Will i get away with srgb monitor?

Hi.

Got question regarding monitor for pghoto editing and compositing. Do i need really adobe rgb monitor for editing if im not printing my works just for digital content. I edit raw plus do compositions.

Now i got 2 options:

Buy srgb monitor 4k or fhd adobe rgb( eizo cs2420)?

Thank you

Raphaello88 said:

Hi.

Got question regarding monitor for pghoto editing and compositing. Do i need really adobe rgb monitor for editing if im not printing my works just for digital content. I edit raw plus do compositions.

Now i got 2 options:

Buy srgb monitor 4k or fhd adobe rgb( eizo cs2420)?

Thank you

Click to expand...

The vast majority of online content consumers don't have Adobe RGB monitors, so if you're creating content for them I don't see any benefit.

I would make sure that whatever monitor I bought supported a high percentage of the sRGB gamut; I'd personally insist on greater than 90%, and more is better.

Austinian said:

Raphaello88 said:

Hi.

Got question regarding monitor for pghoto editing and compositing. Do i need really adobe rgb monitor for editing if im not printing my works just for digital content. I edit raw plus do compositions.

Now i got 2 options:

Buy srgb monitor 4k or fhd adobe rgb( eizo cs2420)?

Thank you

Click to expand...

The vast majority of online content consumers don't have Adobe RGB monitors, so if you're creating content for them I don't see any benefit.

I would make sure that whatever monitor I bought supported a high percentage of the sRGB gamut; I'd personally insist on greater than 90%, and more is better.

Click to expand...

Agreed. Although you still need colour management in my opinion. Budget for something like the Datacolor Spyder 5 calibrator.


Ian

IanYorke said:

Austinian said:

Raphaello88 said:

Hi.

Got question regarding monitor for pghoto editing and compositing. Do i need really adobe rgb monitor for editing if im not printing my works just for digital content. I edit raw plus do compositions.

Now i got 2 options:

Buy srgb monitor 4k or fhd adobe rgb( eizo cs2420)?

Thank you

Click to expand...

The vast majority of online content consumers don't have Adobe RGB monitors, so if you're creating content for them I don't see any benefit.

I would make sure that whatever monitor I bought supported a high percentage of the sRGB gamut; I'd personally insist on greater than 90%, and more is better.

Click to expand...

Agreed. Although you still need colour management in my opinion. Budget for something like the Datacolor Spyder 5 calibrator.

https://www.wexphotovideo.com/datac...MI8o6JzoqL3gIVCrHtCh3qRQv8EAQYASABEgJ-PfD_BwE

Click to expand...

Yes, absolutely.

IMO any monitor used for serious photography needs hardware color calibration regardless of gamut.

Based on digidog's posts (before he was sadly banned) I'd personally prefer an X-rite i1Display Pro (or a Colormunki Display if DisplayCAL is used instead of the X-rite software and the monitor isn't i1Display Pro-specific), but either should be much better than nothing.

I prefer just working in the sRGB space. That is the most common standard among digital devices and what most people will be using to view any digital media I share. Many phones and monitors come factory calibrated to sRGB now as well.

Austinian said:

Raphaello88 said:

Hi.

Got question regarding monitor for pghoto editing and compositing. Do i need really adobe rgb monitor for editing if im not printing my works just for digital content. I edit raw plus do compositions.

Now i got 2 options:

Buy srgb monitor 4k or fhd adobe rgb( eizo cs2420)?

Thank you

Click to expand...

The vast majority of online content consumers don't have Adobe RGB monitors,

Click to expand...

Every monitor out there is capable displaying a particular color space such Adobe RGB, sRGB, or Pro Photo. It's just a matter of how much. And that (In keeping things simple) depends on the monitors color gamut (color range). When you look at a monitor's color specs, you'll notice more than one color space listed - 100% sRGB, 99.3% Adobe RGB, 94.8% NTSC for example. So many people do have Adobe RGB monitors, they just may not be using that color space.

Austinian said:

so if you're creating content for them I don't see any benefit.

Click to expand...

It depends on the user and what they do. If you print (as I do), sRGB is the last profile you want to use, since it produces the least colors. Now you can't see all those missed colors, but what you can and will see is loss of vibrancy in colors. This is because certain shades are compressed (or lost) to their closet cousins in the sRGB color space.

So, if you print, you'll want something wider than sRGB. If you're ONLY interested in online posts, sRGB is the best.

For me, I save my final images as tiff files in the ProPhoto color space from which I print. When I post to my site or online, I create a jpeg copy saved in sRGB.

That said, all this talk about needing an sRGB monitor is moot because they're all capable of that color space. It's like saying I want a car with a gas tank. They all come with gas tanks, it's just a matter of size.

