sRGB vs AdobeRGB

[hjoseph7]

The other day I picked up a book on converting Color digital images into B&W digital images. This book had been sitting on my shelf for years, but I had not bothered to read it. Once I opened it, I found out that it is a reallly well written book that I found hard to put down, even though it is a little dated. "Black and White in Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Lightroom" by Leslie Alsheimer and Bryan O'neil Hughes. 

The book starts by explaining Color Management in one of the simplest ways I have come across. I usually try to avoid this subject unless I'm printing at home which I haven't done for years. Anyway, the book explains that there are 4 color spaces. A color space is like a crayon box in that the number of crayons in that box, determines the number of colors you are allowed to use. There are 4 major color spaces, sRGB, AdobeRGB, ProPhoto RGB and Color Match RGB.  The two most popular ones are sRGB and Adobe RGB. 

Beleieve it or not sRGB is the smallest color space or has the narowest Gamut. Just pretent that Gamut is the number of crayons in a box. The next largest is AdobeRGB, and the largest of all is ProPhoto RGB. Match RGB is like a mixture of ProPhoto and Adobe RGB. Like I said, I never paid much attention to all this Color Management stuff unless I was printing, that is before I came across this book.

According to the authors as of now, our digital cameras should give us the choice between sRGB and AdobeRGB. I sort of knew that, but to avoid problems my brain defaulted to sRGB automatically when it came to choosing Color Spaces. That means that all 3 of my digital camera, Pentax, Nikon and Canon should give me the choice of choosing between sRGB and AdobeRGB. ProPhoto is way to wide for digital cameras to handle right now, but it does have its applications.

I checked and by golly, all 3 of my cameras do give me that choice, but they were all set to sRGB by default. sRGB is mostly for Web applications. AdobeRGB is meant for printing but can also be used for web applications. AdobeRGB has the wider gamut so the camera should pick up colors that it wasn't able to with sRGB (remember the crayon box analogy).

With that said, I should be setting my camera to AdobeRGB instead of sRGB since I want to get as many colors as I can get. Today I tried it by setting all my cameras to Adobe RGB instead of sRGB, but I could not tell the difference ?  Maybe I didn't have a wide enough choice of subjects to choose from since I was sitting in my living room when I did the test. I will probably do a more extensive test once I get a chance, but for now, how many of you use sRGB and how many of you use AdobeRGB and what are the differences if any ? 

Choosing a Color Space in-camera is not enough though, when it comes to Editing you also have to match that color space with color space in Photosho and Lighroom. What happens when the edited image gets passed to the printer ? Your guess is as good as mine. Printers use an entirelly different color space that is, they use the CMYK color space. AdobeRGB is recomended for printing so there must be a reason.  

  

[paddler4]

Quote

ProPhoto is way to wide for digital cameras to handle right now, but it does have its applications.

Not the case unless you are shooting JPEG. If you are shooting raw, there is no color space, but the range of data is sufficient to be rendered as ProPhoto.

[AlanKlein]

1. From a pratical standpoint, could people really tell the difference between AdobeRGB and sRGB looking at one or the other but not both next to each other?

 

2. If you intend to post on the web, is it better to start with sRGB in the camera, or doesn't it matter?

[John Seaman]

I'm reluctant to say too much, being as confused about colour management as I guess many people are. The reason that images shot in different colour spaces can look the same is that many applications and viewers "know" whether the image was made in sRGB or AdobeRGB and adjust the colours on the screen to suit. If you take a picture in AdobeRGB, and view it in an application which doesn't make the adjustment, the colours will appear muted. All my cameras are set to sRGB, yes there's the potential for a wider range of colours with Adobe, but getting them to appear on a print may be problematic depending on the ability of the printer.

Edited February 24, 2023 by John Seaman

[rodeo_joe1]

RAW files are colour space agnostic, meaning that they can be rendered as sRGB or AdobeRGB, or any of a dozen other obscure colour spaces that have been dreamt up. The limitation to a choice of sRGB or AdobeRGB only applies to 8bit JPEGs, where the colour gamut gets 'baked in'. 

Shooting RAW future-proofs your pictures and allows a free choice of colour spaces at any time, rather than pre-selecting from a narrow choice. It also saves the images at a higher bit-depth, allowing a wider dynamic range to be captured and retrieved. 

