colour space (again)

[M.Chapman]

13 hours ago, MDM said:

Therein lies the fundamental problem of all digital imaging - you have no control over what anyone else will use to view your image. They might receive an image in the state you intended but may (and most likely will) perceive something very different. One could say something similar about print images as it depends a lot on the lighting used to view the image and also on the way the viewer perceives colour. 

 

Indeed. But at least by (a) ensuring my monitor is calibrated and (b) finishing and uploading in sRGB I've eliminated 2 of the sources of variability. Thereby ensuring the jpg file received by the customer is the same (apart from Alamy's extra jpg compression and profile removal) as the file I reviewed and checked on my system.

 

But yes, there's no way of knowing how the customer will view the image. Their monitor may be uncalibrated, their system maybe setup incorrectly and their colour perception will be different. 

 

Alamy doesn't help matters by stripping the colour profile from our images. This makes it more likely that the images will be incorrectly displayed. If the customer loads an Alamy image (ie. sRGB with no profile) into PS where the working space has been set to AdobeRGB, all the colours in the image will be artificially boosted. Depending on their settings they may get no warning of this. To those using PS I urge you to check the following settings.

Edit>Color Settings...

It's important that the "Missing profiles - Ask when opening" is ticked.

 

There's a lot of misconception about the differences between sRGB and AdobeRGB. In the case of correctly rendered images, the differences are quite restricted. But what sometimes happens is that the same image is swapped between being displayed on an sRGB to wider gamut monitor without making the necessary changes to either the system profile or the image RGB data (in the case of a profile free image) and boom all the colours look more intense on the wide gamut display. This can lead to the false conclusion that Adobe RGB images and displays are so much more "colourful" than sRGB. A good test of whether a system is setup correctly or not is to take an sRGB image (with profile) and compare its appearance on the two displays. It should appear to be virtually identical. If not, then there's something wrong with the setup.

 

If the same test is carried out with an AdobeRGB image then (depending on the image) the image may appear more colourful on the wide gamut display, but the differences should only be noticeable in the saturated colours beyond the edges of sRGB colour space (if the image contains such colours). If every colour in the image looks less intense on the sRGB display, then again there's probably something wrong with the setup.  

 

Mark

Edited March 11, 2023 by M.Chapman

[M.Chapman]

On 10/03/2023 at 04:36, John Mitchell said:

Thanks for all the useful information. I think the advanced age of my version of PS Elements is to blame for the different look of images. Also, I'm not sure how compatible it is with Windows 10. I've noticed a couple of other glitches since moving from Windows 7. As mentioned, I've switched to Affinity Photo for extra tweaking, etc. It's far superior software. I plan to invest in a better monitor when/if finances permit.

 

Even old versions of PSE should be OK (I have PSE 7). If you are using an ordinary (not wide gamut) monitor and preparing images for Alamy only, then I suggest you check the following setting in PSE

Edit>Colour settings...

Select the "Always optimise colours for computer screens" option

Mark

Edited March 11, 2023 by M.Chapman

[M.Chapman]

Deleted

Edited March 11, 2023 by M.Chapman

[M.Chapman]

18 hours ago, Cal said:

 

I don't know much about using PS for this as it isn't in my workflow, but your last point is why I like to use the soft-proofing option in Lightroom. You can set it to soft proof in sRGB and it will show you both visually and on the histogram what clips in sRGB. I find a lot of the time reds clip - particularly on a vivid sunset or bright flowers. 

Yes the soft proofing function in LR works well and it's great that the histogram updates too.

 

The soft proofing function in PS doesn't quite work the same way. It doesn't update the histogram and gives a misleading result if View>Proof Setup>Internet RGB standard (sRGB) is selected.

 

To get the right (and same as LR) proofing result you have to select View>Proof Setup>Custom...

Device = sRGB IEC61966-2.1

And untick preserve RGB numbers and then select the rendering intent (Perceptual or Relative) to match what was used in LR

 

Mark

Edited March 11, 2023 by M.Chapman

[John Mitchell]

11 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Even old versions of PSE should be OK (I have PSE 7). If you are using an ordinary (not wide gamut) monitor and preparing images for Alamy only, then I suggest you check the following setting in PSE

Edit>Colour settings...

Select the "Always optimise colours for computer screens" option

Mark

 

Thanks. I have that box checked. I'll have to do some more experimenting with all of this...

[John Mitchell]

These are the colour preferences offered in Capture One. Most of them are technical gobbledygook to me. I've just left things at the default setting -- i.e. "Perceptual." Should I have chosen something else?