There's also the matter of color management - at least making sure you include a color profile in your image - sRGB for online posts.

sygnus21 said:

That said, all this talk about needing an sRGB monitor is moot because they're all capable of that color space. It's like saying I want a car with a gas tank. They all come with gas tanks, it's just a matter of size.

Click to expand...

That's true, but using adobeRGB for use on monitors that may only cover 50% of the color space is like paying for 20 gallons of gas for a 10 gallon tank.

Member said:

There's also the matter of color management - at least making sure you include a color profile in your image - sRGB for online posts.

Click to expand...

Every device I know of defaults to sRGB. No color profile is needed if you have worked in the sRGB space. Another reason to stick with it for media intended to be shared digitally.

tkbslc said:

sygnus21 said:

That said, all this talk about needing an sRGB monitor is moot because they're all capable of that color space. It's like saying I want a car with a gas tank. They all come with gas tanks, it's just a matter of size.

Click to expand...

That's true, but using adobeRGB for use on monitors that may only cover 50% of the color space is like paying for 20 gallons of gas for a 10 gallon tank.

Click to expand...

Yeah, and the sun goes up and cows go down.... yada yada yada. My point still stands - sRGB IS included with every monitor out there. Thank you.

tkbslc said:

tkbslc said:

There's also the matter of color management - at least making sure you include a color profile in your image - sRGB for online posts.

Click to expand...

Every device I know of defaults to sRGB. No color profile is needed if you have worked in the sRGB space.

Click to expand...

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the monitor. My NEC PA monitor didn't default to sRGB.

tkbslc said:

Every device I know of defaults to sRGB. No color profile is needed if you have worked in the sRGB space. Another reason to stick with it for media intended to be shared digitally.

Click to expand...

I have two so-called sRGB monitors on my desk at work - I can't get them to look anywhere close to consistent. I need to go in some weekend with my ColorMunki...

All my output images at the moment are sRGB, and I make sure that profile is embedded. I think it was okay to just assume sRGB until recently, higher gamut displays are becoming more prevalent. Even with a sRGB image, having the embedded profile available helps those using color-managed software on higher-gamut monitors to handle the image as best as possible, with the appropriate rendering intent.

Edit: Just thought about the last sentence a little more, rendering intents AFAIK are about handling out-of-gamut colors. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone with experience displaying sRGB images on a high-gamut monitor with color-managed software - how did it look?

So for now - editing raw on srgb- colors are mapped and "downgraded" to srgb gamut right?

With adobe rgb i can edit in pro photo/adobe rgb and than save it as a file with srgb color space wich has more saturated/vibrant colors as it would be edited only in srgb?

Another one - how do u edit raw files : edit raw in pro photo 16 bit than save it to tiff?

Raphaello88 said:

So for now - editing raw on srgb- colors are mapped and "downgraded" to srgb gamut right?

Click to expand...

I edit in Rec2020, don't deal with sRGB until saving to JPEG.

Raphaello88 said:

With adobe rgb i can edit in pro photo/adobe rgb and than save it as a file with srgb color space wich has more saturated/vibrant colors as it would be edited only in srgb?

Click to expand...

Yes, after messing with unmanaged editors, I now see the difference. My images go from camera profile -> Rec2020 -> sRGB, and the colors are much better. Still struggle a bit with high-intensity blues, most recently from accent spotlights at a local performing venue.

Raphaello88 said:

Another one - how do u edit raw files : edit raw in pro photo 16 bit than save it to tiff?

Click to expand...

I'm not mainstream here - I wrote my own software. I shoot raw, then batch-develop to 800x600 JPEGs. I use those as proofs to review, and for family stuff usually that's all they need. I don't save intermediate files unless I want to do something special in GIMP, then I use 32-bit floating point TIFF in Rec2020. Otherwise, I just start from the raw for every different output, my software is written to support that.

ggbutcher said:

tkbslc said:

Every device I know of defaults to sRGB. No color profile is needed if you have worked in the sRGB space. Another reason to stick with it for media intended to be shared digitally.

Click to expand...

I have two so-called sRGB monitors on my desk at work - I can't get them to look anywhere close to consistent. I need to go in some weekend with my ColorMunki...

All my output images at the moment are sRGB, and I make sure that profile is embedded. I think it was okay to just assume sRGB until recently, higher gamut displays are becoming more prevalent. Even with a sRGB image, having the embedded profile available helps those using color-managed software on higher-gamut monitors to handle the image as best as possible, with the appropriate rendering intent.

Edit: Just thought about the last sentence a little more, rendering intents AFAIK are about handling out-of-gamut colors. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone with experience displaying sRGB images on a high-gamut monitor with color-managed software - how did it look?