In view of the low cost of high-capacity memory cards, I see no reason not to shoot RAW or RAW+JPEG by default. Because most modern cameras have a 14 bit analogue-to-digital converter, and throwing 6 bits of tonal information away by only storing JPEGs seems like a pointless waste. RAW renders the choice of colour space in the camera menu (as well as the White-Balance) largely irrelevant, unless you only ever use the JPEG file. 

WRT the difference between sRGB and AdobeRGB: Adobe RGB has a different, 'wider' positioning of its Green primary within the CIE 'horseshoe'. The Red and Blue primaries are the same as sRGB. The wider green primary of AdobeRGB allows more overlap between CMYK (printing) colour gamuts and the display gamut. The Adobe green primary will be out of gamut on a legacy sRGB display, but many high-end monitors can now display the AdobeRGB colour-space quite adequately. 

There's also a difference in the tone curve applied, with Adobe RGB adopting a pure log 1/2.2 curve, while sRGB has a partially linear shadow region, followed by a log 1/2.4 curve - for purely theoretical and mathematical reasons - there's almost no practical difference in their tonal appearance. 

RAW, on the other hand, stays linear and can have any tonal curve you like applied to it. Within the bounds of its 14 bit precision of course. 

In short, if you shoot RAW the choice between sRGB and AdobeRGB in camera isn't at all important. 

Edited February 24, 2023 by rodeo_joe1

[hjoseph7]

2 hours ago, rodeo_joe1 said:

RAW files are colour space agnostic, meaning that they can be rendered as sRGB or AdobeRGB, or any of a dozen other obscure colour spaces that have been dreamt up. The limitation to a choice of sRGB or AdobeRGB only applies to 8bit JPEGs, where the colour gamut gets 'baked in'. 

Shooting RAW future-proofs your pictures and allows a free choice of colour spaces at any time, rather than pre-selecting from a narrow choice. It also saves the images at a higher bit-depth, allowing a wider dynamic range to be captured and retrieved. 

In view of the low cost of high-capacity memory cards, I see no reason not to shoot RAW or RAW+JPEG by default. Because most modern cameras have a 14 bit analogue-to-digital converter, and throwing 6 bits of tonal information away by only storing JPEGs seems like a pointless waste. RAW renders the choice of colour space in the camera menu (as well as the White-Balance) largely irrelevant, unless you only ever use the JPEG file. 

WRT the difference between sRGB and AdobeRGB: Adobe RGB has a different, 'wider' positioning of its Green primary within the CIE 'horseshoe'. The Red and Blue primaries are the same as sRGB. The wider green primary of AdobeRGB allows more overlap between CMYK (printing) colour gamuts and the display gamut. The Adobe green primary will be out of gamut on a legacy sRGB display, but many high-end monitors can now display the AdobeRGB colour-space quite adequately. 

There's also a difference in the tone curve applied, with Adobe RGB adopting a pure log 1/2.2 curve, while sRGB has a partially linear shadow region, followed by a log 1/2.4 curve - for purely theoretical and mathematical reasons - there's almost no practical difference in their tonal appearance. 

RAW, on the other hand, stays linear and can have any tonal curve you like applied to it. Within the bounds of its 14 bit precision of course. 

In short, if you shoot RAW the choice between sRGB and AdobeRGB in camera isn't at all important. 

Thank you Rodeo...

[hjoseph7]

I changed the Color Space on my Canon 6D from sRGB to AdobeRGB then used the camera using those settings on the job recently. This time I did notice some differences in the resulting images. They semed a little bit more colorful if not brighter, but not by much. Of course I was shooting JPEG. The book "Black and White in Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Lightroom also emphasizes shooting in RAW  whenever possible, but I don't think the authors of this book would have written chapters on Color Management if it didn't pertain to RAW  whatsoever ? That would be pretty sensless. What happens after the RAW image is processed is when Color Management plays a part especially when it comes time to Editing and  Printing. Photoshop and Lightroom let you choose what Color Space to choose although I think that LightRoom defaults to ProPhoto RGB. Matching Color Spaces I think makes it easier to translate precise color values to the printer, or other output device. I remember getting those annoying Warning messages from Photoshop, when there was a mismatch, or missing color space, but I wasn't sure why ?  

