Computer Graphics with Photoshop - Embedded profile miss match?

Author

Embedded profile miss match?

John A. Stovall

2005-06-12, 7:15 pm

I'm using in my RAW ProPhoto RGB and 16bit channel. The camera is set
to Adobe RGB (1998) and I get an "Embedded Profile Mismatch" when I go
to save.

Is there any way to make over ridding the default in CS2?

For that matter, I can find any place to tell Photoshop CS2 to use
ProPhoto RGB for a color space or am I missing something.

I'm just getting up to speed on all this.

*********************************************************

"I have been a witness, and these pictures are
my testimony. The events I have recorded should
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Bill Hilton

2005-06-12, 7:15 pm

>John Stovall asks ...
>
>I'm using in my RAW ProPhoto RGB and 16bit channel. The camera is
>set to Adobe RGB (1998) and I get an "Embedded Profile Mismatch"
>when I go to save.

This doesn't make sense, the camera setting is over-ridden by the RAW
converter so the file you generate from RAW will be in ProPhoto space.
You're getting the "Mismatch" because Photoshop is set up by default to
generate the warning, it has nothing to do with your camera setting.

>Is there any way to make over ridding the default in CS2?

Sure, two options you can take (this is for CS, I assume it's similar
for CS2) ... if you want to make ProPhoto your default RGB working
space then do Edit > Color Settings and in the 'working spaces' box for
RGB pick ProPhoto from the drop down menu instead of using Adobe RGB.

The other thing you can do, if you don't want to set ProPhoto as your
default working space for all new files (and there are good reasons why
you shouldn't use it as the default), is to go down to the 'color
management policies' box in the same Color Settings dialog box and
uncheck 'ask when opening' besides the 'profile mismatches' setting.
Then you can still use AdobeRGB as your default but you won't get a
mismatch warning when you open a file with a different profile. There
are a couple of other settings you can change which are
self-explanatory.

Bill

Bill Hilton

2005-06-12, 11:14 pm

>John Stovall writes ...
>
>why would I not won't to use ProPhoto as my default color
>space since it's a larger space and provides more "Head Room"
>than does Adobe RGB (1998).

Two main reasons ... 1) you can't actually see the full extent of this
space (which encompasses all visible light, much wider than the gamut
of almost any image you'll actually capture) on any monitor you can
actually afford, so editing is very hit or miss and 2) you can't use
these extra colors (ie, colors beyond the gamut of say ARGB) because no
output device can print or display them (with a couple of exceptions).

>I was following the work flow suggested in
>"Real World Camera Raw with Photoshop CS2: Industrial-Strength
>Production Techniques" by Bruce Frazer.

Are you SURE he said to use ProPhoto as your main working space? I
really doubt this ... like many others on this NG I respect Bruce's
work a great deal but he's been pretty consistent over the years in
saying that you should use the ultra-wide working spaces sparingly.
For example, in his book "Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop
CS" he suggests checking the RAW histogram to see if you have out of
gamut colors and if so switch to a wider space (like ProPhoto), "then
use Convert to Profile to convert the images into your working space of
choice". (pg 70-71)

If you're really worried about clipping colors in saturated images then
I'd suggest trying a tool like Chromix's Color Think, which lets you
plot the actual gamut of an image against a profile (working space or
printer or monitor or whatever type of profile). If you find you are
clipping a lot of colors then you can use a wider space on those type
of images at conversion and then convert to profile further in the
flow. That's what I do, using either Ektaspace (gamut of color slide
film) or, rarely, ProPhoto (gamut of visible light) for maybe 2-3% of
my images, then converting to something easier to work with, typically
AdobeRGB. Here's a sample of the image linked to below, the dots are
the gamut of the image, the smooth area the gamut of a printer profile,
showing how and where this rendering of the image is out of gamut for
this paper profile. http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/CT_demo.jpg

You can convert the RAW files multiple times and compare results ...
for example, this abstract shot has some saturated colors with smooth
gradients and I find I get better final prints (less blocky colors,
better smoothness in the gradients) when converted using Ektaspace ...
here's a screen dump showing some test conversions in the File Browser,
where I've converted it from the RAW with several different working
spaces, then converted again to a printer profile ...
http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/tulips.jpg ... try this on some of
your shots and see if you really need to use ProPhoto RGB all the time.

In brief, the wide gamut working spaces are useful when you need them
(highly saturated colors) but require care and most of the time you
don't need them. I wouldn't want to use one as my main default working
space. Here's an early (PS 6 era) article by Fraser which essentially
says the same thing ...
http://www.creativepro.com/story/fe...ml?origin=story

Bill