sRGB v Adobe RGB, Pro Photo etc..

[mahfoudhhi]

Charles setting your camera to sRGB (if RAW is not supported) is not the optimum choice. You just have to soft proof your images with a ICC profile provided by the lab or if not any with sRGB before sending them the file. That way you can have a high quality file for future use and PP and another version for sending to the lab. You cannot expect great results from a lab without correct soft proofing. The CiC tutorials on that are (as all of them) fantastic.

I wish I had an Epson R3000 :-)

Thank you Miltos. so you think Epson R3000 is good. I am happy to this.

[mahfoudhhi]

Charles setting your camera to sRGB (if RAW is not supported) is not the optimum choice. You just have to soft proof your images with a ICC profile provided by the lab or if not any with sRGB before sending them the file. That way you can have a high quality file for future use and PP and another version for sending to the lab. You cannot expect great results from a lab without correct soft proofing. The CiC tutorials on that are (as all of them) fantastic.

I wish I had an Epson R3000 :-)

Thank you Miltos. you made me happy when you said you wish you had Epson R3000. this means it is good enough. although I am not good at soft proofing (and I forgot what it means exactly) but I know it is related to preparing before printing.
I have colorMunki and I made a profile for printer and I am using it now and it is fine, but if you have any advice (on how or where to learn soft proofing) for me I will appreciate it.

[charzes44]

Quite right, Miltos. I misunderstood the original post. I thought Gary was taking his photos to be done at a lab. He didn't say anything about his (excellent) Epson printer. My apologies for perhaps giving the wrong impression.

Charles

[mahfoudhhi]

It is me who have Epson R3000, not Gary.
I am Hafedh.

[charzes44]

Oops!

[Manfred M]

Let me add a couple of additional thoughts:

1. There are two places where you can assign a colour space. The first one is in your camera; and then basically if you are shooting jpegs. The second place is in PP software, where you can assign a colour space. If you shoot RAW, you might want to consider a wider gamut colour space in PP; ie. why would you shoot RAW and then use the default sRGB colour space in Photoshop..

2. Soft proofing is going to give you an idea as to what your print is going to look like, BUT is is still an emulation process, so unless you have a profiled monitor and are following a colour managed workflow, the results are going to be meaningless. Even with a colour managed workflow, you are still only going to get an approximation of what the final result will be. No emulation using a transmitted light, additive RGB process is going to look the same as a print that uses a reflected light, subtractive CMYK process. Even more important is that the emulation does not take into account the colour temperature that you will be viewing the print under. If you are being fussy, I found that the only real was to see what your print will look like is to do a test print and then view it under the appropriate lighting conditions, and then tweaking your colours based on your test print.

[Macmahon]

I am always being told by more experienced photographers out there that if I want the best colour quality I should shoot in Adobe RGB (1998) ....
So my question to the experts out there is wouldn't it make more sense to just use sRGB and have done with it?

Regards
Gary

Gary
Have a look at this thread and particularly Andrew Rodney's video. It is very good.
FWIW my printer can print cyans and blues that lie well outside the sRGB colour space. If I capture (or convert) my images into the sRGB colour space, I throw away those cyans and blues and could never print them. On the other hand viewers with an 'ordinary' monitor that is limited to ~sRGB wouldn't see them anyway.
The bottom line is: capture in, and work in, the largest possible colour space to keep all your colours until you know what your output medium is going to be, then save or export a copy in the relevant colour space.
If you convert an image to sRGB early in your workflow, you can never retrieve the lost colours.
Cheers
Tim

[GaryMarsh]

Thank you to all those who took the trouble reply to my thread I am very grateful for your help, I am now much clearer about this subject. I must add I don't have my own printer as yet but I do always set my camera to 14 bit raw before shooting so at least I can always go back to them at a later date and convert them in Capture NX2 to Adobe RGB to benefit from the larger colour space.
Many thanks