[conrad_hoffman]

High end monitors are pricy. I don't have one, nor does anybody else I know. Strictly RGB. I don't care about phones, which often do have wider gamuts. My printer is good, but isn't going to print much beyond RGB, if that. On top of all that, realistically, I don't shoot anything with a particularly challenging color range. For a while I got all excited about shooting RAW and using ProPhoto RGB, but it just didn't offer anything I could see on the screen or in my prints. Thus, I went back to plain old RGB for most everything. My guess is most people don't need anything more.

[Nick D.]

15 hours ago, conrad_hoffman said:

High end monitors are pricy. I don't have one, nor does anybody else I know. Strictly RGB. I don't care about phones, which often do have wider gamuts. My printer is good, but isn't going to print much beyond RGB, if that. On top of all that, realistically, I don't shoot anything with a particularly challenging color range. For a while I got all excited about shooting RAW and using ProPhoto RGB, but it just didn't offer anything I could see on the screen or in my prints. Thus, I went back to plain old RGB for most everything. My guess is most people don't need anything more.

They all RGB, which one you talking about?

[Nick D.]

If you want use wider gamut colors, you need wide gamut monitor.

[conrad_hoffman]

Certainly you know what I meant!

 

[JDMvW]

On 2/24/2023 at 4:27 AM, rodeo_joe1 said:

In short, if you shoot RAW the choice between sRGB and AdobeRGB in camera isn't at all important. 

Absooolootely right!

 

What color space you work in depends on what the site in question requires, what you are trying to do, and becomes less important as "time goes by" ...

[hjoseph7]

I decided to brush up on my RAW skills today since I rarely shoot RAW. Good thing I still have a bunch of RAW images from my last wedding shoot stored in a Folder on my desktop. I opened one of the images using Canon DPP (Digital Photo Professional) software that ships with all Canon DSLR's.  The reason why I decided to use this software is because it lets you process RAW files ! Not only that,  it let's you convert them, but only to JPEG and TIFF.

Anyway,  I opened one of my RAW files using DPP. The good thing about this software is that it allows you to change the Color Temperature and the Picture Style on the fly but only on RAW files. Color Temperature is not the same thing thing as Color Space, but rather its the variable settings on your camera such as: Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsen,  Shade, Flash etc that are supposed to match the color temperature that you took your picture(s) in.  You can also click on a white,  or grey object in the image to correct things.

My picture look a little on the yellow side, so I clicked on the bride's white dress which improved  things quite a bit. I did some more minor edits such as increase exposure, sharpen, desaturate a little, Tone Curve. There are not that many edits you can do with this software, so you got to work with what you got. My picture looked better than ever, but still could use some more tweaking in photoshop.

Like I said this DPP software lets you convert your RAW images to JPEFG or TIFF (why not DNG ?) So I saved/converted my image to JPEG  and opened it up in Photoshop. To my surprise my image looked  absolutely horrible ! The colors looked dull and had this pale yellow/green cast ? I thought I made a mistake so I repeaded the process all over again and sure enough I got the same results a pale/greenish looking image after all that work I did in DPP. 

I started looking around the Photoshop screen for solutions when I happened to notice that under the Tab [EDIT]  there were three settings ( Color Settings, Assign Profile, Convert To Profle) Aha ! I clicked on Color Settings and  up came a drop-down box which allowed you to change the Color Space. My picture  was using the sRGB settings, at least this is what I saw in the dropdown box. I immediately changed it to Adobe RGB(1998) and my image looked a lot better, a lot closer to the image in DPP, but not exactly.

DPP really makes Canon images look good. I remember I use to Print off  DPP and skip Photoshop altogether because the resulting prints looked better. I tried some of the other Profles on the list, such as ProFoto RGB and ColorMatch, but none of them worked as well as Adobe RGB(1998).  However those 4 Color spaces were not the only ones ! There were color spaces for every piece of equipment that I have connected to my computer !  Monitor profiles, printers profiles, scanners profiles, etc., they all had color profiles, plus there were profiles that did who kows what ?   There is much more to this Color Profile stuff that meets the eye. 

[paddler4]

I don't use DPP, but I have a guess as to what your problem is. As Rodeo Joe said, raw files don't have a color space assigned. JPEGs do. My guess is that you have DPP set to assign Adobe RGB to JPEGs and you didn't have photoshop set up to use that assigned profile.

