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Post by michelb on Jan 20, 2019 21:51:28 GMT
Elements supports two color modes, aRGB for print, sRGB for display. It can also support other modes like prophoto when opening from Lightroom or Photoshop, but when you download from your camera those two modes are the one you can choose. With raw files, the conversion from raw is set from your choices in the menu Edit >> color settings: aRGB if you optimize for print, sRGB for display. Even if they are acquainted with color management and understand the advantage of a wider color gamut like aRGB, most Elements users don't have professional printers or displays which can show them the difference. I may add that we don't have all the ability to distinguish between very close hues. There are tests which show that I have lost some ability in getting older. So, my purpose is to use a simple Elements procedure to reveal the differences even if my display or printer can't show them.
To begin, the advantage of wider color range modes like aRGB or ProPhotoRGB is to better render some hues. And that is dependent on the colors of an image. If the colors in a given image are all included in the sRGB color space, nothing will be lost. So, it's useful to know which colors are hard to render in sRGB because they are 'out of range'. Generally those colors will lose saturation.
The second thing to consider is that neither your printer nor your display are exactly sRGB or aRGB. They may be inferior for some hues, but the good thing is that they often are better in other ones. If you can reveal the differences calculated by Elements, you'll be able to check if your display and printer can do better than sRGB and enable you to use an aRGB workflow. You also will be able to check if your favorite scenes are critical for color range (flowers...)
The idea is simple, it's to use the difference blending mode in layers. - first set your Edit >> Color settings to always optimize for print (aRGB) for raw files, and your camera settings to aRGB if you shoot jpeg. - Open the file and check that it is in aRGB mode - File >> duplicate - Menu Image >> Convert color profile (to sRGB) (Now you can toggle between the two modes in the history panel, and maybe notice differences in colors.)
- Select all and copy (Ctrl A then Ctrl C) - choose the original aRGB image and paste the sRGB layer. - set the sRGB layer mode to difference - stamp visible to copy the result to a new layer (Shift + Ctrl + Alt + E) - Do an auto level to increase the contrast.
Now, you can see the real differences even if you did not notice them before. Elements can't show out of gamut regions easily like its pro companions, but it can be done.
My hardware is not too basic, LaCie 324 and HP C7280 (6 inks) and Spyder calibration. I was pleasantly surprised that the differences revealed by the above procedure are generally visible both in the display and the printer.
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Post by Bailey on Jan 20, 2019 22:22:24 GMT
Elements supports two color modes, aRGB for print, sRGB for display. ........but when you download from your camera those two modes are the one you can choose.
That is not quite correct. PSE also supports custom user profiles/color spaces which I have been doing for a few years now with no problem. If you select "No Color Management" in Color Settings, PSE uses the monitor's default color profile/color space. After I calibrate my monitor, I set the custom profile I created to be my screen's default profile so that PSE can use it. I set my camera to Adobe RGB color space which is larger that sRGB. I use the free Gamutvision application to view/overlay various color spaces for comparison and quality control of custom profile purposes. I use Exiftool to see what, if any, colour profile is embedded into a jpeg. When I do File->Save As in PSE my custom screen profile name is displayed in the dialogue box as an option to save with the image, which should always be done btw. hth  |
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Post by Bailey on Jan 21, 2019 9:56:27 GMT
... The second thing to consider is that neither your printer nor your display are exactly sRGB or aRGB. ... Yes, that is true for 99.999% of screens and printers. That is exactly why if colour management/matching between devices is important, it is imperative to have a properly calibrated screen and an accurate printer profile for each printer, ink, paper combination you use. I suspect that an accurate display of difference between Adobe RGB and sRGB using the method you describe is dependent on an accurate screen profile. I think of it this way. If you use the same image on 5 different uncalibrated screen to display the difference in the two gamuts using your method, you will most likely see 5 different differences for the given image.
