sRGB or Adobe RGB?

[Midnight_lightning]

I recently upgraded my graphics card and ever since all images on screen are brighter and more saturated than they used to be. 

For some things I like the new look but my astro images are too rich - bottom line is I intend to calibrate my screen, don't know what to do but am reading up on it.

One question I am struggling with is should I use sRGB or Adobe RGB? 

I've read sRGB is better for on screen display and Adobe for printing - but is that it?

I also read somewhere years ago not to use Adobe RGB because it would " lead to problems" - cant remember what they were worried about.

My screen is an Eizo CS240 and supports 99% AdobeRGB and is 10 bit from 16bit - whatever that means.

So, if anyone could enlighten me I would be grateful - I do most processing using APP/PI and Affinity Photo.

Thanks

Jon 

 

 

 

[richard ashbee]

Use a Spyder to calibrate your screen, can get from amazon for just over £100. RGB is generally when its going to be printed in a book or magazine. sRGB is the normal setting for the web and printing. 

[richard ashbee]

Sorry forgot to say you can see the before and after once you have calibrated the screen, best to redo every month

[Midnight_lightning]

13 hours ago, richard ashbee said:

Sorry forgot to say you can see the before and after once you have calibrated the screen, best to redo every month

Thanks Richard, looks like I need to but a spyder

 

[Midnight_lightning]

Any more views on the choice between sRGB and Adobe RGB?

Edited April 24, 2020 by Midnight_lightning

[Star Struck]

I have an Eizo monitor and they support 100% sRgb.

You will need a screen profiler, there are other makes than Spyder, as it is essential to keep your monitor calibrated. Very easy to do and should be done regularly.

I would avoid Adobe Rgb as it is essentially for high end printing and is very specialised. Stick with sRgb and you cannot go wrong.

what do you intend to do with your final images and let this guide your choice. SRgb can be used on all devices, #creens, web etc. 

Tony

[Midnight_lightning]

7 minutes ago, Star Struck said:

I have an Eizo monitor and they support 100% sRgb.

You will need a screen profiler, there are other makes than Spyder, as it is essential to keep your monitor calibrated. Very easy to do and should be done regularly.

I would avoid Adobe Rgb as it is essentially for high end printing and is very specialised. Stick with sRgb and you cannot go wrong.

what do you intend to do with your final images and let this guide your choice. SRgb can be used on all devices, #creens, web etc. 

Tony

I currently display images online and have had numerous images printed at A3 size which I have around the home. I have some interest from friends about buying prints so may offer prints for sale at some point. 

My objective is to do everything I can to produce the best images possible but not to make life unnecessarily difficult. If using Adoobe is going to cause problems I will stay away from it. 

[vlaiv]

Complex topic. Here are some guidelines:

1. Calibrate your monitor properly.

2. If you intend to share your work - either do it in sRGB or Adobe RGB in formats that support color space information.

This only makes sense if you have accurate colors. Many people don't bother getting color accurate in their astro photos, so there is not much point in paying attention to color space.

Most monitors are capable of displaying some of sRGB gamut. Very few monitors are capable of displaying Adobe RGB gamut. If you don't include color space information with your image, it will be assumed that it is sRGB color space and colors in your image should be coded in sRGB color space.

If you code them in Adobe Color space but record them in format that does not have color space information - colors will be wrong on other people's computers as they will assume it is sRGB (no profile given).

3. Here is breakdown of what will happen in different cases:

- You have AdobeRGB gamut monitor. Both AdobeRGB and sRGB will be displayed properly on your monitor

- You publish sRGB - on everyone's monitor it will display properly - (regardless if you include color profile with image - as it is assumed sRGB by default) - if they have their monitors calibrated.

- You publish AdobeRGB and include color gamut info - People with sRGB capable monitors and operating systems / browsers that support color profiles (all modern) - will see it properly but in reduced gamut of sRGB, provided that they have their monitors calibrated. People with AdobeRGB will see larger gamut and again correct colors.

- You publish AdobeRGB but don't include color gamut info - No one will see it properly except you.

It is a bit like "selecting a language"

Imagine you know two languages - English language and Japanese for example and you are trying to choose which one you want to use.