If your copy of photoshop is set up correctly, it will correctly render whatever JPEGs you open. You can set photoshop so that it will ask you what to do if you open a file that has a color space assigned that isn't what you have set for your working space. You can keep that profile or change it. Go to Edit-Color Settings and check the boxes at the bottom next to "Profile Mismatches" and "missing profiles."

"Color Temperature is not the same thing thing as Color Space, but rather its the variable settings on your camera such as: Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsen,  Shade, Flash etc that are supposed to match the color temperature that you took your picture(s) in."

Sort of. Those aren't fundamentally what temperature is; those are just labels for common temperature settings. Hues can be represented as a wheel, and when that is done, it requires position on two orthogonal axes (at right angles to each other) to represent any color. Any two orthogonal axes will do, but by convention, one goes from yellow to blue and the other goes from magenta to green. By convention, the first is labeled temperature (the reason has to do with physics) while the second is usually labeled "tint." If you watch carefully when you use a white (or neutral gray) area to set white balance, you will often see that tint changes, not just temperature.

[hjoseph7]

11 minutes ago, paddler4 said:

I don't use DPP, but I have a guess as to what your problem is. As Rodeo Joe said, raw files don't have a color space assigned. JPEGs do. My guess is that you have DPP set to assign Adobe RGB to JPEGs and you didn't have photoshop set up to use that assigned profile.

If your copy of photoshop is set up correctly, it will correctly render whatever JPEGs you open. You can set photoshop so that it will ask you what to do if you open a file that has a color space assigned that isn't what you have set for your working space. You can keep that profile or change it. Go to Edit-Color Settings and check the boxes at the bottom next to "Profile Mismatches" and "missing profiles."

"Color Temperature is not the same thing thing as Color Space, but rather its the variable settings on your camera such as: Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsen,  Shade, Flash etc that are supposed to match the color temperature that you took your picture(s) in."

Sort of. Those aren't fundamentally what temperature is; those are just labels for common temperature settings. Hues can be represented as a wheel, and when that is done, it requires position on two orthogonal axes (at right angles to each other) to represent any color. Any two orthogonal axes will do, but by convention, one goes from yellow to blue and the other goes from magenta to green. By convention, the first is labeled temperature (the reason has to do with physics) while the second is usually labeled "tint." If you watch carefully when you use a white (or neutral gray) area to set white balance, you will often see that tint changes, not just temperature.

This makes sense, since I converted my original RAW file to JPEG a Color Space must have been assigned to it ?  I went to the Settings section of the DPP software  and noticed that under Color Management sRGB was the default setting, but it allows you to change it(see attachment). When I opened the Image in Photoshop however it looked terribl even tough the Color Space in Photoshop was set to sRGB. When I changed the Color Space in Photoshop to Adobe RGB(1998) things improved quite a bit. Before changing the Color Setting to Adobe RGB, first I had to select "Dont Color manage the Document" under the [Assign Profile] selection(see attachment below) in Photoshop.  

 

   

 

[rodeo_joe1]

IMO a JPEG should be a file type of last resort. In other words do not convert your file to Jpeg until you've absolutely finished editing it to your complete satisfaction, and only then if a small file size is absolutely necessary.

So, to transfer between DPP and Photoshop, use Tiff, which will preserve a 16 bit, uncompressed, unsharpened image for further editing.

JPEG applies automatic lossy compression (which is vulnerable to data corruption), can only save at 8 bit depth (which limits the tonal and colour adjustment that can be subsequently made). It also applies a default sharpening and introduces edge artefacts that damage definition. In short, JPEGs are a bit crap! No, make that very crap. 

If you transfer files between editors, use a lossless, high bit-depth format like TIFF or DNG. There's still the issue of keeping the colour space compatible between editors, but at least you'll have more than 8 bits worth of colour to play with. 

*With JPEGs, once you've baked in sRGB or AdobeRGB there's no going back without some loss of colour fidelity.*

If you have any recent version of Photoshop, there's absolutely no reason not to use the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) plugin that comes with it to open and process your RAW files. ACR handles a wide variety of RAW formats from almost every brand of camera. Although it may need updating if your camera is a very recent model. 

ACR allows many adjustments, like colour-temperature and tint, selection of a neutral grey-point, exposure adjustment and much more, including target colour space and bit-depth - which should be set to 16 bits; there's no point shooting RAW to only use 8 bits! After which the file automatically opens in Photoshop for further editing, printing, saving in multiple different versions or file formats or whatever. 

