Adobe RGB vs. sRGB

hark

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I'd like some input from members here. A while back I changed my camera to shoot as Adobe RGB instead of sRGB. Some of what I shoot gets printed (Adobe RGB is preferred for that), and I found I had less clipping with Adobe RGB instead of sRGB. And I also changed my post processing in ACR and Photoshop CC from sRGB to Adobe RGB.

Below I have the same image saved as two different color profiles. The first is Adobe RGB. The second was converted to sRGB prior to saving. Can you see any noticeable differences? Supposedly when uploading to the web, images saved as Adobe RGB get washed out whereas sRGB is ideally suited for the web. So technically the 2nd image (sRGB) should look a little better. Please let me know if you see any differences...even subtle ones. Thanks! :)

By the way, the watermark might be a different opacity so please don't go by that. I couldn't remember how I set it for the first image. :eek:

@Horoscope Fish when you have a chance, will you please scrutinize any differences?

_DSC1120 low res.jpg


_DSC1120 sRGB low res.jpg
 
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nickt

Senior Member
No difference here. I checked on my phone and tablet as well. Those screens always look more vivid than my laptop screen but the shots still look the same.

I said in the other thread that I have trouble wrapping my head around color space. Since then I have done some reading and I think as a concept, I finally get it. As for real life, I still don't get it. I set my camera for jpg and took some shots in each color space. No processing at all. No matter what I viewed them in, I could not tell the difference. So maybe our devices are not capable of showing the difference? Maybe its a printer thing? But that doesn't explain why the aRGB does not look bad on the web. I'll be following along here to learn.

Sometimes I can't even tell when my wife gets her hair color touched up so there is probably no hope for me.:dejection:
 

Horoscope Fish

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I'd like some input from members here. A while back I changed my camera to shoot as Adobe RGB instead of sRGB. Some of what I shoot gets printed (Adobe RGB is preferred for that), and I found I had less clipping with Adobe RGB instead of sRGB. And I also changed my post processing in ACR and Photoshop CC from sRGB to Adobe RGB.

Below I have the same image saved as two different color profiles. The first is Adobe RGB. The second was converted to sRGB prior to saving. Can you see any noticeable differences? Supposedly when uploading to the web, images saved as Adobe RGB get washed out whereas sRGB is ideally suited for the web. So technically the 2nd image (sRGB) should look a little better. Please let me know if you see any differences...even subtle ones. Thanks! :)

By the way, the watermark might be a different opacity so please don't go by that. I couldn't remember how I set it for the first image. :eek:

@Horoscope Fish when you have a chance, will you please scrutinize any differences?
The difference is subtle but it's there, and I noticed it straight away. The aRGB image appears less saturated and slightly "muddier" than that of the sRGB version. The pics below show the difference clearly, I think. To make these, I simply cropped the same area (roughly) from the rust-colored tree that appears in the top center of your example shot (here's hoping the formatting of my message holds up). The crops aren't exact and both have been resized to 200%, so they're less than sharp, but that's not what's important here; look only at the color. I see distinct color differences not only in the foliage but even in tiny bit of sky you can see in each example:
.....
aRGB-Crop.jpg.....sRGB-Crop.jpg
..................aRGB...............................................sRGB
 
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gustafson

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The sRGB image colors are more saturated and brighter, and is more pleasing to my eye. Thanks for sharing. The difference is more substantial than I’d have expected.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

hark

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Thank you to everyone for your thoughts. I noticed something which I will mention below Nick's comment.

No difference here. I checked on my phone and tablet as well. Those screens always look more vivid than my laptop screen but the shots still look the same.

When I posted both photos here last night, I couldn't tell any difference other than the watermark shifted slightly (added them by hand with a brush). Then when I went through Tapatalk on my iPhone, I could see a difference. When I have time, I will take a screen shot to show the differences. It even listed the bytes which were slightly different.

This laptop displays 75% sRGB and only 56% Adobe RGB according to my Spyder's calibration. Even when comparing the files directly, they appear to be identical. However, since there is enough of a striking Tapatalk difference, I am going to change my workflow somehow. I prefer working in Adobe RGB simply because I get less clipping. When I checked the clipping between both files, the Adobe RGB had only a tiny amount of white clipping. I fixed those areas individually with a brush before posting. Fortunately I didn't have the issue with clipping blacks. That's been the biggest pain in the butt for me when working in sRGB and the main reason why I switched to Adobe RGB.
 

nickt

Senior Member
I clearly see a difference in Paul's crops. I see no difference in Cindy's original pictures on my laptop screen, they both look like Paul's sRGB crop, neither looks under saturated like the aRGB crop. On my tablet I can zoom in and still see no difference, both look great. I downloaded the two images and cropped in LR. I exported each as what they were, aRGB and sRGB. I still can't see a difference. Is my low-end laptop not letting me see it? Or maybe something on my end is converting the aRGB image before I even get to experience it?