Click to expand...

There were some issues (primarily over saturated reds) with web page colors and untagged sRGB images. The issue was mostly that, other than Firefox*, browsers were not color managed, in the sense of rendering into the monitor color space.

Chrome now seems to render into monitor color space as well (both seem to be using perceptual intent)

*and in FF, you have to enable it in the settings.

Have a look at this page for a discussion (and a test untagged image with overlaid tagged image that shows whether your browser is managing colors properly or not.

I'd not worry about how tagged sRGB looks on WG monitors. Folks who've spent the extra $$ for them have probably also gone to the trouble of turning on color management in Firefox - and it seems to be on by default in the recent versions of Chrome.

Raphaello88 said:

So for now - editing raw on srgb- colors are mapped and "downgraded" to srgb gamut right?

With adobe rgb i can edit in pro photo/adobe rgb and than save it as a file with srgb color space wich has more saturated/vibrant colors as it would be edited only in srgb?

Click to expand...

If you edit a file in ProPhoto or Adobe RGB and assign the sRGB color space, you'd be downgrading colors. sRGB has less color vibrancy than either ProPhoto or Adobe sRGB.

Raphaello88 said:

Another one - how do u edit raw files : edit raw in pro photo 16 bit than save it to tiff?

Click to expand...

Sounds like you need to do some reading first on photo editing as well as color management. Color management is not an easy subject to grasp, and because of that there is lots of confusion and misinformation bandied about.

With that I would highly suggest you do some net research before you end up being totally confused by some of the answers posted. People will argue, well that's what the forum is for, but if you don't know the basics, you can't tell the right and wrong info posted. And quite frankly some of your questions show you've no idea how all this stuff works.

Here's a 16 minute video on basic color management. It's a good video and explains a lot in a short amount of time. Check out the video, get a grasp, come back as ask questions.

Good luck.

bobkoure said:

ggbutcher said:

tkbslc said:

Every device I know of defaults to sRGB. No color profile is needed if you have worked in the sRGB space. Another reason to stick with it for media intended to be shared digitally.

Click to expand...

I have two so-called sRGB monitors on my desk at work - I can't get them to look anywhere close to consistent. I need to go in some weekend with my ColorMunki...

All my output images at the moment are sRGB, and I make sure that profile is embedded. I think it was okay to just assume sRGB until recently, higher gamut displays are becoming more prevalent. Even with a sRGB image, having the embedded profile available helps those using color-managed software on higher-gamut monitors to handle the image as best as possible, with the appropriate rendering intent.

Edit: Just thought about the last sentence a little more, rendering intents AFAIK are about handling out-of-gamut colors. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone with experience displaying sRGB images on a high-gamut monitor with color-managed software - how did it look?

Click to expand...

There were some issues (primarily over saturated reds) with web page colors and untagged sRGB images. The issue was mostly that, other than Firefox*, browsers were not color managed, in the sense of rendering into the monitor color space.

Chrome now seems to render into monitor color space as well (both seem to be using perceptual intent)

*and in FF, you have to enable it in the settings.

Have a look at this page for a discussion (and a test untagged image with overlaid tagged image that shows whether your browser is managing colors properly or not.

I'd not worry about how tagged sRGB looks on WG monitors. Folks who've spent the extra $$ for them have probably also gone to the trouble of turning on color management in Firefox - and it seems to be on by default in the recent versions of Chrome.

Click to expand...

That's the thing - without the embedded profile, color management doesn't really know what to do with the image, color- wise. With regard to the metadata tags that just say "sRGB", there are too many different interpretations of that in use.

I thought it (sRGB) was all close enough, until I had the recent occasion to make a slide show for display at our church - bunched up reds were horrifying to regard.

ggbutcher said:

bobkoure said:

ggbutcher said:

tkbslc said:

Every device I know of defaults to sRGB. No color profile is needed if you have worked in the sRGB space. Another reason to stick with it for media intended to be shared digitally.

Click to expand...

I have two so-called sRGB monitors on my desk at work - I can't get them to look anywhere close to consistent. I need to go in some weekend with my ColorMunki...

All my output images at the moment are sRGB, and I make sure that profile is embedded. I think it was okay to just assume sRGB until recently, higher gamut displays are becoming more prevalent. Even with a sRGB image, having the embedded profile available helps those using color-managed software on higher-gamut monitors to handle the image as best as possible, with the appropriate rendering intent.

Edit: Just thought about the last sentence a little more, rendering intents AFAIK are about handling out-of-gamut colors. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone with experience displaying sRGB images on a high-gamut monitor with color-managed software - how did it look?

Click to expand...

