Why Your Photos Look Lousy… or Simple Truths About Color Management
Let’s embrace the obvious. Many photographers feel that investing time and effort into learning color management is the digital equivalent of going to the dentist. Unless you are an uber-geek, I bet that you would rather study DIY acupuncture, medieval French literature or the genome of the common fruit fly than cuddle up with a long piece on the theory of color management. Fear not. Color management is built upon simple truths. Many of which are close at hand.
Let’s start with the following. I think you’ll recognize it as irrefutable proof about why it’s important to know at least the basics of color management.
Huh? O.K. Stick with me and I’ll lay it out for you.
First, take a look at the following nothing-special-about-it-snapshot of some geraniums. While not a great photo, it is a great stepping stone towards an understanding of why your photos look lousy. Really.
The most important truth in color management – the fundamental truth that all digital photographers cannot escape – is that our eyes and brain can distinguish many more colors than our cameras can capture. The second most important truth in color management is that our cameras can capture more colors than most monitors can display. And… the third most important truth in color management is, you just guessed it, that our monitors can display more colors than our printers can print.
Let me also add, since I’m on a roll, that there’s no direct link between the cost of a printer and the range of colors that it can print. As you’ll see in the graph at the end, my Epson 3800 inkjet can print a wider range of color (say “gamut”) than a multi-million dollar commercial printing press.
A color space is like a box of crayons. It describes a gamut (think “range”) of color. Like friends, it’s important to choose your color spaces carefully. ProPhoto RGB is the huge color space into which you should be converting your RAW files when opening them with Photoshop or Lightroom. (Yes, our digital devices today can only use a fraction of the colors in ProPhoto RGB. But, converting your RAW captures into ProPhoto now will assure that you’re keeping your color options open for future technology.) Adobe RBG (1998) is a more moderate space and is the space your DSLR camera should be set to – unless it has ProPhoto as an option. sRGB is smaller still and is typical of the color gamut of most sub-$1500 monitors.
Of course, my inner-photographer wants to see these concepts as a graph. The yellow box below shows the vast range of colors in the ProPhoto color space. The blue box contains all the colors within the Adobe RBG (1998) space and the cyan box all those within the sRGB space. You’ll note that Adobe RGB (1998) and sRGB can show about the same range of reds and magentas. You’ll also see that Adobe RGB (1998) can show a few more yellows and blues and loads more green than sRGB.
If you choose to work in a color space that’s too limited (like using sRGB for capture or Adobe RGB for RAW conversion) you are literally throwing away crayons that you otherwise could have used to render subtle differences of color in your photos. Onward.
So, here is the truth about why your photos look lousy. They have colors that won’t show up on your monitor and colors that can’t be printed. Remember the nothing-special-about-it-snapshot of geranium? The green dots in the graph below represent all of the colors in that photo. The orange line represents the gamut of colors that can be displayed on my calibrated NEC 2090UXi monitor (a 20″ desktop LCD). You’ll note that there is a large blob of green dots that extend outside of the orange line at the upper-right corner… meaning that there’s a large number of red and orange shades in the photo that my monitor is not able to display. So right out of the gate, I’m not even able to see many of the colors that my camera recorded. Out-of-gamut reds and oranges with a geranium. Humm… my photo is beginning to look lousy already.
You need to plug a real monitor into your laptop. If you want your photographs to be taken seriously, you have to get a “real” monitor. Here’s a graph that compares the gamut of my stylish MacBook Pro 17 to my NEC 2090UXi. The sad reality is that my laptop monitor is worthless when it comes to making critical color decisions. It just doesn’t have enough crayons in its box. When color matters, I haul my studio monitor with me – especially when shooting for clients on location. [Look for more in an upcoming post on "Shooting Tethered Into Lightroom".]
Your printer and paper make a huge difference as well. Can your favorite printer/paper combo show all of the colors in your photo? Maybe. Maybe not. The graph below compares the gamut of my geranium photo (green dots) against the gamut of my three favorite Epson papers coming out of my Epson 3800 – Ultra-Smooth Fine Art (pink line), Premium Luster (cyan line) and Exhibition Fiber (purple line). For the geranium image, Ultra-Smooth Fine Art absolutely would be the wrong choice because most of the important reds and oranges won’t show at all (check out the large blob of green dots outside of the pink line). Premium Luster shows all but a handful of the reds (just a few dots outside of the green line). Exhibition Fiber (using the free Pixel Genius profile) is able, but just able, to show everything (all of the green dots are within the purple line). In terms of showing the full gamut of colors in the geranium photo, Exhibition Fiber would be the best Epson paper for printing this image on my E-3800 (as if I would actually want to print such a handsome image… not).