 

I find Affinity Photo's colour settings even more mind-boggling. Again, I've chosen "perceptual" and "conversion to working space."

 

 

Edited March 11, 2023 by John Mitchell

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, John Mitchell said:

These are the colour preferences offered in Capture One. Most of them are technical gobbledygook to me. I've just left things at the default setting -- i.e. "Perceptual." Should I have chosen something else?

 

I find Affinity Photo's colour settings even more mind-boggling. Again, I've chosen "perceptual" and "conversion to working space."

Perceptual is fine.

 

Mark

[John Mitchell]

51 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

Perceptual is fine.

 

Mark

 

That's a relief!

 

Thanks again, Mark.

[M.Chapman]

Hi John,

 

To help with checking the colour rendering of images in different software packages I knocked up a test chart in sRGB colour space based (loosely) on the Passport Colorchecker colours. It can be downloaded here. https://i.postimg.cc/13342FFB/Marks_SRGB_test_chart.png

I also converted it to AdobeRGB colour space and saved a copy here. https://i.postimg.cc/2ydVRFTc/Marks_AdobeRGB_test_chart.png

The advantage of computer generated charts like this is they contain a reasonable spread of colours and the patches are perfectly uniform (PNG format helps here too) making sampling with an eyedropper (if needed) more accurate and easy.

 

Updated charts (larger charts in more widely used jpg format) are here:

https://i.postimg.cc/W41GJVGp/Marks_SRGB_test_chart_(2).jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/MG3y7L57/Marks_AdobeRGB_test_chart_(2).jpg

 

Take one of the charts (AdobeRGB or sRGB) and load into each software package you want to check. Arrange each package so it occupies a fraction of the screen so you can see how the chart is rendered by a number of packages at the same time (a side by side comparison).

 

Here's my result for Photoshop 2023 (top left), PSE 7 - running in Window 10 VM (top right), FastRawViewer (bottom left) and Affinity Photo 2 (bottom right)

 

Hopefully you can see the rendering is identical in each. For a finer detail check (if needed) take a whole screen screenshot and then open in PS. Then use the eyedropper tool to read the RGB values of the patches in the screenshot to check if each package is displaying each patch using the same RGB values (within +/-1). 

 

Mark

Edited March 14, 2023 by M.Chapman
Added links to new charts

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, M.Chapman said:

Hi John,

 

To help with checking the colour rendering of images in different software packages I knocked up a test chart in sRGB colour space based (loosely) on the Passport Colorchecker colours. It can be downloaded here. https://i.postimg.cc/13342FFB/Marks_SRGB_test_chart.png

I also converted it to AdobeRGB colour space and saved a copy here. https://i.postimg.cc/2ydVRFTc/Marks_AdobeRGB_test_chart.png

The advantage of computer generated charts like this is they contain a reasonable spread of colours and the patches are perfectly uniform (PNG format helps here too) making sampling with an eyedropper (if needed) more accurate and easy.

 

Take one of the charts (AdobeRGB or sRGB) and load into each software package you want to check. Arrange each package so it occupies a fraction of the screen so you can see how the chart is rendered by a number of packages at the same time (a side by side comparison).

 

Here's my result for Photoshop 2023 (top left), PSE 7 - running in Window 10 VM (top right), FastRawViewer (bottom left) and Affinity Photo 2 (bottom right)

 

Hopefully you can see the rendering is identical in each. For a finer detail check (if needed) take a whole screen screenshot and then open in PS. Then use the eyedropper tool to read the RGB values of the patches in the screenshot to check if each package is displaying each patch using the same RGB values (within +/-1). 

 

Mark

 

Thanks very much. I tried this with your Adobe RGB chart, and the colour rendering in PS Elements and Affinity Photo appear to be virtually identical. However, the rendering in Capture One Express is very different -- i.e. colours are darker and more saturated. This is disturbing since I do most of my post-processing in Capture 1, but I'm not sure what it's telling me or what I can do about it. Could the difference have something to do with the fact that Capture 1 is designed for RAW files, not png?

Edited March 12, 2023 by John Mitchell

[M.Chapman]

16 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Thanks very much. I tried this with your Adobe RGB chart, and the colour rendering in PS Elements and Affinity Photo appear to be virtually identical. However, the rendering in Capture One Express is very different -- i.e. colours are darker and more saturated. This is disturbing since I do most of my post-processing in Capture 1, but I'm not sure what it's telling me or what I can do about it. Could the difference have something to do with the fact that Capture 1 is designed for RAW files, not png?

