BenQ SW240 Monitor, color space settings for web posting

[drewbeck]

The more I read the more confused I get on the proper settings and workflow to get my photos posted online to match what I see. Here's what I have:

My Canon 5D iv is set to Adobe

1. BenQ 240 on Adobe RGB

2. Calibrate the monitor with that setting

3. export from Lightroom to a jpg and SRGB.

So that should keep everything good, right? Is there anything I need to change in Windows 10 color management? What about Photoshop? Or should I just set everything including the camera to SRGB and just forget about everything else?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated by this senior citizen of average intelligence.

[pschlute]

You say you export from LR to a jpg. But what is your starting file ? Raw or jpeg.

[drewbeck]

You say you export from LR to a jpg. But what is your starting file ? Raw or jpeg.

It always starts out as a dng raw file.

[pschlute]

It always starts out as a dng raw file.

Ok. First your camera setting of AdobeRGB/sRGB is irrelevant if you shoot raw. Your sensor records a much wider range of colours than either of those.

As you are using a calibrated Adobe RGB monitor you should set your "working space" in Photoshop to Adobe RGB or wider ( Prophoto)

I believe (help me here folks) Lightroom uses a working space of Melissa ? which is similar to ProPhoto. Dont think you can change that.

After you have done your editing, if you want to post to the internet you need to convert the CS to sRGB. Settings are different in LR versus PS. Make sure your images are tagged sRGB...this is important

If you have done all this, and are viewing your posted images in a "colour-managed" browser, you should see the colours identical to your colour space converted images in LR or PS.

Are you seeing any differences ?

[pschlute]

You should not need to make any changes to win10 colour management.

But do please note that the default Photos app in win10 is not colour managed. So viewing an sRGB image in win10 on a AdobeRGB screen will give you over saturated colours

[xpatUSA]

The more I read the more confused I get on the proper settings and workflow to get my photos posted online to match what I see. Here's what I have:

My Canon 5D iv is set to Adobe

1. BenQ 240 on Adobe RGB

2. Calibrate the monitor with that setting

3. export from Lightroom to a jpg and SRGB.

So that should keep everything good, right?

Yes, assuming that your Color Management System is correct.

Is there anything I need to change in Windows 10 color management?

Sorry, I don't use Win 10.

What about Photoshop?

Sorry I do not use Adobe products.

Or should I just set everything including the camera to SRGB and just forget about everything else?

A bit drastic, some might say, although that's what I do because I don't print.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated by this senior citizen of average intelligence.

If you print, it may be better to stay in Adobe RGB and convert to sRGB for the web**

One caveat with such work is that a highly-saturated image simply converted to sRGB can get gamut-clipped, for example a red-flower that had it's saturation cranked up to look pretty on your Adobe RGB screen.
** or you could just assume that all web equipment is properly color-managed and leave it as-is.

[xpatUSA]

** or you could just assume that all web equipment is properly color-managed and leave it as-is.

For example, do these look the same on your screen?





First is a PNG saved with sRGB values which most web stuff will show as sRGB.

Second is JPEG sRGB converted to and saved with a ProPhoto ICC profile.

They look the same on my sRGB monitor in FireFox under Windows 7.

[Manfred M]

How have you calibrated and profiled your BenQ screen? If you are using an xRite (i1) or Datacolor (Spyder) product and have written the calibration data to the in-screen lookup table (LUT). You need to use the Palette Master software that ships with the screen and your computer and screen need to be connected through the USB cable in addition to connecting the calibration sensor to the computer. That software does not work with xRite Colormunki devices.

The various manual / visual calibration tools, including the ones found through the Windows Control Panel should NEVER be used. Nicely said they rely on the viewer's eyes to create settings and our eyes cannot be trusted (something called Colour Adaptation comes into play).

My screen may have been calibrated straight out of the box, but was much too bright for post-processing work, so I had to redo it. Do not touch any of the screens controls either as you will mess up the correct colour settings.

Most serious photographers shoot in raw mode, so the default camera colour space settings (sRGB or Adobe RGB) don't really matter. The camera settings only impact the JPEG files produced by the camera. Lightroom uses a variant of the ProPhoto RGB colour space as its default colour space.

PS - when using any post processing software, it is important to work in a dimly lit room (light levels below 70 lux and ideally below 40 lux) with the computer screen set to output between 80 and 120 candela / square metre (done during calibration and profiling). Most computer screens are set up for use in an office environment which is recommended to be above 500 lux at the work surface).

Yes, output as sRGB is best as this is the default setting for most software that displays images. Many modern browsers are colour managed, but rely on having an embedded colour profile to work properly.

[DanK]

It always starts out as a dng raw file.

5D mark IV raw files are *.CR2, not *.DNG. Are you running the files through Adobe's DNG converter to convert to DNG format? If so, there is no reason to bother. Lightroom edits CR2 files directly.

Peter's post has some of the essentials. The camera setting will affect the thumbnails on the LCD but have no effect on the color gamut of the stored raw file, which is very big. If you read these into Lightroom, as Peter said, LR will edit them in Melissa, which is a variant of ProPhoto, which is larger than Adobe RGB.

However, Lighroom will render the image to appear correctly on your monitor, whatever it is. It will map from Melissa to the gamut of the display.

The issue of color management of other people's displays is complicated. Most software, but not all, is color managed, so it will display things reasonably even if the gamut of the image is larger than the gamut of the display. That is, assuming you've embedded a profile, a lot of software will convert to sRGB to display on an sRGB-compliant monitor. However, some software won't.

So my workflow is always to export in sRGB for display on the web.

Here's a complication. Your monitor can display more than sRGB. So if your image has colors that lie outside of the sRGB gamut, they may look a bit different once converted to sRGB. In practice, however, I don't find this is much of an issue. Keep in mind that many people viewing online have monitors that are of low quality, aren't calibrated, or both, so no matter what you do, what they see may be different from what you see.

As for your last question about changing to an sRGB workflow: you can't do that in lightroom even if you want to, as you can't change it's internal working space. I would recommend against it anyway, even if you use software that let's you do this. sRGB leaves less headroom for editing, and if you ever print, most good printers have gamuts considerably wider than sRGB.

[xpatUSA]

For example, do these look the same on your screen?





First is a PNG saved with sRGB values which most web stuff will show as sRGB.

Second is JPEG sRGB converted to and saved with a ProPhoto ICC profile.

They look the same on my sRGB monitor in FireFox under Windows 7.

But not the same on my Win 7 desktop!



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