Getting “It” Right For Better Photographs: Color Space

What do I mean by “color space” and why should you care?

Your monitor is the primary device you rely on to show you the colors of your photographs or other artwork on your computer. Today’s monitors are primarily flat screens and may use various technologies for displaying images (this sounds suspiciously like the beginning of the last “Getting ‘It’ Right” entry, doesn’t it?).

The color space, in fairly simple terms, is how many colors are available and how many can actually be shown on the monitor or the printed image.

Your eye can see billions of colors but a typical 8-bit image can contain 2⁸ colors per each of the three channels, or a maximum of 16.7 million colors. That’s a lot of colors. I don’t want to get into a deep discussion on color theory because I’d like to keep this on a basic level.

The bad news is that a typical 8-bit monitor can’t see anywhere near 16.7 million colors. Nor can a typical inkjet printer reproduce them. Although a good printer can reproduce more colors than a monitor, the colors are different.

Let’s talk about monitors for a minute…

Back in the olden days when color specs were being defined, a standard called “sRGB” was created to cover what could be reproduced on monitors of the day. This was (and still is) the standard for image viewing on monitors and the internet. An sRGB image should look the same (or at least similar) on monitors that are correctly profiled. This should be true in most applications and all web browsers without any need for additional color management. sRGB color space is also used for many digital cameras (when creating jpeg images) and is required by many print labs using chemicals to process their images.

In the late 90s, Adobe came up with a new standard that expanded the color space to include what could be reproduced on more up-to-date monitors and the better color inkjet printers. They called this “Adobe RGB(1998)”. This is still the color space of choice today for most commercial and fine art inkjet printing. Some of today’s 10-bit and higher monitors can display most, if not all of this color space.

Today, some people use an even larger color space called “ProPhoto.” However, you can’t see all of the ProPhoto colors on any printer or on most monitors (maybe on a 32-bit monitor, but there aren’t very many of those and I don’t know anyone who can afford one).

By the way, most good digital cameras will produce jpeg images using either Adobe RGB(1998) or sRGB. My preference is to shoot RAW and to apply the color space I need to use for each image on an “as-required” basis.

Knowing this, and hopefully not too confused, let’s try to simplify the process. If you stick to the following rules, you’ll be okay.

If your aim is to make prints on a giclée or inkjet printer - use Adobe RGB(1998) for your working color space. Do not use Adobe RGB(1998) for the internet - your images will look horrible (or at the least different from what you intend). This is because of how sRGB interprets colors that are not within its gamut (or range of colors).

If you are going to use the images for Powerpoint or similar presentations, on the internet, or for printing at a color lab - use sRGB. You can use sRGB for images you’ll be printing on an inkjet printer but they might not look as good as those you’ve printed based on Adobe RGB(1998).

What about ProPhoto? Well, for right now I just want you to be aware that it exists.

How do you specify the color space? In Photoshop, go to ”Edit > Color Settings...” and set your RGB color space preference. Photoshop will ask you what it should do when you try to open an image with a different color space.

How do you change an image’s color space? In Photoshop, go to “Edit > Convert To Profile...” and chose your new color space. Photoshop’s “Save For Web & Devices” also has a check box for converting to sRGB since that action is intended for images destined for the internet.

Oh, by the way, you can convert from a larger color space to a smaller one as needed (Adobe RGB(1998) to sRGB). But you can’t go the other way and expect to pick up any of the colors in the larger color space.

Our next step will be to learn about “printer profiles” and how to use them. It’s really not as intimidating as it sounds and we’ll cover it next time.

You can add your comments and questions below.  I’ll be happy to answer them. The idea is to just enjoy and learn.

iPhone Geolocation

There’s been quite a bit of interest recently about using a GPS device to track where you’ve shot photographs - this is called geolocation. There are many devices on the market that will do this for you... at a price.

How would you like to be able to geolocate for free - or almost free? You can if you have an iPhone or other smart phone that can use apps.

All you need to do is to find an appropriate GPS tracker and activate it when you’re taking pictures. Then you transfer the GPS data to your computer and use a program on your computer (there are free ones available for that too) to associate the time that you made your image with the location in the GPS data. These programs will put the location into your image’s metadata.

There are several programs that will read the metadata and show you a map, hi-lighting the point where you shot your image. I use Adobe Lightroom - it automatically opens Google Maps on my web browser.

for the original tracking, I'm using a free iPhone app (GPS Stone - from the AppStore -  on the iPhone and a free geocoding software package, GPSPhotoLinker - http://www.earlyinnovations.com/gpsphotolinker) for the Mac.

There are others available for windows - use google to find them.