Edited March 2, 2023 by rodeo_joe1

[rodeo_joe1]

Addendum to above after editing window:

After using ACR the RAW file remains untouched, except that it has a 'sidecar' file attached with an XMP extension. This file basically just remembers the last adjustments you made in ACR and automatically applies them the next time that raw file is opened. The parameters can be subsequently changed while absolutely no alteration is made to the precious Raw file. 

I suspect that those same parameters can be transferred to other RAW files by copying and changing the name of the XMP file, but I haven't tried that. Must experiment next time I use ACR and Photoshop! 🤔

[hjoseph7]

"After using ACR the RAW file remains untouched, except that it has a 'sidecar' file attached with an XMP extension. This file basically just remembers the last adjustments you made in ACR and automatically applies them the next time that raw file is opened."

 

Seems like DPP does the same thing because after I transferred the Image to Photoshop, then went back to the Image in DPP, the changes I had made previously still seem to be there ? I was expecting the RAW file to revert to its original state, but it hadn't ? In any case and I should have written this down, I opened up a RAW file from my folder, edited it in DPP while also selecting the ADOBE RGB Color Space in the Settings section of DPP. Then I saved the file as a JPEG.  I then opened the file in Photoshop. A pop-up box opened telling me there was some type of Color Space mismatch (I previously set up Photoshop to launch this box) and what Color Space did I want to use ? So I clicked on Adobe RGB. All I can say is WOW ! the Image looks GREAT almost life-like !  I need to try this again and maybe write it down. I also will try saving it as a TIFF file instead of JPEG.     

My problem is I'm still using the old CS5 version of Photoshop which runs on Window 7.  It came with ACR, but that is also an old version(version 6.5). That version is so old that it wont read RAW files from my more modern cameras like my Canon 6D. So I'm using Canon's propriety RAW software program DPP to read those RAW files. Upgrading to Windows 10 would solve all those PS problems, but I  was hesistant because I have a Scanner and Printer(s) that only work on Windows 7. However recently I found out that there are now Drivers for those components that would allow them to run on Windows 10. That wasn't always the case. Switching to Windows 10 would allow me to upgrade to Photoshops' latest version which unfortunately I might have to do.  😒    

Edited March 2, 2023 by hjoseph7

[marceppy]

I use Adobe RGB except when posting web pictures then I use sRGB.  Web pictures look better in sRGB on my system.  Affinity will work on Windows 7 also DPP.  I couldn’t get Bridge to open in Windows 10 or 11.  

[paddler4]

You can also use Adobe's free DNG converter to convert your raw files to DNGs that old versions can read. However, if you are selling your work, $10/month for up-to-date software would seem like a very good investment, given the enormous improvements that have been made in the software in the 13 years since CS5 was released. In addition, you would get Lightroom thrown in. Then again, it's not for me to say how other folks should spend their money.

From your post, I think you may be missing a bit of how raw converters work. When you edit a raw file in what are called parametric editors, all the software is doing is accumulating commands for editing and rendering the image accordingly on the screen. In Adobe products, these changes are stored either as XML "sidecar" files or in the Lightroom catalog (if you set Lightroom to do that). The actual image data are not altered until you store a new file in another format, such as JPEG or TIFF. So, when you go back to the parametric editor, you usually have a choice of whether to render the image with or without the stored edits.

That's not the case with programs like Photoshop, which will alter actual pixels.

I agree with Rodeo Joe: don't convert to JPEG, which is a lossy format, until you need to. Use TIF to move from a raw converter to anything else.  

In your initial editing, before you have to export for the web or some other purpose, you should use the widest gamut possible for your working space. What you have done in DPP is throw out all of the colors outside of the sRGB gamut. You can't get them back. That is, you can't display the entire Adobe RGB gamut if you've limited the image to sRGB. 

Beyond this, I can't figure out what the cause of your problem is. Note that if you don't have a wide gamut monitor, you can't get more than sRGB on your monitor, no matter how you set software. Most monitors can't display more than sRGB, if even that. Photoshop should have no difficult reading a file that has been assigned any of the standard color profiles, and it should manage colors appropriately. The exception is that if the color profiles (in the file and expected by Photoshop) don't match and you choose the wrong option, colors will look off.

