I don't know how he manages to be wrong so many times in such a short video. Incredible really.
Brian A
Here is a reprint of my comment in Luminous Landscape:
If you look at the context of the video, I am explaining why people find that as soon as they switch their cameras to the AdobeRGB color space, their colors appear lifeless and dull. In the beginning of the video, one of the first things that I express is, "AdobeRGB is superior - IF you have the equipment that can exploit it". I then go on to explain that the majority of the wet process printers (RA-4) and web browsers are all within the narrow gamut of sRGB.
For those of you who do not know my background, I was a professional wedding photographer for 20 years, and shot over 1,000 weddings. I then went on to start a photo lab called, "Pictage, Inc." with one of the first Fuji Frontier printers. We were the first company to have to crack open the hood and tone down the saturation and up the midrange tones because the stock Frontiers were too hot. We literally had techs from FujiFilm in West Hollywood over at the lab every day to help me dial it in. Eventually, we got it all dialed in, and went on to become the largest online pro photo lab in the USA, going from six people to 170 employees before we sold it for $29 Million.
During this time, I was involved in testing and prototyping the Fuji S3 and S4. I shot the national ad campaigns before that. And prior to buying my Fuji Frontier, I spent time in Rochester with Kodak, aiding their engineers and testing the prototypes of what became Portra film. I then went and did a number of national platforms for Kodak, and Hasselblad, and appeared in Hasselblad's ad campaigns.
So I intimately know color management as we were the first on the horizon when the world switched to digital. The Fuji Frontier was the bridge technology, scanning negative film to digital (sRGB width) files, which then were stored and printed on RA-4 process printers. We had C-41 film developers, as well as our Frontiers, so I had to learn everything about color management. We had to bullseye our RA-4 output to adjust our chemistry to keep everything balanced. Back then, we used densitometers before the concept of Spiders was even a fantasy.
So when I do a video aimed at helping the enthusiast understand a very basic misunderstanding about color space, I used metaphors like "Muffin tops" and "wide rainbows" to help people understand color clipping - a very widely experienced phenomenon among people who read that AdobeRGB is better, switch to it, then are disappointed in their color. To help illustrate this, I showed a completely red and violet square, side by side, and used my apple monitor profile to simulate color clipping. By switching my printer monitor from sRGB to AdobeRGB, I forced the monitor to "expect" a wider gamut, thereby showing only the middle of the width.
So when Andrew Rodney went on the attack, accusing me of not knowing color management, and then going on to literally say on his Google+ page that my misunderstandings were possibly because I was having problems reading english (an obviously cheap and racist remark), I could not be ok with this. Not only is he being unfair and petulant, he is accusing me of a lot of wrongdoing. He accuses me of trying to mislead people for financial gain.
It is not of any benefit to me if people shoot sRGB or AdobeRGB. I do not sell educational products about color management like Mr. Rodney does. The reason I'm doing this is because I spend a lot of time internationally giving workshops and seminars simply to learn the needs of photographers, so I can stay in touch with what my customer's needs are, and to understand what hinders them from improving their photography.
Despite the cheap shots I've seen here about my "tupperware", my products are the market leader, are carefully researched and tested, have a ten year history of use worldwide acceptance. You'll see my products in use at press events, magazine shoots and by NASA. Jay Meisel, Greg Gorman and many other legendary photographers use my lighting accessories. My Lightsphere was named Popular Photography's Product of the Year in 2010. I have had the good fortune of, well, good fortune, so I don't need to make money off of misleading people for whatever motive in misleading them about color management.
I had a lengthy phone conversation with Will Crockett today, who originally was poked at the beginning of this thread. I have known of Will Crockett's deep knowledge of color printing because he was giving nationwide tours for FujiFilm back when I purchased my $240,000 Fuji Frontier. The management at Fuji hand picked Will because of his knowledge and popular method of teaching. He gave me quite the education of Andrew Rodney, and we will be doing a Skype video to clear up the confusion stirred up by Mr. Rodney (and others) for a YouTube video.
Mr. Rodney is critical of my neophyte misunderstanding of color, yet I know it very well. Mr. Rodney is not a professional photographer, and AdobeRGB did not take over the sRGB world in print volume worldwide, as Adobe wished it would. It does have a wider gamut but nobody will dispute that the equipment that exploits it is pale in comparison to sRGB equipment worldwide. And, nobody can dispute that if a typical photographer shoots JPG and uploads directly to the web or goes to wet process will need to change the color profile of an AdobeRGB file to sRGB for optimal display for common browsers.
I had a student at one of my workshops insist that AdobeRGB was better than sRGB, and I agreed with him. And I asked him to show us one of his prints, and the students commented that the red umbrella appeared dull. I then went on to explain how color clipping occurs, and this student got very angry. He said he much preferred the color of the AdobeRGB, and when I turned the paper over, it said, "Fuji Crystal Archive" - a wet process RA-4 printer paper used then exclusively by the Fuji Frontiers. I pointed out why the other students found his colors to be dull, and he became very angry. He absolutely insisted that his print had better color, so be it.
Color is subjective, but the application of the use of the most proper color space is not. You can create stunning prints with AdobeRGB and a continuous color management workflow that preserves it from generation to generation. And I am sure that those of you who do this from beginning to end earn the pride of enjoying your enhanced color. But you are not everybody, and the person who buys the Digital Rebel is at risk of reading experts decry that AdobeRGB is always better. It's not. Not in a hybrid workflow that starts with a wide gamut and ends with a narrow one.
This has gotten so intensely blown out of proportion that I am proud to announce that we will be doing a series of Skype interviews with top experts in photography and color management to address this.
I am super thankful to Will Crockett for giving me the run through about Rodney Andrew. Yes my responses have been very blunt, but it's because it is really something to see this kind of criticism when it is unfounded and unwarranted. And I am dedicated to bringing out clarity, and truth, especially about the history and background of Rodney Andrew.
To the moderators, please review your TOS, because I feel like a lot of these potshots in this thread violates it. And for the record, while I am of chinese descent, I do not speak chinese. English is my first language, and I can read it just fine.
Gary Fong
CEO Gary Fong Inc.
