sRGB vs Adobe RGB

sRGB vs Adobe RGB: The Truth Continued

Sure parts of the printers space is outside the reach of both sRGB and Adobe RGB, but with proper color management we can easily remap the captured data and let it flow into the “protrusion” of the output space. See our Painless Color Management smARTICLE for more info. Even if we put up your labs Frontier, Lambda, Lightjet, etc. printer spaces - all would be smaller than sRGB. This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the printers, we can just capture more color volume with our cameras than they can print on paper. The same was true with film, did you ever try to make a print from a transparency? There’s plenty of data in the trans or neg for that matter that could not be reproduced on paper but the prints still looked great right? Right.

FACT TWO: Just about all portrait labs want you to send them files that are in the sRGB color space for printing. Why? Because their big expensive digital printers have an “input space” that allows them to print any pixel data as long as it fits inside this input space. Any data that is outside of this input space (called out of gamut data) will simply not be printed - it just disappears. Think of this input space as the mouth to the printer and your data is a big ole meatball sandwich. If the sandwich is no taller or wider than the mouth of the printer, it will fit in the mouth and be reproduced by the printer and look terrific on the print. But if the sandwich is taller than the mouth of the printer, the bread gets knocked off and only the meatballs get shoved into the printers mouth. The result is not a print of a meatball sandwich, but of only the meatballs and maybe a little cheese and some nice hot peppers. mmmm.

The input space or “mouth” of the lab grade printers is defined by a specific color space. That space is usually sRGB. So if your meatball sandwich is larger than sRGB, say it’s the size of the wider AdobeRGB space, you or your lab will need to convert that sandwich down to the sRGB size before sending it over to the printer. If not...it’s meatballs for you pal. ; )

What about printing in-house to my printer?

You can start off with data in any space you want to, but you need to realize that the data needs to be remapped (compressed) into your printers output space to be able to reproduce all that pixel data you capture. Some printer drivers do a great job of compressing the data for you automatically, and some printer drivers are more “manual” about it.
So if you capture an image in RAW, process into a 16 bit, Adobe RGB TIFF file, then convert to your printers output space in Photoshop, you will get the most data (color, tone and texture) from your camera and produce a terrific looking print. But this process took forever! Now if you’ve captured that same image as a standard 8 bit JPEG in the sRGB space, then converted it to your printers output space in Photoshop, you will produce a great looking print. Notice I didn’t say a terrific print, only a great print. These great looking prints took much less time and much less effort to produce (ever custom process 350 RAW files?) and can make you just as much money as the terrific ones if you catch my drift.

Now let’s take it a step further... Let’s capture that same image as a standard 8 bit JPEG in the sRGB space, then skip Photoshop all together, load it into StudioMaster Pro or ProShots or Pictage and send it off to your lab for printing. The result? A great, or maybe even a terrific looking print with no hassle at all and a “per print” cost much lower than doing it yourself. In fact, the presentation function of those lab-printer software packages may even boost your print sales. But don’t load an image into these lab software packages when you photo file is in the AdobeRGB space.
This will get you a nasty looking print. Why? Because labs want your image in sRGB - so give them what the ask for. Right tool for the job remember.