There were some issues (primarily over saturated reds) with web page colors and untagged sRGB images. The issue was mostly that, other than Firefox*, browsers were not color managed, in the sense of rendering into the monitor color space.

Chrome now seems to render into monitor color space as well (both seem to be using perceptual intent)

*and in FF, you have to enable it in the settings.

Have a look at this page for a discussion (and a test untagged image with overlaid tagged image that shows whether your browser is managing colors properly or not.

I'd not worry about how tagged sRGB looks on WG monitors. Folks who've spent the extra $$ for them have probably also gone to the trouble of turning on color management in Firefox - and it seems to be on by default in the recent versions of Chrome.

Click to expand...

That's the thing - without the embedded profile, color management doesn't really know what to do with the image, color- wise. With regard to the metadata tags that just say "sRGB", there are too many different interpretations of that in use.

I thought it (sRGB) was all close enough, until I had the recent occasion to make a slide show for display at our church - bunched up reds were horrifying to regard.

Click to expand...

How were you "showing them"?

Ian

IanYorke said:

How were you "showing them"?

Click to expand...

It was an MPEG video assembled by my son with both scanned and camera images I collected and processed. I made sure all were converted from my working space to sRGB with the relative_colorimetric intent, which pulls out-of-gamut colors into the target colorspace in a 'gradated' manner. I handed the USB drive to the church AV person; I don't know what program they used to run it. Pretty sure it just pumped the raw values to the screen, no display profile or any such.

Low on my priorities (day job isn't imaging) is to experiment with smaller-than-sRGB profiles on cheap projectors, as color management in such venues is a rather optimistic expectation...

ggbutcher said:

IanYorke said:

How were you "showing them"?

Click to expand...

It was an MPEG video assembled by my son with both scanned and camera images I collected and processed. I made sure all were converted from my working space to sRGB with the relative_colorimetric intent, which pulls out-of-gamut colors into the target colorspace in a 'gradated' manner. I handed the USB drive to the church AV person; I don't know what program they used to run it. Pretty sure it just pumped the raw values to the screen, no display profile or any such.

Low on my priorities (day job isn't imaging) is to experiment with smaller-than-sRGB profiles on cheap projectors, as color management in such venues is a rather optimistic expectation...

Click to expand...

Assuming you are not going to profile a projector, there might be a 'sRGB' mode in the display menus somewhere. That might sort things for you.

If you are using non-color managed software your images will just be sent as-is.

If you are using color managed software your images will be converted to whatever your OS has as the profile for that display. Without profiling, that'll be either sRGB, or whatever the display manafacturer provided on a driver disk, which will probably be sRGB or close to it.

My day job isn't imaging either, but I have a hobby that takes me there

BTW, for a projector, if I was converting manually, I'd use perceptural intent rather than relative. If you have photoshop, and can find a projector display profile (from the disc or downloaded) you might 'soft proof'. Andrew Rodney (who used to post here on dpr) has a decent tutorial on soft proofing . His focus is on soft proofing to print, but there's no reason you can't do the same for a display device, so long as what you are proofing on has a wider gamut than what you're proofing for.

ggbutcher said:

IanYorke said:

How were you "showing them"?

Click to expand...

It was an MPEG video assembled by my son with both scanned and camera images I collected and processed. I made sure all were converted from my working space to sRGB with the relative_colorimetric intent, which pulls out-of-gamut colors into the target colorspace in a 'gradated' manner. I handed the USB drive to the church AV person; I don't know what program they used to run it. Pretty sure it just pumped the raw values to the screen, no display profile or any such.

Low on my priorities (day job isn't imaging) is to experiment with smaller-than-sRGB profiles on cheap projectors, as color management in such venues is a rather optimistic expectation...

Click to expand...

Thanks for the response I think you want to use perceptual rendering. Please see this Web page which actually uses reds in its example:


Ian

Bob and Ian, thanks for the considered responses. I had not seen the color-management-guide article before, a very good description. My previous study of rendering intents has been in the programmer's documentation, which is much less descriptive of the implications.

I've got a 'zoo' collection of profiles, I'll need to go through the sRGB profiles to find a LUT-based one. Perceptual needs that; if all there is in the profile is the 3x3 matrix, the LittleCMS library defaults to relative_colorimetric.

BTW, 'bunched up reds' is a classic issue with relative intent. If a set of colors is outside of what the display can do, relative pegs them all at the max - so the colors are as close as can be on that device / ink&paper set - but they're bunched up. Perceptual keeps the differential values between colors that are OOG. When I'm printing, I'll often soft proof using first one intent, then the other. If I see a difference between the two it'll be in the reds ( e.g. roses, tulips), or sometimes the blues (e.g. Lake Yellowstone blue).