Just some food for thought
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Post by Sepiana on Jan 21, 2019 10:09:36 GMT
If you can reveal the differences calculated by Elements, you'll be able to check if your display and printer can do better than sRGB and enable you to use an aRGB workflow. You also will be able to check if your favorite scenes are critical for color range (flowers...) The idea is simple, it's to use the difference blending mode in layers. - first set your Edit >> Color settings to always optimize for print (aRGB) for raw files, and your camera settings to aRGB if you shoot jpeg. - Open the file and check that it is in aRGB mode - File >> duplicate - Menu Image >> Convert color profile (to sRGB) (Now you can toggle between the two modes in the history panel, and maybe notice differences in colors.) - Select all and copy (Ctrl A then Ctrl C) - choose the original aRGB image and paste the sRGB layer. - set the sRGB layer mode to difference - stamp visible to copy the result to a new layer (Shift + Ctrl + Alt + E) - Do an auto level to increase the contrast.
Now, you can see the real differences even if you did not notice them before. Elements can't show out of gamut regions easily like its pro companions, but it can be done. Michel,
Great tip! Thanks! I had never thought of using the Difference blending mode this way. It makes sense though. Difference is one of the Comparative blending modes (the difference between images becomes apparent). My use of this blending mode has been mostly limited to creating "artsy" effects, and to layer alignment and color grading. (See this THREAD.) You taught me something new. Living and learning!
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Post by Bailey on Jan 21, 2019 10:12:19 GMT
Are you using a calibrated monitor Sepiana as I described earlier?
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Post by michelb on Jan 21, 2019 14:32:14 GMT
Just two images to make my purpose still clearer. The first one is jpeg in aRGB. The second one is the result of the comparison from difference blend mode and auto level.
So, Bailey, while it is obvious that the result will be seen differently on each monitor and with everyone's personal vision, the resulting file pixels will be strictly identical since it is strictly calculated from the numbers.
The process is identical to comparing two aRGB files, the second having been converted first to sRGB, then back to aRGB. All pixels within the sRGB range are not altered. The second conversion can't restore exactly the out of gamut colors. You don't see any change on screen when converting any sRGB file to aRGB. When we paste an sRGB file over an aRGB file the conversion is implicit.
My purpose is still to reveal the difference. Anyone can get the same difference "by the numers". And anyone with Elements can experiment to find which colors in which images may be "out of gamut". You may find that your monitor is better than you think, that some subjects are worth a wider and truer color range.
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Post by kdcintx on Jan 21, 2019 23:45:37 GMT
Thank you Michel for this mini tutorial. I use sRBG and never thought of using aRGB. I'll give it a try.
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Post by Bailey on Jan 22, 2019 9:41:06 GMT
As I posted earlier, I use Gamutvision to display colour spaces. In the application you can spin and rotate the colour spaces any way you like to view in 3D from any angle. You can see from the two colour spaces below that the Adobe RGB colour space completely engulfs the sRGB colour space. For anyone not using colour management in their workflow, I don't see any point in using Adobe RGB except for potentially having more in gamut colours displayed on only their screen for a given image or for printing purposes.
The reason I say this is because all modern web browsers use the sRGB colour space by default. So even if you publish on the web an image using Adobe RGB, it's going to be mapped to the sRGB colour space in the viewer's browser anyway. Any image colours in the Adobe RGB colour space that are not in the sRGB colour space will be out of gamut and so will be rendered according to whatever the default setting of the viewer's browser's Rendering Intent is set to.  sRGB Color Space  Adobe RGB Color Space |
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Post by Bailey on Jan 22, 2019 23:51:40 GMT
... The second thing to consider is that neither your printer nor your display are exactly sRGB or aRGB. ... In addition to what I posted earlier that some people might not be aware of is that the colour gamut of ink jet printers most likely found in homes is significantly smaller than the sRGB gamut.
That is why the PSE print dialogue box, and any other reputable printing application, has a "Rendering Intent" option to tell the printer how to render out of gamut colours.
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