Mac Gamma and the Perils of Field Editing
- This topic has 13 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated Feb 20, 2007 at 12:12 am by
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Zach,
If I were you, I would get in the habit of capturing your images and having your working space in the larger color gamut, Adobe RGB. A simple conversion in PS (edit > color conversion) to sRGB is all you need for copied web-displayed images or clients who ask for the smaller gamut, sRGB.
Some publishers insist on Adobe RGB images because they contain more colors (it usually doesnt make a difference, but sometimes it does, especially with greens and blues) plus the conversion to CYMK is much more seamless. sRGB to CYMK conversions will find certain colors and hues falling out of gamut, and since the original capture was in sRGB, there is no going back and getting them afterward.
You are right about most not knowing the difference. If they have no preference or dont know when asked, I will convert to sRGB to avoid confusion. My master files, however, stay in the larger color gamut so I dont restrict their possibilities later.
Hey Richard –
For the time being I’m going to stay with sRGB but I do intend to set up an Adobe RGB workflow.
Some more food for thought:
If you have a Mac, go back and open up this thread using both Safari and Firefox. Night and day difference between how the two render the photos. When I was looking at this thread originally in firefox I really couldn’t understand the huge deal between the two photos, I saw a little oversaturation on the red in your shirt, but now looking at it in Safari… the first picture obviously isn’t acceptable, waaaaay oversaturated.I don’t know that Firefox is capable of color management, and if it is, it doesn’t appear to be honoring the embedded color profiles of the images you posted. What a frustrating experience it must be for photographers who are concerned about presenting color accurate images.
When I first bought my MacBook I borrowed a ColorVision Spyder to calibrate the LCD. The difference between the calibrated and uncalibrated profiles is significant, and the ColorVision was able to produce colors much more accurately (I think) than I had from the “eye test” calibration that comes with OS X.
Hahaha, yeah, ironically, here on my crappy PC at work, in Firefox, the first image looks like it should and you can’t detect any oversaturation or red tint, while the second is a little washed out.
I still haven’t dicked around at all with the color calibration on my macbook but while we are on the subject my long term plans involve getting a 22″ widescreen monitor so I can still have a desktop set up to work on after I buy some decent camera equipment and whatnot.
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