I'll try loading up Capture One Express and see what I get.

 

Mark

[M.Chapman]

35 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Thanks very much. I tried this with your Adobe RGB chart, and the colour rendering in PS Elements and Affinity Photo appear to be virtually identical. However, the rendering in Capture One Express is very different -- i.e. colours are darker and more saturated. This is disturbing since I do most of my post-processing in Capture 1, but I'm not sure what it's telling me or what I can do about it. Could the difference have something to do with the fact that Capture 1 is designed for RAW files, not png?

OK I loaded up Capture One Express and I'm seeing the same. The AdobeRGB png file looks dull. It looks suspiciously like Capture One is ignoring the AdobeRGB tag and interpreting the file contents as if it's sRGB. I'll investigate further to see what's going wrong. It could be that Capture One doesn't understand a png with a profile and is just defaulting to sRGB. I'll see if the same happens with an AdobeRGB jpg file.

 

Update - Same happens with a jpg. Mmmm... I need to check the Colour management settings in Capture One Express. 

 

Mark  

Edited March 12, 2023 by M.Chapman

[John Mitchell]

21 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

OK I loaded up Capture One Express and I'm seeing the same. The AdobeRGB png file looks dull. It looks suspiciously like Capture One is ignoring the AdobeRGB tag and interpreting the file contents as if it's sRGB. I'll investigate further to see what's going wrong. It could be that Capture One doesn't understand a png with a profile and is just defaulting to sRGB. I'll see if the same happens with an AdobeRGB jpg file.

 

Update - Same happens with a jpg. Mmmm... I need to check the Colour management settings in Capture One Express. 

 

Mark  

 

The colour management settings / options in C1 Express appear to be minimal to say the least. I've noticed for a long time that when I open my processed RAW files as 16-bit TIFFs (AdobeRGB and sRGB) in either PS Elements (especially) or Affinity, they look much brighter and less saturated.

[M.Chapman]

I notice if I import the sRGB file into Capture One Express it's fine. But the AdobeRGB file isn't. Capture One Express is ignoring the profile and interpreting the AdobeRGB file as if it's sRGB. That's not good. At the moment I can't find anywhere to change Capture One Express colour management settings, it does seem to be pretty crippled. Have you found any colour management settings in Capture One Express?

 

Mark

Edited March 12, 2023 by M.Chapman

[M.Chapman]

Mmm..I've done further tests and Capture One 22 Express is definitely ignoring the profile in AdobeRGB jpg file and interpreting the data as sRGB instead and I can't find any setting to fix it. I think this problem will only affect AdobeRGB (and any other wide gamut) jpgs and pngs and tiffs imported into Capture One Express. Imported sRGB files are fine. I also expect that a RAW file developed in Capture One Express will be fine - I'll try developing a RAW Passport ColorChecker image from my Sony RX100 in PS, Affinity and Capture One Express. They results will undoubtedly look different, but shouldn't be as dull as the imported AdobeRGB jpg. I'll try that tomorrow.

 

Mark

Edited March 12, 2023 by M.Chapman

[John Mitchell]

3 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

Mmm..I've done further tests and Capture One 22 Express is definitely ignoring the profile in AdobeRGB jpg file and interpreting the data as sRGB instead and I can't find any setting to fix it. I think this problem will only affect AdobeRGB (and any other wide gamut) jpgs and pngs and tiffs imported into Capture One Express. Imported sRGB files are fine. I also expect that a RAW file developed in Capture One Express will be fine - I'll try developing a RAW Passport ColorChecker image from my Sony RX100 in PS, Affinity and Capture One Express. They results will undoubtedly look different, but shouldn't be as dull as the imported AdobeRGB jpg. I'll try that tomorrow.

 

Mark

 

Thanks, Mark. You're right, this doesn't sound good. It sounds as if I may have to do more tweaking of AdobeRGB files in Affinity Photo after they've been developed in C1 Express, or perhaps I should just use Affinity for developing RAW files in the future. Will have to experiment.

[M.Chapman]

10 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Thanks, Mark. You're right, this doesn't sound good. It sounds as if I may have to do more tweaking of AdobeRGB files in Affinity Photo after they've been developed in C1 Express, or perhaps I should just use Affinity for developing RAW files in the future. Will have to experiment.