On my preview screen, these two crops look the same. We'll see when I upload them.

aRGB
_DSC1120 low res.jpg

sRGB
_DSC1120 sRGB low res.jpg
 

hark

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I clearly see a difference in Paul's crops. I see no difference in Cindy's original pictures on my laptop screen, they both look like Paul's sRGB crop, neither looks under saturated like the aRGB crop. On my tablet I can zoom in and still see no difference, both look great. I downloaded the two images and cropped in LR. I exported each as what they were, aRGB and sRGB. I still can't see a difference. Is my low-end laptop not letting me see it? Or maybe something on my end is converting the aRGB image before I even get to experience it?

On my preview screen, these two crops look the same. We'll see when I upload them.

aRGB
View attachment 299504

sRGB
View attachment 299505

This is interesting. The first one (aRGB) appears slightly more saturated on my monitor. I wonder why.
 

nickt

Senior Member
This is interesting. The first one (aRGB) appears slightly more saturated on my monitor. I wonder why.
I think I see that too. My laptop is crap though. I can change the screen or my head angle and make them look the same. They look the same on my tablet too. Did I mention I'm confused? The only thing that is clear is that I am not ready to work in aRGB. Maybe when I get a new computer. Things work for me now though. I have my crappy uncalibrated laptop. Prints from Nations always looked as expected and now that I have the Canon Pro 100, prints still look as expected.
 

gustafson

Senior Member
I clearly see a difference in Paul's crops. I see no difference in Cindy's original pictures on my laptop screen, they both look like Paul's sRGB crop, neither looks under saturated like the aRGB crop. On my tablet I can zoom in and still see no difference, both look great. I downloaded the two images and cropped in LR. I exported each as what they were, aRGB and sRGB. I still can't see a difference. Is my low-end laptop not letting me see it? Or maybe something on my end is converting the aRGB image before I even get to experience it?

On my preview screen, these two crops look the same. We'll see when I upload them.

aRGB
View attachment 299504

sRGB
View attachment 299505

I looked at the pics again on a Windows laptop and a Mac. Other than the crops posted by Paul, the differences in the other image pairs are not as stark as when viewed on my iPhone. It appears that hardware (or the software driving the display) can make a difference on how images render on a given display based on the colorspace. Definitely learned something here. Thanks for sharing!
 

Horoscope Fish

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I think the reason some people are not seeing a difference between the sRGB image(s) and the aRGB image(s) is because some browsers/image viewers respect color-space while others do not. It's entirely possible a particular phone, tablet, browser, etc. is displaying aRGB images in an sRGB color-space.

@hark :: Not that you're asking for my advice on your workflow but I feel your pain regarding clipping and such when working with a pure sRGB workflow. That's one of the reasons I switched to an aRGB workflow as well. In short, I import and do all my raw processing in aRGB. As a final step I'll convert the image to sRGB, do a "Save As" and use that .jpg for posting online. If, and when, I find I have clipping issues once an image is converted to the sRGB color-space, I deal with it then, on a case-by-case basis. It's annoying to some degree, having to do that, but I'd rather do that than sacrifice the wider overall gamut that aRGB provides. Remember... You can always down-sample but once down-sampled, there's no going back... I decided on this workflow after experimenting with even wider gamuts, such as ProPhoto, and finally decided that working with aRGB is a good, middle of the road sort of path.

My thoughts on shooting .jpg are simpler: shoot and process in sRGB. If I'm shooting .jpg's the whole reason is to AVOID post-processing altogether. If I'm going to process a shot, I'm going to process a raw file. I'll let my camera "post-process" my .jpg's.

Just my two-cents.
 

hark

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I think the reason some people are not seeing a difference between the sRGB image(s) and the aRGB image(s) is because some browsers/image viewers respect color-space while others do not. It's entirely possible a particular phone, tablet, browser, etc. is displaying aRGB images in an sRGB color-space.

hark :: Not that you're asking for my advice on your workflow but I feel your pain regarding clipping and such when working with a pure sRGB workflow. That's one of the reasons I switched to an aRGB workflow as well. In short, I import and do all my raw processing in aRGB. As a final step I'll convert the image to sRGB, do a "Save As" and use that .jpg for posting online. If, and when, I find I have clipping issues once an image is converted to the sRGB color-space, I deal with it then, on a case-by-case basis. It's annoying to some degree, having to do that, but I'd rather do that than sacrifice the wider overall gamut that aRGB provides. Remember... You can always down-sample but once down-sampled, there's no going back... I decided on this workflow after experimenting with even wider gamuts, such as ProPhoto, and finally decided that working with aRGB is a good, middle of the road sort of path.