It takes a little getting used to but it's been working reliably for the past few weeks. It is pretty accurate within a few yards. You can then use Lightroom or GpsPhotoLinker to display the photo's location on Google Maps.

One of the neat things about GPS Stone is that it can be set to record at various intervals in both time and distance. It also can be set to automatically resume recording after a phone call or activating another app (the iPhone OS only allows one app to run at a time). To get the data from your iPhone to your computer, simply email the .gpx track file to yourself - that's not automatic - you have to push a button.

GPSPhotoLinker is very fast and easy to use. Drag the images into the application from the computer or from Lightroom - copy the images to your HD first - don't do it from the CF card because this program will write directly to the metadata in the image files. This way you keep your original files intact if you mess things up.

You can view your position directly from GPSPhotolinker or from Lightroom. If you have imported your images into Lightroom prior to geocoding, you must read the updated metadata from the file (Metadata > Read Metadata From File) after running GPSPhotoLinker. Then you can click on the arrow next to the geolocation metadata (Library mode) to see the image location on Google Maps.

There is one caveat - you must have cell service to use GPS on a smart phone. It does work with ATT’s E network as well as with the G3 service. It just takes a little longer to initiate.

I’m planning on creating a video screencast of the process soon - keep checking here.

Getting “It” Right For Better Photographs:

Calibrating & Profiling Your Monitor

What do I mean by calibrating and profiling your monitor?

Your monitor is the primary device you rely on to show you the colors of your photographs or other artwork on your computer. today’s monitors are primarily flat screens and my use various technologies for displaying images.

Unfortunately monitors, even the really good ones, are not totally stable and need to be profiled every one to four weeks. Also, you should probably replace a monitor you’re using for critical color work after about five years.

Oh, by the way you really need to understand this... a monitor that is properly calibrated and profiled for color will not be as bright and punchy as one you might use for gaming or watching movies. But then you’re reading this blog because you want accuracy... right?

The process is easily defined and done well with a little more effort. Calibrating & profiling is basically setting your monitor to it’s factory standard and having your computer tell it how to correctly and accurately display color and density.

There are ways of doing this using only a combination of your eyes and software (like the calibration function in Apple’s Displays Preference Panel or with Adobe Gamma on Windows). Sometimes this works fine but it’s not totally consistent. There are other methods that are more accurate but require a hardware investment.

The next step up is using a “Colorimeter” - a hockey puck like device that you place on your monitor that works with software to build a Lookup Table (LUT) that will (hopefully) generate the correct colors on your monitor. There are several such devices available like the Huey, Eye-One Monitor, and the Spyder. These will range in price from under $100 to about $300 and will do an ok job.

If you want to do the job right, you’ll want to invest in a spectrophotometer like the Eye-One Spectrophotometer, the ColorMunki or the Spyder3. These devices not only read light transmitted by your monitor, but have their own light source and can create custom paper profiles for your printer (more about that later). These devices are not inexpensive, running between $300 - $1500.

Using either the colorimeter or spectrophotometer is pretty easy - start the software and follow the on-screen instructions. The software will automatically tell applications like Photoshop which monitor profile to use.

The next step is to learn about “color space” and ow to set up your applications to use it. It’s really not as intimidating as it sounds and we’ll cover it next time.

I have created a number of video tutorial CDs covering this topic in detail as well as many other Photoshop & Lightroom subjects. These CDs are available at http://www.chbphoto.com - click on the the “Tutorial CDs" button.

You can add your comments and questions. I’ll be happy to answer them. The idea is to just enjoy and learn.

Getting “It” Right For Better Photographs: The original image

What do I mean by getting it right in the original image?

Back in the days of film you had to pay attention to lighting and the type of film you were using. Typically you’d use daylight balanced film. If you took pictures indoors with this film under tungsten light you’d get yellow images because of a light balance mismatch.

With digital imaging, your camera usually takes care of color balance for you. The only time you really run into trouble is if you program your camera to use a particular color balance and shoot in the jpeg format. That’s only one of the reasons I always shoot in the raw digital format! But, the multitude of reasons for this preference is really another topic - maybe we’ll talk about that later.

With most digital cameras you can set the color balance to something like “Natural”, “Portrait” or another color setting. This is okay if you shoot jpeg; but, if you shoot raw you might have noticed that the camera settings never get into Photoshop (or any other bitmap graphics editing program). That’s because they only affect jpeg images (as does the histogram on your camera display).

“But,” you say, “I want to shoot raw. And, I like those jpeg color settings and want to keep them!