If you use English and send your documents to people (in England) - not much is needed as everyone will just read it. But if you send them Japanese and say - this is in Japanese, please translate it prior to use, then very few people that know Japanese will be able to read it without translation, but everyone else will need to fire up google translate to be able to read it.

If you send Japanese without telling people it's a different language, here analogy breaks a little as people will generally be able to recognize it's Japanese, but it will be just a bunch of markings that would be wrong if they tried to read them using rules of English language.

AdobeRGB and sRGB are two different "languages" used to write down image color. sRGB is common language that everyone speaks. AdobeRGB is spoken by only a few.

Here is page that will help you determine if you have AdobeRGB capable monitor. It contains sRGB and AdobeRGB images side by side. Images contain wide gamut (there is third image that shows where you should see difference in color) and if you see them equal - you only have sRGB gamut monitor. If you see them differently - your computer monitor speaks AdobeRGB

https://webkit.org/blog-files/color-gamut/

In the end - just remember, above is rather pointless if you don't do precise color calibration of your astro images. Adjusting color tone and saturation to your liking is already producing wrong color. AdobeRGB and sRGB will give you slightly different results but neither will be correct as initial data is not color correct (but to your liking on your computer screen).

 

[Midnight_lightning]

Thanks Vlaiv for that excellent answer and analogy. I purchased a sensor today and have an Adobe RGB capable monitor but I think given what you say I will calibrate the screen but stay with sRGB. I doubt most people would see the difference in my images and it quite honestly this hobby is hard enough without adding anything that isn't essential   

Thanks again for replying, very helpful.

[Alien 13]

I would like to add a small note regarding Monitor calibration using devices like the Spyder, I have the Spyder 5 pro and what it does is create a custom colour profile for your graphics card but does not in fact calibrate the Monitor itself.

Alan

[ollypenrice]

Good reply, as ever, from Vlaiv.

For a while I took to processing in Adobe RGB because the colour gamut seemed better and I felt it brought a slight advantage, particularly since I enjoy colour in astrophotography in the same way that some poeple enjoy fine resolution. (Not that I don't enjoy that as well...) But then I had to re-work the images in sRGB in order to share them. In then end I got fed up with this and decided to work only in sRGB!

I'll be interested in any more informed discussion of this matter since I'm just being subjective here.

Olly

[Buzzard75]

I shopped for monitors for a long time and thought I had settled on an Adobe RGB monitor as well. I don't have print capability and don't plan to sell prints professionally. However, I do like to print stuff out occasionally for my own personal use and to give away. Most of the online print services I've used only use sRGB. Knowing that, I opted to get a sRGB monitor and forego Adobe RGB which saved me some money in the end. Of course that's my situation and my decision making process, yours may be different if you have professional aspirations and print capabilities.

[Midnight_lightning]

15 hours ago, Alien 13 said:

I would like to add a small note regarding Monitor calibration using devices like the Spyder, I have the Spyder 5 pro and what it does is create a custom colour profile for your graphics card but does not in fact calibrate the Monitor itself.

Alan

I'm completely new to this topic, as you may have guessed. My monitor comes with Eizo's ColourNavigator software - am I right in thinking that using this with the Spyder will do the calibration? 

[vlaiv]

18 minutes ago, Midnight_lightning said:

I'm completely new to this topic, as you may have guessed. My monitor comes with Eizo's ColourNavigator software - am I right in thinking that using this with the Spyder will do the calibration? 

I'm also not familiar with advanced level monitor calibration (although I want to try it and get myself that spyder thingy), but I guess that for best calibration you need to do both.

Monitor controls, such as brightness, contrast and color levels need to be properly adjusted to enable as wide gamut as possible. Then you need to create a color profile with that device.

Color profiles are just mathematical operations to convert colors from different color spaces. I did some research after we had the discussion above, and for example - PNG file format allows you to embed ICC color profile of the image.

This means that you can have any sort of color space saved as PNG as long as you provide proper color profile - others should be able to display it properly (if they have adequate monitor calibration and color profile).

ICC color profile just contains transformation from any color space into either of two - CIE XYZ or CIE Lab.