My thoughts on shooting .jpg are simpler: shoot and process in sRGB. If I'm shooting .jpg's the whole reason is to AVOID post-processing altogether. If I'm going to process a shot, I'm going to process a raw file. I'll let my camera "post-process" my .jpg's.

Just my two-cents.

Thanks for the info, Paul. After updating Camera RAW on my laptop, that's when I began noticing a much larger issue with clipping. This has been my only workable solution. Moving forward, I think I will simply switch to sRGB at the very end. I haven't had any issues when printing sRGB but also haven't scrutinized the difference when printing.

My normal browser is Chrome. After just viewing this thread via Firefox, the red tree has a very subtle difference in color and brightness...but not by much.

Here is the screen shot from my phone (via Tapatalk). It lists the bytes. I swear when I looked at it last night, the bytes both were listed in the 1xxx range, not the hundreds. Might have been because I was tired and heading to bed. ;) Yeah, let's just go with that! :eek:

IMG_0025.PNG
 

nickt

Senior Member
[MENTION=13090]Horoscope Fish[/MENTION] , I'm trying to wrap up my understanding of color space...
Would this be true.... We may be experiencing clipping in our processing. Since aRGB has a wider range of colors, that is, it can display more extreme reds, blues, etc., there is less clipping. Have I got that? And moving ahead, not everyone's equipment/software handles the aRGB the same. Some systems might just ignore the extremes, leaving some 'blah'. And other systems might convert everything to sRGB so some people might see little or no difference between the two? Am I on the right track?
 

Horoscope Fish

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Horoscope Fish, I'm trying to wrap up my understanding of color space...
Fun stuff, no? LOL...


Would this be true.... We may be experiencing clipping in our processing. Since aRGB has a wider range of colors, that is, it can display more extreme reds, blues, etc., there is less clipping. Have I got that?
Well, yes and no... aRGB is a broader color-space than sRGB. Period.

However, there is much overlap between the two color-spaces... aRGB overlaps with sRGB everywhere except in the Blue and Green channels:
......
sRGB vs aRGB.jpg
.....
That being the case I would say, "yes"; aRGB images will be better able to capture color in those areas not covered by the sRGB color-space but, since the overlap is effectively 100% in the Reds, i'd say, "no" to that part of your question. I may be splitting hairs a wee bit but I'm trying to be fair and accurate. What matters to me is that aRGB is the wider color space and that's why I've chosen to use it. It's bigger, it's arguably "better" than sRGB so why NOT use it, right? The answer to that is, because every so often you'll clip a color channel when converting a shot from the wider aRGB gamut to the smaller sRGB gamut. You then have to either go back and correct it in the aRGB color-space (so it doesn't clip when converted to sRGB) or learn to just let it go and get on with life. Sometimes (most of the time, in my experience) the clipping is so minimal I just let it go.


And moving ahead, not everyone's equipment/software handles the aRGB the same. Some systems might just ignore the extremes, leaving some 'blah'. And other systems might convert everything to sRGB so some people might see little or no difference between the two? Am I on the right track?
You're on the right track. When a photo is assigned a particular color-space it has been "tagged". This means the photo itself contains a bit of information about it's color space that image viewing software can read and understand. Some (and these days I think most) Internet browsers see that tag and will display images accordingly. Safari is color-managed, Firefox is color-managed and I don't know about Chrome. For a long time Chrome was not color-managed, but that may have changed. Individual applications on your phone, tablet, etc. may or may not be color-managed. I would think this day in age they would be but it's not a given and it can account for why the same photo will look different on different devices.
 
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Kevin H

Senior Member
On my PC at work (big AOC monitor), the bottom photo has less vibrance. It's very evident.

On my Galaxy Note 8, there is no difference at all.

Here's a Flickr album of only two photos, processed the same way you did it. One in AdobeRGB, the other sRGB. On my same monitor here at work, they look the same. I'm wondering if Flickr changed something.


https://www.flickr.com/photos/41728000@N08/albums/72157654408152976/with/18563006119/

good call looked at both no difference at all
 

hark

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On my PC at work (big AOC monitor), the bottom photo has less vibrance. It's very evident.

On my Galaxy Note 8, there is no difference at all.

I'm actually surprised with that. The bottom one *should* be the more vibrant of the two if there is any difference in color. Hmm....:confused:
 

hark

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Here is another comparison. The first image was done as Adobe RGB. The second is sRGB. I have an entire folder of car show photos that will require converting. I did batch processing one time for resizing but haven't ever done it to change my color profile. 126 images is a lot, and I don't want to mess this up. ;)

_DSC7685 low res.jpg


_DSC7685 sRGB low res.jpg
 
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