Something strange is going on. I thought I'd give Capture One Express (for Sony) the best chance of working. I took 2 shots of my Passport colour checker with my Sony RX100 M3. I had the camera set to RAW + JPG. I took one pair of pictures with Camera set to sRGB. The other pair with the camera set to AdobeRGB. Imported all 4 images into Capture One Express, and they're all rendered correctly. So I opened the sRGB jpg in PS and converted to AdobeRGB (which is effectively the same process I used to create the test images) and saved with profile embedded. I imported that image, and that is rendered correctly too. 

 

It appears that Capture One Express is ignoring the Adobe profile in some image files (e.g. my earlier test image files) and not others. I'll do some more investigation this evening. I'll try feeding it jpgs from a non-Sony camera to see what happens. Maybe it doesn't like the PS generated image files? Maybe it doesn't like pngs?

 

Mark

Edited March 13, 2023 by M.Chapman

[M.Chapman]

Initial results indicate it's possibly a image size or aspect ratio issue. My PS generated sRGB and AdobeRGB test images are only 610 x 410 pixels - at this size Capture One Express is ignoring the AdobeRGB colour profile. When I upsized one to 2820 x 2115 then Capture One appears to behave differently and takes the AdobeRGB colour profile into account. Once I've got to the bottom of it, I'll upload some new test images.

 

Mark

[gvallee]

You've made Mark happy John, he's in his element. Great detective work Mark! Respect.

[M.Chapman]

John,

 

It's an image size issue.

An AdobeRGB test chart of 732 x 492 (or smaller) loads incorrectly (Capture One Express ignores the embedded Adobe RGB profile).

An AdobeRGB test chart of 793 x 533 (or larger) loads correctly (Capture One Express uses embedded Adobe profile)

Here are links to 2 new (larger) test charts. Try these.

https://i.postimg.cc/PxCZL5kW/Marks_AdobeRGB_test_chart_(2).png

https://i.postimg.cc/Y9TFQBpJ/Marks_SRGB_test_chart_(2).png

These test charts display correctly in Capture One Express 22 on my system.

 

Doesn't inspire 100% confidence in Capture One Express when small images don't load correctly... Code was probably originally written to suit those high MegaPixel Phase One cameras!

 

Mark 

Edited March 13, 2023 by M.Chapman

[John Mitchell]

9 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

John,

 

It's an image size issue.

An AdobeRGB test chart of 732 x 492 (or smaller) loads incorrectly (Capture One Express ignores the embedded Adobe RGB profile).

An AdobeRGB test chart of 793 x 533 (or larger) loads correctly (Capture One Express uses embedded Adobe profile)

Here are links to 2 new (larger) test charts. Try these.

https://i.postimg.cc/PxCZL5kW/Marks_AdobeRGB_test_chart_(2).png

https://i.postimg.cc/Y9TFQBpJ/Marks_SRGB_test_chart_(2).png

These test charts display correctly in Capture One Express 22 on my system.

 

Doesn't inspire 100% confidence in Capture One Express when small images don't load correctly... Code was probably originally written to suit those high MegaPixel Phase One cameras!

 

Mark 

 

With my low-end monitor I don't really see any significant difference between the AdobeRGB and sRGB charts. However, using the larger images that you kindly provided, the color rendering now looks more consistent in all three programs (Elements, Affinity, and C1 Express). However, both charts still appear somewhat darker in Capture One to me. This is something that I'm going to have to somehow take into account when post-processing. Thanks very much for all your expertise and effort. It's very helpful. Part of the the mystery seems to have been solved. Did you work for Scotland Yard in another life? 🔍

 

P.S. I wonder how common this is with other RAW processing software -- i.e. developed images appear a bit on the dark side compared to how they look when opened later in editing programs like Photoshop and Affinity.

Edited March 13, 2023 by John Mitchell

[M.Chapman]

4 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

P.S. I wonder how common this is with other RAW processing software -- i.e. developed images appear a bit on the dark side compared to how they look when opened later in editing programs like Photoshop and Affinity.

Developed RAWs will usually look different from one package to another, but imported jpgs should not.

 

I'm still concerned that Capture One on you system looks darker. Which Version are you running? Is it the AdobeRGB chart or the sRGB chart looks darker in Capture One, or both? Have you taken a side by side screenshot? If not it can be difficult to judge by eye - especially if the background colour is different. That being said -  I also tried my test images with Capture One Pro and find that's not reliable either :-(

LR, PS and Bridge, PSE, Affinity, BreezeBrowser Pro are all good, but FastRawViewer has a problem with AdobeRGB.

 

Mark

 

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by M.Chapman

[MDM]

6 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

P.S. I wonder how common this is with other RAW processing software -- i.e. developed images appear a bit on the dark side compared to how they look when opened later in editing programs like Photoshop and Affinity.

