Color spaces and Lightroom


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canetoad

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Dec 19, 2006
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Hi all,

Wondering if you guys know what is wrong...

I am using Lightroom to process my images, adjusting for color saturation, brightness, tone, etc in Develop mode. When i managed to get a good picture inside lightroom, I export it, and the JPEG comes out over saturated (viewed with Windows Picture/Fax Viewer).

I'm guessing this has something to do with the color space that lightroom uses. According to the lightroom help, the develop module uses Adobe RGB 1998, so I set my monitor and windows color profile to Adobe RGB 1998, but the problem is still there.

Even on the same screen, the lightroom picture and the exported picture look very different.
I've tried the Microsoft Color Powertoy, and the "Monitor Calibration Wizard", but both do not seem to help.

Any advice about configuring Lightroom and/or Windows to solve this problem?
 

First regarding LR and colour space:
first one needs to distinguish what type of photo file you are using. RAW files do not have an assigned colour space. for these LR is using a colour space similar to ProPhoto RGB. This is a rather wide colour space, bigger than Adobe RGB or sRGB.

for jpegs and tiffs, LR uses the embedded colour space if there is no colour space embedded in the file LR is using sRGB.

For export from LR you have a choice between sRGB, Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB. I would recommend sRGB.

Now, why is the photo not the same outside LR? First one needs to know if you have a calibrated system and what other wizards and settings are active (Adobe Gamma!). Then you need to check if the software you are using is actually colour managed or not.

if you system is colour managed then ensure that all other colour management devices (Adobe Gamma etc) are removed or turned off.
Export in sRGB as this is the colourspace that is most commonly used.

If you do things right you should not see a difference.
 

Hi thanks for the advice. I tried doing that and it works much better. However, I'm wondering, if I want to use Adobe RGB or ProPhoto, because of a larger color range, can I do the same as the sRGB profile?

Are there additional settings to be tweaked if I want to use non-sRGB profiles, and yet maintain the same color inside and outside Lightroom?
 

Hi thanks for the advice. I tried doing that and it works much better. However, I'm wondering, if I want to use Adobe RGB or ProPhoto, because of a larger color range, can I do the same as the sRGB profile?

Are there additional settings to be tweaked if I want to use non-sRGB profiles, and yet maintain the same color inside and outside Lightroom?
yes, you should be able to. As mentioned before RAW has now colour space (or rather the cameras native colour space), so LR works in ProPhoto and you can export in ProPhoto, choose the appropriate output colour space during export.
Jpeg however will be most definitively saved by the camera in sRGB, converting to Adobe or ProPhoto will not result in a bigger colour range since it was already limited during creation.
Please take note that your monitor and printer may not be able to show the full range of ProPhoto or Adobe colours...
 

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