Why edit in aRGB ?

[intrepidstu]

Ive been reading about colour profiles and gamuts for the past 4 days and think i understand most of it pretty well (see below). There is still, however, one thing that confuses me.

Most monitors display in aprox sRGB NOT aRGB, so how can i edit images in aRGB when the colours i am suppost to be editing are not available for me to view on my monitor ?
In other words...suppose i have a printer that WILL print most of the aRGB colours (so naturaly i would want to take advantage , where applicable, of the aRGB space), so in photoshop i choose the aRGB space to work in. BUT i am not actually viewing the colours present in the aRGB space on my monitor, so the colours i edit (that i see on the screen) will not look as they do when printed on my Argb capable printer.

There is obviously some gap in my knowledge...possibly in conversions "on the fly" between the working aRGB colour space during editing, to what we atualy SEE on the monitor screen.

I hope this makes sense. Below i will specify what i already know because any questions on colour space normaly elict a full explanation of the topic..which i dont think i need.

Device dependent profiles are used to make sure a know colour renders as such on the profiled device.
Device Independent profiles are used for editing images in a standard way (ie R=G=B=128).
aRGB and sRGB colour spaces actualy contain the SAME number of colours...but "different" colours for a particular RGB number value.

Thanks for your patience.

Stu.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Stu,

In essence, if you work & print Adobe RGB (no such thing as aRGB) then you may be able to print some extra colours. Whilst it's true that the print won't match what you seeon your screen, it doesn't matter since it's the screen that was "wrong" anyway.

In real-world terms the differences are fairly subtle, and most people wouldn't be able to see the difference.

Hope this helps