 

My only experience is with Lightroom and Photoshop and there is a major dependence on what colour space you view the images in after development and opening in Photoshop. If different apps are implementing colour management differently then you would expect to see differences in the developed images even if the colour spaces are supposed to be the same across apps. 

 

With Lightroom (and Adobe Camera Raw) there are four options for colour space in the raw conversion: ProPhoto, AdobeRGB, sRGB and P3, each of which looks and measure as different colour numbers using the Color Sampler tool in Photoshop. It is much more revealing and accurate to measure the same area in a set of images than to just judge by eye. The advantage of this Color Sampler tool is that you can cliick on an area, designate the number of pixels you are measuring and keep up to 10 measurements on an image which makes comparisons much easier. You don't need a wide gamut monitor to make accurate measurements as the colour numbers are not influenced by the monitor. I don't know if it is available in PSE but it's been around Photoshop for a long time so it's possible. 

 

 

[John Mitchell]

5 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

Developed RAWs will usually look different from one package to another, but imported jpgs should not.

 

I'm still concerned that Capture One on you system looks darker. Which Version are you running? Is it the AdobeRGB chart or the sRGB chart looks darker in Capture One, or both? Have you taken a side by side screenshot? If not it can be difficult to judge by eye - especially if the background colour is different. That being said -  I also tried my test images with Capture One Pro and find that's not reliable either 😞

LR, PS and Bridge, PSE, Affinity, BreezeBrowser Pro are all good, but FastRawViewer has a problem with AdobeRGB.

 

Mark

 

 

 

Both your charts -- AdobeRGB and sRGB -- look a bit darker in C1 Express than they do in Elements and Affinity. As mentioned, my current monitor leaves much to be desired, but I do calibrate it every month or so. Not sure if monitor quality might have something to do with it...

 

 

Edited March 14, 2023 by John Mitchell

[M.Chapman]

19 hours ago, MDM said:

 

My only experience is with Lightroom and Photoshop and there is a major dependence on what colour space you view the images in after development and opening in Photoshop. If different apps are implementing colour management differently then you would expect to see differences in the developed images even if the colour spaces are supposed to be the same across apps. 

 

With Lightroom (and Adobe Camera Raw) there are four options for colour space in the raw conversion: ProPhoto, AdobeRGB, sRGB and P3, each of which looks and measure as different colour numbers using the Color Sampler tool in Photoshop. It is much more revealing and accurate to measure the same area in a set of images than to just judge by eye. The advantage of this Color Sampler tool is that you can cliick on an area, designate the number of pixels you are measuring and keep up to 10 measurements on an image which makes comparisons much easier. You don't need a wide gamut monitor to make accurate measurements as the colour numbers are not influenced by the monitor. I don't know if it is available in PSE but it's been around Photoshop for a long time so it's possible. 

The colour sampler tool in PS, LR etc. normally* displays the value of the internal image data in PS and not the value being sent for the display (which is after application of the colour space profile). The best way to illustrate this is to create an image of a dull colour patch with sRGB profile and note its RGB value with the eyedropper in PS (e.g. 128,0,0). Then assign AdobeRGB profile (NB Assign AdobeRGB profile NOT convert to AdobeRGB). You will see the colour on the screen change (becomes brighter) as the values being sent for display are "decompressed", but if you look with the PS eye dropper you will see the RGB value is unchanged. *Unless the eyedropper is set to measure the proofed RGB values.

 

Other apps may have their own eyedroppers, but there's no guarantee they work the same way. 

 

Fortunately there's a workaround. If the two apps or images are side by side on the screen at the same time the colours can be compared by taking a whole screenshot, opening the screenshot image in PS and then moving the eyedropper from the colour in one image to the other. This doesn't allow absolute colour checks (a monitor profile is being applied across the whole image) but does allow relative colour checks. Here's a screenshot from example from PS.

 

 

I created the red (128,0,0) patch on the left in PS in sRGB colour space. I then applied AdobeRGB profile and put that image on the right. The eyedropper in PS shows the patches are both 128,0,0 even thought they appear visually quite different. But, if I take a screenshot, then open that in PS, the eyedropper now reveals the difference in colour between the two.

 

That's why I recommended taking a whole screenshot and using the eyedropper to John, earlier in this thread. Alternatively there are various colour picker apps that will sample the screen colour being sent for display by an application, rather than the application's "internal" RGB pixel value.

 

Mark

 

Edited March 14, 2023 by M.Chapman
Improved some of the terminology