Okay, you can do that (Adobe to the rescue!). Adobe has a free application called “Adobe DNG Profile Editor” that not only applies approximations of the built-in camera profiles, but also allows you to actually profile your camera using a widely available Macbeth ColorChecker card.
If you’re using Photoshop CS3 or CS4 or Lightroom 2, this capability is included. You might have to install the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw to access it. CS3 uses Camera Raw 4.5, CS4 uses Camera Raw 5.x. The DNG Profile Editor is available at the adobe.com web site.

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles - Go to Downloads_and_Installation

What if you don’t have Photoshop CS3 or CS4, Lightroom 2 or you’re using another program that doesn’t recognize the latest Camera Raw? Well, all you have to do is to convert your camera’s raw files to the Adobe DNG format. DNG is a universal digital negative format developed by Adobe that, among other things, allows backward compatibility of new digital camera raw files with older versions of editing software. If you need to do this and your editing program doesn’t have the capability to convert, simply download the free Adobe DNG Converter and use that.

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/
Click on DNG Converter 5.5 update.

In Photoshop CS3 & CS4, the camera color calibration function can be found in the Camera Calibration Tab in Camera Raw. It’s under Camera Profile.

In Lightroom 2, it’s under Camera Calibration in the Develop Module. If you’re using Lr2, you can set up a preset so that you can apply a camera profile when you import your images.

One other thing you might want to do... this will make life a bit easier for you whether you do the calibration thing or not. Include a digital gray card in one of your images! Then you can use the white balance function to neutralize the colors of your image, no matter which program you’re using to edit your images.

Next time we’ll talk about calibrating and profiling your monitor. You do want to be sure that the colors you’re seeing represent the colors you think you’re seeing... don’t you?

You can add your comments and questions. I’ll be happy to answer them. The idea is to just enjoy and learn.

This and similar blogs may be found at thewhole9.com.

Chuck Behrman, a Los Angeles based advertising and fine art photographer, has been holding workshops in digital photography, Photoshop and Lightroom in the Los Angeles and Central Coast areas since 2004. You can see his images and learn about all his services at http://www.chbphoto.com

Update For Using ColorMunki With Snow Leopard

The other day, I posted some information about color management and Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6.1).

Since then, I did some printing on an Epson 9800 using the ConeColor inkset. I tried using my old profiles, created with the ColorMunki in the Leopard OS (10.5). They were "not optimum" - in other words, they were pretty bad. The prints I had previously made in Leoard were perfect.

So, I followed XRite's suggestion and re-profiled the paper using the Version 2 ICC profile (it's a setting in the ColorMunki printer profiling preferences - I described the process in the last post). The default for the ColorMunki (and the I-1) is Version 4. According to XRite, the Snow Leopard OS cannot currently recognize the Version 4 profiles.

Bottom line -- everything is back to normal -- I'm getting beautiful prints using the Version 2 ICC profiles generated by the ColorMunki and using Snow Leopard.

When will Apple fix Snow Leopard? I don't know... but I'll let you know when I do.

Updates To ColorMunki, I1 & HueyPro for Snow Leopard

Well, I've finally got something meaningful to say for the blog... XRite/Pantone has updated the color management software for their monitor and printer profiling devices to be compatible with the new Mac Snow Leopard OS (10.6).

The new software can be found at the following site:

Snow Leopard Product Support Matrix

It's easy to install and from what I can tell works fine.

There is one thing you need to know - Mac 10.6 and 10.6.1 are still having problems with the new Type 4 ICC profiles. According to XRite, Apple is aware of the problem and will fix it with a software update to Snow Leopard.

In the mean time this is what you should do if you are using Snow Leopard:

ColorMunki - Start the process of "Profile My Display..... Go to Profile My Display & Projector > Preferences. Change BOTH "ICC Profile Version" settings to "Version 2" for Display & Printer.

That's it.

Now you can profile your display. Be aware that your existing ColorMunki printer profiles ar Type 4 and should be regenerated as Type 2. I haven't done that yet for my printer profiles so I can't say what the differences are, if any.

I'll let you know as soon as I can create and test the new profiles.

I1 - According to XRite, "This release of Eye-One Match is currently not able to create correct large ICC4 monitor profiles on the new Intel Macs. It is recommended to create only default monitor profiles on the Intel Macs until a new version of Eye-One Match will be released."


HueyPro - Just use the new software.

Getting “It” Right for Better Photographs

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to attempt to cut through the techno-fog that surrounds it and, to some extent, how you can do it quickly and economically.

I’ll show you about how to do it with your camera, do it with your monitor, and how to do it with your printer.

What is this elusive “it” that I am referring to? “It” is called color management. Without this kind of information, you’ll have an almost impossible time getting repeatable, correct colors from your images.

