Color correction in ProPhoto

[Abitconfused]

I have forgotten my basics! When I bring a sRGB image or an Adobe RGB into the ProPhoto color space in Photoshop, I am not converting them into the ProPhoto color space but merely working WITHIN the ProPhoto color space. Correct?

[Manfred M]

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to do here.

First of all, there is no reason to bring either an sRGB or AdobeRGB image into ProPhoto RGB. The wider gamut colours will not be available and you will effectively have an image in ProPhoto that only has sRGB or AdobeRGB colours.

If you do not convert to the colour space you are working in, the colours will not be mapped correctly, so regardless of what you are trying to do, the colours must be converted into the working colour space.

[dje]

I have forgotten my basics! When I bring a sRGB image or an Adobe RGB into the ProPhoto color space in Photoshop, I am not converting them into the ProPhoto color space but merely working WITHIN the ProPhoto color space. Correct?

If you have ProPhoto RGB selected as the Working Color Space in Photoshop, when you open an image with say a color space of sRGB, PS will ask you if you want to convert the image data into ProPhoto RGB or whether you want to change the working color space to sRGB. If you select the former, the image pixel color values will be converted to ProPhoto RGB color values. ie they will have different digital values but will still be the same colors (the same locations on the xy chromaticity diagram).

Dave

[Abitconfused]

I was watching a “Lynda” training video and the speaker shows that his image’s color values change (reds mostly) when he brought a sRGB (might have been Adobe RGB) image into ProPhoto. But this is not supposed to happen, so I am wondering if the image was converted to ProPhoto or opened into ProPhoto. There must be a difference...no?

[xpatUSA]

I was watching a “Lynda” training video and the speaker shows that his image’s color values change (reds mostly) when he brought a sRGB (might have been Adobe RGB) image into ProPhoto. But this is not supposed to happen, so I am wondering if the image was converted to ProPhoto or opened into ProPhoto.

There must be a difference...no?

For what it's worth, I recall that in Elements (6!) you can select what the default action is when the incoming color space doesn't match the working color space. Photoshop users can tell you more about that; it's been a while since I've used Elements.

Logic being that if the default is set to automatically convert or assign, there could be a color change without a "d'ya wanna?" pop-up dialog ...

[dje]

I was watching a “Lynda” training video and the speaker shows that his image’s color values change (reds mostly) when he brought a sRGB (might have been Adobe RGB) image into ProPhoto. But this is not supposed to happen, so I am wondering if the image was converted to ProPhoto or opened into ProPhoto. There must be a difference...no?

As Ted says, you can select the default action for profile mis-matches. It's under Color Settings about half way down the box (in CS6 at least). If Profile Mismatches is ticked as "Ask when Opening", you will get the following question when you go to open a file whose embedded profile is different to the current Working Color space.



Ed your terminology seems a little "muddy". You either convert the image to the working color space or you change the color space to match the embedded profile. Respectfully, your concept of "opening in a different color space but not converting to it" doesn't make sense to me.

Dave