embeding a color profile to saved files

George, have you been introduced to Ian Lyons’ site yet? Here’s a link to his page on Color Management in PS 7, but wander around. He’s got some great things on there.

<http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps7-colour/ps7_1.htm>

George,

To embed an sRGB profile set your Color Management to "Limited". You would then be working in the sRGB color space, otherwise known as optimized for Web. You could open your file from camera, change it to .psd and when you Save As, check the box which says sRBG profile. This will embed the profile in the image.

sRGB has a smaller color gamut than Adobe RGB. The whole color management thing is a complicated rats nest. PSE really only offers limited management and choices, not at all like full PS, which is why most of us use it with ‘No Color Management’.

thanks Beth & Nancy. i will look at Ian Lyons site and see what i can’t discover. i have now tried, with good results i might add, to saving my files with no emebed profile and using "no color management" and this seems to be working out quite well. i will try saving and then printing a few pics with "limited color management" (sRGB) and see how that is. you would think by now i would have learned to leave things alone when they are working good. hence my motto, "if it ain’t broke it will be when i get done".

Yes, we are getting a distinct message about you George! 🙂

George,
It may well be that your camera is not saving your files with the sRGB space, but "tagging" them as sRGB in the EXIF info. That is a subtle difference . If the image is actually saved with the sRGB space imbedded, it will remain that way until the file is deliberately changed to remove the space, or convert it. On the other hand, if the file simply has the EXIF tag, it can easily be lost ( the EXIF info, that it), in the editting and resaving process, and you will be left with an "untagged" image.

Confusing, I grant you.

🙂

Brent

brent,
I do believe that is what is happening, that i am ending up with an untagged image. any advice on how to keep the sRGB profile for my files through out the post processing process?

George,

Assign it when saving in PSE as I mentioned earlier, it will be embedded and respected.

You’re opening a can of worms here, George.

The sRGB colour space is the setting used for all parameter settings other than when you specify Adobe RGB in parameters.
sRGB is a limited colour space which was originally designed for low end colour monitors which don’t handle a wide range of colours and so is not ideally suited to printouts. Photo prints can handle a wider range of colours than a monitor.

Adobe RGB is a larger colour space designed for printing (the Canon 300D handbook will have you believe for professionals). Using Adobe RGB will set all other parameters (contrast, saturation, sharpness) to normal, and this will result in a rather flat looking image. Raw images will normally need enhancing first with Canons File viewer utility to increase contrast, saturation etc. It’s also a good time to make an exposure adjustment from raw data if necessary. (I always aim to underexpose a half stop or so according to the histogram.)
You can also use Adobe RGB with JPeg format in the "creative area" settings but then you won’t need to use Canon’s program but can use Elements instead.

The predefined area of automatic settings, portrait, landscape, etc. give you sRGB whether you like it or not.

Personally I prefer to use the Adobe RGB 1998 colour space and 12 bit data format that Raw gives you and make adjustments on sharpness etc with the File viewer utility afterwards.
One disadvantage in using this colour space is that you can be adjusting colours in your image which you cannot see on the monitor. I shall cross that bridge if I come to it.

At the moment I’m trying to plough through this subject of colour space and colour management in particular to get ‘what you see is what you get’ prints. It seems to be a long road ahead, however. The first point to tackle seems to be deciding if it’s necessary to use colour management at all or switch it off and rely on your printer doing it’s job. This may be ok for home printing but as I intend to use professional printers at times I will be forced into dealing with profiles for that purpose.

See my next post on viewing prints and colour temperature of monitors which springs from the last sentence above. I’m hoping for a little guidance from this group.

Richard Lynch’s book the Hidden power… has a couple of chapters dealing with printing. It’s a complicated subject but he has excellent explanations and specifies a way to go about finding the optimum.

That makes it a whole lot easier doesn’t it 🙂
Tel.