This means that "workflow" for displaying arbitrary color space image on arbitrary monitor would be:

SomeColorSpace in PNG + ICC transform from PNG -> CIE XYZ -> ICC transform for Monitor -> Monitor color space (3 arbitrary primaries that are essentially some sort of blue, red and green) == Proper color rendered on screen.

[Buzzard75]

7 hours ago, Midnight_lightning said:

I'm completely new to this topic, as you may have guessed. My monitor comes with Eizo's ColourNavigator software - am I right in thinking that using this with the Spyder will do the calibration? 

I actually just watched a video on this today. I've seen a few of this gentleman's other videos as BenQ was one of my top brand choices when looking for a new monitor. He walks you through step by step how to calibrate a monitor and has other videos on laptop screens and settings you need to change before doing calibration. He uses an X-Rite i1Profiler, but other colorimeters would work the same with changes to the software interface. There are two types of calibration, hardware calibration and software calibration. If your monitor can be hardware calibrated, that is best as it doesn't depend on what source the monitor is connected to, it will always have accurate color. Software calibration creates a color profile for your source graphics card to output to a selected monitor. Obviously, hardware calibrated monitors are more expensive than non-calibrated monitors. I still have questions about what mode the monitor needs to be in when doing the calibration, as I have multiple color modes to select from depending on the type of content I'm viewing. I imagine it needs to be in some type of default or custom mode and not one of the specialized modes.

 

 

Edited April 25, 2020 by Buzzard75

[vlaiv]

Thinks to keep in mind when considering type of monitor and calibration of it:

1. If you want accurate color in your astrophotos - it has nothing to do with monitor / calibration of that monitor. Colors of light coming from objects out there is independent of what hardware you have or how you calibrate it.

2. If you want to accurately reproduce color from your astro photos - you need to accurately record them (do color calibration of your data and use known color profile - either sRGB or some other together with ICC profile), and you need accurately calibrated monitor - see video above.

3. If you do creative work and in that process select a certain color and want other to know exact color you've selected - then you need accurately calibrated monitor and all other things (profile with your image and those looking at your color to have calibrated monitor).

First point is reassuring - you can produce accurate astro photos even if you don't have high end monitor or great calibration. Point two is incentive to get one of those calibration devices and good monitor - if you want to look at colors of objects as they are.

[Alien 13]

8 hours ago, Midnight_lightning said:

I'm completely new to this topic, as you may have guessed. My monitor comes with Eizo's ColourNavigator software - am I right in thinking that using this with the Spyder will do the calibration? 

The Spyder and many others of a similar type of calibrator fully automates the whole calibration process by outputting various levels of R G B and taking measurements of them but does not have the ability to change the monitors internal settings. The result is a dedicated profile for your PC/Monitor combination. The software will set up some basic starting points that you will have to set on your monitor manually to ensure that any profile used by your graphics card wont overdrive it.

Proper monitor hardware calibration is usually a manual affair unless the manufacturer makes a dedicated calibrator for it but you can get reasonably decent results by using a phone and app.

Alan

[Alien 13]

25 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Thinks to keep in mind when considering type of monitor and calibration of it:

1. If you want accurate color in your astrophotos - it has nothing to do with monitor / calibration of that monitor. Colors of light coming from objects out there is independent of what hardware you have or how you calibrate it.

2. If you want to accurately reproduce color from your astro photos - you need to accurately record them (do color calibration of your data and use known color profile - either sRGB or some other together with ICC profile), and you need accurately calibrated monitor - see video above.

3. If you do creative work and in that process select a certain color and want other to know exact color you've selected - then you need accurately calibrated monitor and all other things (profile with your image and those looking at your color to have calibrated monitor).

First point is reassuring - you can produce accurate astro photos even if you don't have high end monitor or great calibration. Point two is incentive to get one of those calibration devices and good monitor - if you want to look at colors of objects as they are.

I use my laptop screen (calibrated with a spyder) to do all my photography and astro work, now a laptop screen has a very limited gamut but what calibration does and is the the critical thing with any photo processing is to set an accurate white and black point and of course good stable transition between the two with a smooth greyscale rendition.  

Alan