“But, wait!” you say… “I get really nice prints on my printer or from my on line lab.” Yup, you probably do get nice, vivid colors. Are the colors in your prints the same as those on your monitor? Are they the right colors? And… do you want to get the right colors… consistently?

If not, then like they say, “read no further.” This column is for those of you who truly care about the quality of your images and the fidelity of their reproduction, whether you print your images yourself or have someone else print them for you.

If you do decide to “read further” you will learn how to maintain a straightforward control over your entire process, from your camera through your computer to your printer.

In up-coming blog installments, we’ll look at topics like:

• The original image
• Calibrating & profiling the monitor
• Photoshop color space
• Profiling your printer
• Printing to your printer
• Sending an image to a photo lab
• Uploading to a website
• Lighting your images for display

I really hope you’ll come back and learn.

This blog entry is also being posted at a blog I'm contributing to at www.thewhole9.com.

You can add your comments and questions, too. I’ll be happy to answer them. The idea is to just enjoy and learn.

Secrets of Photographing Sculpture & Other Small Products workshop at the San Luis Obispo Art Center

The time will expire soon to take advantage of the early registration discount for the Secrets of Photographing Sculpture & Other Small Products workshop at the San Luis Obispo Art Center.

On Wednesday, September 23 at the San Luis Obispo Art Center:

The Secrets of Photographing Sculpture and Other Small Products At Home

A Pragmatic Approach to Easily Photographing Sculpture Using An Inexpensive Table Top Setup with a Digital Camera and Processing Your Images with Photoshop Elements. (Basic – Intermediate)

This workshop covers, through live, real-time demonstrations, how to quickly and easily create professional looking photographs of your sculpture or similar items using an inexpensive table top setup.

You will learn how to set up and light the sculpture for photography and then bring the images into Photoshop Elements and process them to provide the results required for exhibition and promotion.

Please click here for full description, registration and prices pdf for the Small Products Workshop

For more information call Chuck Behrman at 310.216.6611

To get a preview of what you'll be seeing, please take a look at the free video on the Sharpics Blog website at:

Sharpics Product Photography Solutions

These are just some of the items and techniques I'll be demonstrating in the workshop and on the included CD.

I hope to see you there,

Reminder for Using Lightroom & Photoshop Together Workshop

I hope you are having a great Labor Day Weekend.

The time will expire soon to take advantage of the early registration discount for the Photoshop/Lightroom workshop in Atascadero.

On Tuesday, September 22 at Jim Vincolisi’s Black & White Gallery in Atascadero:

Working With Both Lightroom & Photoshop

How to use Lightroom and Photoshop together to produce and print beautiful images

This class is for both Mac and Windows users and is applicable to Photoshop ( CS Versions), recent versions of Photoshop Elements & Lightroom.

Please click here for full description, registration and prices pdf for the Photoshop/Lightroom Workshop

For more information call Chuck Behrman at 310.216.6611

For some other great deals on hardware, software and ink - please go to the completely redesigned chbphoto.com website: www.chbphoto.com/affiliates.html

Thanks again for your support in the past. I'm looking forward to seeing you soon.

chbphoto.com Revision Is Live

It's been a long time in the making - the new and improved chbphoto.com is now live!

That doesn't say that more changes won't be included in the near future but for now, go to chbphoto.com and see what's new.

In addition to seeing a lot of images and learning about our workshops... you'll find some greta deals through some of our affiliates.

I'd like to know what you think about the site.

I'd also like to thank all of you who have commented on the interim site.

Chuck

September Workshops In SLO & Atascadero

I know it’s not a lot of advance notice but we’re holding a couple workshops in the SLO and Atascadero areas:

On Tuesday, September 22 at Jim Vincolisi’s Black & White Gallery in Atascadero:

Working With Both Lightroom & Photoshop

How to use Lightroom and Photoshop together to produce and print beautiful images

This class is for both Mac and Windows users and is applicable to Photoshop ( CS Versions), recent versions of Photoshop Elements & Lightroom.

Please click here for full description, registration and prices pdf for the Photoshop/Lightroom Workshop

On Wednesday, September 23 at the San Luis Obispo Art Center:

The Secrets of Photographing Sculpture and Other Small Products At Home

A Pragmatic Approach to Easily Photographing Sculpture Using An Inexpensive Table Top Setup with a Digital Camera and Processing Your Images with Photoshop Elements. (Basic – Intermediate)

This workshop covers, through live, real-time demonstrations, how to quickly and easily create professional looking photographs of your sculpture or similar items using an inexpensive table top setup.

You will learn how to set up and light the sculpture for photography and then bring the images into Photoshop Elements and process them to provide the results required for exhibition and promotion.

Please click here for full description, registration and prices pdf for the Small Products Workshop