that will be out of gamut for sRGB will be certain blue-green shades. You can identify these in an image by looking for pixel values at either extreme - 0 or 255. If you want to verify, try the test for yourself; I wouldn't arbitrarily believe some random guy on the internet either.

You lose nothing by using the widest color space available: AdobeRGB when shooting RAW, ProPhotoRGB when editing in LR/PS/whatever. Export to sRGB always for labs and social media, for JPGs and PNGs.

Print work usually required CMYK, but I'm not sure how that overlaps the versions of RGB. I just stay as wide as possible in an attempt to avoid conversion problems.

Conrad, do you shoot in sRGB or Adobe and convert to standard after edit then?

My monitor is sRGB only, so I rarely mess with Adobe. If you shoot RAW you can always use whatever you want.

Bill, I really appreciate your input. That is really helpful. I do not have a studio or anything so all of my shots are taken at different locations most being outdoors.

Thanks