[hjoseph7]

"You can also use Adobe's free DNG converter to convert your raw files to DNGs that old versions can read. "

I think I tried downloading the DNG converter, but my computer would not run it ?  Adobe and Microsoft have done a very good job of locking-down older versions of their software so that you have no choice, but to upgrade. I spoke to a Customer Service Rep from Adobe the other day and he said he could upgrade my computer to Windows 10 for free as long as I subscribe to their Cloud Photoshop package which includes the Latest Version of Photoshop and Lightroom. It cost about $20 per month which is acually not bad, since you are always kept up to date with the latest changes. I much prefer having a hard-copy CD version, but it seems they have done away with that. 

I have other software packages that can read RAW files like Affinity Photo and ACDSee, but they don't have the Color Management tools that Photoshop has.   

 

[paddler4]

" I spoke to a Customer Service Rep from Adobe the other day and he said he could upgrade my computer to Windows 10 for free as long as I subscribe to their Cloud Photoshop package which includes the Latest Version of Photoshop and Lightroom. It cost about $20 per month "

This is what I was referring to, but you only need to spend half that much. $20 gets you 1TB of cloud storage. I have never used any of their cloud storage. You can get the same software with 20 GB of cloud storage for $10. See https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/compare-plans.html.

All of this runs fine on Windows 10, which I use, but I' not sure you can update from Windows 7 to Windows 10, given that Windows 11 was released a year and a half ago. Maybe there is still some way to upgrade to Windows 10.

Any decent editing software will offer at least basic color management tools. You say you have Affinity Photo and ACDSee. I believe both offer color management. See:

https://digital-photography-school.com/color-management-in-affinity-photo/

https://help.acdsystems.com/en/acdsee-pro-9/Content/1Topics/7_Options_configuration/Setting_options/IDDH_OPTIONS_COLORMANAGEMENT.htm

[mikemorrellNL]

On 2/23/2023 at 9:25 PM, hjoseph7 said:

The other day I picked up a book on converting Color digital images into B&W digital images. This book had been sitting on my shelf for years, but I had not bothered to read it. Once I opened it, I found out that it is a reallly well written book that I found hard to put down, even though it is a little dated. "Black and White in Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Lightroom" by Leslie Alsheimer and Bryan O'neil Hughes. 

The book starts by explaining Color Management in one of the simplest ways I have come across. I usually try to avoid this subject unless I'm printing at home which I haven't done for years. Anyway, the book explains that there are 4 color spaces. A color space is like a crayon box in that the number of crayons in that box, determines the number of colors you are allowed to use. There are 4 major color spaces, sRGB, AdobeRGB, ProPhoto RGB and Color Match RGB.  The two most popular ones are sRGB and Adobe RGB. 

Beleieve it or not sRGB is the smallest color space or has the narowest Gamut. Just pretent that Gamut is the number of crayons in a box. The next largest is AdobeRGB, and the largest of all is ProPhoto RGB. Match RGB is like a mixture of ProPhoto and Adobe RGB. Like I said, I never paid much attention to all this Color Management stuff unless I was printing, that is before I came across this book.

According to the authors as of now, our digital cameras should give us the choice between sRGB and AdobeRGB. I sort of knew that, but to avoid problems my brain defaulted to sRGB automatically when it came to choosing Color Spaces. That means that all 3 of my digital camera, Pentax, Nikon and Canon should give me the choice of choosing between sRGB and AdobeRGB. ProPhoto is way to wide for digital cameras to handle right now, but it does have its applications.

I checked and by golly, all 3 of my cameras do give me that choice, but they were all set to sRGB by default. sRGB is mostly for Web applications. AdobeRGB is meant for printing but can also be used for web applications. AdobeRGB has the wider gamut so the camera should pick up colors that it wasn't able to with sRGB (remember the crayon box analogy).

With that said, I should be setting my camera to AdobeRGB instead of sRGB since I want to get as many colors as I can get. Today I tried it by setting all my cameras to Adobe RGB instead of sRGB, but I could not tell the difference ?  Maybe I didn't have a wide enough choice of subjects to choose from since I was sitting in my living room when I did the test. I will probably do a more extensive test once I get a chance, but for now, how many of you use sRGB and how many of you use AdobeRGB and what are the differences if any ? 

Choosing a Color Space in-camera is not enough though, when it comes to Editing you also have to match that color space with color space in Photosho and Lighroom. What happens when the edited image gets passed to the printer ? Your guess is as good as mine. Printers use an entirelly different color space that is, they use the CMYK color space. AdobeRGB is recomended for printing so there must be a reason.  

  

I fully agree with all the previous comments. If you're (in the future) considering converting other photos to B/W, then I would recommend checking out Silver Efex Pro. It's the best 'B/W tool' (plugin) that I've ever found. Not only in terms of (adjustable) B/W 'style' but also in terms of adjusting local areas of grey values. And adding a range of 'finishes'.

Silver FX Pro once used to be a free 'plugin' from Google. Part of the (free) 'Nik collection' of Google apps. Then Google disowned the 'Nik collection' and said that they no longer supported it. The 'unsupported' (free) version continued to work with Adobe products until some Adobe update a year or two ago. My old Nik collection 'free version' hasn't worked as an Adobe plugin since then. Dxo.com took over the 'Nik collection' from Google and now provide further development, maintenance, support, etc. As you might guess the current (updated) 'Nik collection' is no longer free. The current version (for all Nik Plugins) is priced at about $160.

I haven't checked whether the free 'legacy' version of the Nik collection is still available as a download (probably) and whether the collection can be used as stand-alone programs (independently of Adobe programs).

I have no idea what your future use of  color -> B/W conversions might be or what your budget is. 

DXO offers a free 'trial version' of each of its Nik apps. I suggest you try out the Silver Efex Pro app to decide whether it's worth the money.  You might want to tryout a couple other apps too. From what I read, all apps come as a bundle for about $160. You might be able to negotiate fort just 1 or 2 apps.

 

[hjoseph7]

18 hours ago, paddler4 said:

" I spoke to a Customer Service Rep from Adobe the other day and he said he could upgrade my computer to Windows 10 for free as long as I subscribe to their Cloud Photoshop package which includes the Latest Version of Photoshop and Lightroom. It cost about $20 per month "

This is what I was referring to, but you only need to spend half that much. $20 gets you 1TB of cloud storage. I have never used any of their cloud storage. You can get the same software with 20 GB of cloud storage for $10. See https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/compare-plans.html.

All of this runs fine on Windows 10, which I use, but I' not sure you can update from Windows 7 to Windows 10, given that Windows 11 was released a year and a half ago. Maybe there is still some way to upgrade to Windows 10.

Any decent editing software will offer at least basic color management tools. You say you have Affinity Photo and ACDSee. I believe both offer color management. See:

https://digital-photography-school.com/color-management-in-affinity-photo/

https://help.acdsystems.com/en/acdsee-pro-9/Content/1Topics/7_Options_configuration/Setting_options/IDDH_OPTIONS_COLORMANAGEMENT.htm

Wow thanks, I saw the $10 deal once when I was thinking about upgrading, but then I never found it again ? Adobe makes it real confusing when choosing plans, so you have to be careful because even if the software fails to download, you get charged anyway.   I think I will call Adobe again and see what they have to say. I do have Windows 10, but its on my laptop and the screen is only 14 inches. I would rather use it on my Dektop with a fully color-corrected 22" screen. 

Edited March 3, 2023 by hjoseph7

[hjoseph7]

18 hours ago, paddler4 said:

" I spoke to a Customer Service Rep from Adobe the other day and he said he could upgrade my computer to Windows 10 for free as long as I subscribe to their Cloud Photoshop package which includes the Latest Version of Photoshop and Lightroom. It cost about $20 per month "

This is what I was referring to, but you only need to spend half that much. $20 gets you 1TB of cloud storage. I have never used any of their cloud storage. You can get the same software with 20 GB of cloud storage for $10. See https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/compare-plans.html.

All of this runs fine on Windows 10, which I use, but I' not sure you can update from Windows 7 to Windows 10, given that Windows 11 was released a year and a half ago. Maybe there is still some way to upgrade to Windows 10.

Any decent editing software will offer at least basic color management tools. You say you have Affinity Photo and ACDSee. I believe both offer color management. See:

https://digital-photography-school.com/color-management-in-affinity-photo/

https://help.acdsystems.com/en/acdsee-pro-9/Content/1Topics/7_Options_configuration/Setting_options/IDDH_OPTIONS_COLORMANAGEMENT.htm

I checked both ACDSee and Affinity and they do have some type of Color Management ?! I'll have to see how they work when I get a chance, thanks again.