Here’s the detail from the upper right corner showing that the gamut of Premium Luster is a tiny bit smaller than Exhibition Fiber when it comes to geranium reds.
You have to be very careful with CMYK. When it comes to having your photos printed in books, magazines or catalogs, your heart will be broken again and again by the limited gamut of the commercial printer’s Cyan Magenta Yellow and blacK. (Remember CMYK is a 4-letter word.) Despite the fact that we see images printed in CMYK countless times each day, it has the smallest gamut of all the crayon boxes we’re discussing. As shown below, the vast majority of the important colors in my geranium snapshot cannot be reproduced on a commercial CMYK press (note the huge blob of green dots outside of the green line). Yes, I hear the uber-geeks shouting that there are alternative ink sets to CMYK, like Hexachrome and such. But, unless you’re self-publishing and paying the printer, you’ll be stuck with good ol’ CMY and K. If you are handing photos off to a commercial printer, your photos will greatly appreciate the time you invest in the study of color management.
My photo looks lousy and it’s not my fault! (Or is it?) There’s no arguing with the fastest thing in the universe. As Einstein may have said, “physics is physics.” I can’t make my monitor show a wider gamut of RGB than it’s capable of showing. I can’t get a redder red on a commercial CMYK press than 100% Magenta mixed with 100% Yellow. If I can’t extend the gamut of the monitor or printer, then I have to optimize my photo for the gamut in which it will live forever. For instance, when photographing a subject that has ultra-saturated colors, I know that I’m in for some extra work back in the studio – skillfully massaging pixels with Photoshop so that at least the essence of the image is portrayed in the smaller gamut of my intended printer/paper combo.
One final graph. If you were baffled by the graph at the top and have read this far, I bet that you now can interpret the graph below. Consider it to be the photographic proof that the resources on color management listed below are worth checking out.
Learning About Color Management
Books
Real World Color Management
Color Management For Photographers
More Color Management Books
DVDs
Six Simple Steps to Good Color Management – new DVD by JP Caponigro, available through ACME Educational
Online
John Paul Caponigro’s website – check out the Downloads page for free tutorials
Kelby Training – on-demand tutorials from the folks who invented Photoshop education
National Association of Photoshop Users – access to NAPP’s online tutorials is worth the price of membership alone
Lynda.com – 24/7 on-demand tutorials for a wide range of digital topics
Workshops & Seminars
D-65 Workshop – lives up to it’s slogan “Digital workflow, not workslow.”
The Fine Art of Digital Printing – spend a week with JP Caponigro and Mac Holbert at FADP and you’ll no longer think of “Color Management” as a four-letter word
Photoshop World – offered spring and fall by NAPP. You’ll find many seminars on color management and sit in large rooms filled with fellow photographers who are as baffled eager to learn as you.
Santa Fe Workshops – week-long workshops in beautiful northern New Mexico
Thanks for this info.
Do you suggest a LCD monitor that would do the “job” for color management?
Ken
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just for the record:
the k in cmyk does NOT stand for black.
it stands for key. (key print plate)
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Thanks for the clear and informative article. How do the items covered apply to black and white printing? Thanks!
Ray Davis
Rayt – true confession time… I gave up my interest in B&W when I printed my first Cibachrome back in art school 25 years ago. But, I know the guy to ask. I’ll go find Mr. Versace and ask him.
Lao – O.K. You busted my chops for being so casual. Do you really think that a guy who uses “large blob of green dots outside of the pink line” in a Simple Truths post is going to admit that “K” actually stands for “Key” and not “blacK”. What color is Key anyway…? Thanks for keeping me on the straight and narrow.
Probably the biggest and most common mistake that photographers make is that they think that just because they do just black and white, there is no need for color management. It’s all grayscale. If ANYTHING needs to be color managed the most it’s a black and white workflow. Particularly if you are using inkjet printers.
The best results for black and white inkjets come from firing ALL of the heads not just the black ink(s). What color management provides is a way to control all aspects of the process. that the gray you see on the monitor is the exact gray you’ll print. Black and white images are the most unforgiving of all if the printer profile is not spot on, or the calibration of the monitor is off.
In the world of inkjet printing gray is, and should be treated as, a color. So with out color management, away to know that all aspects of your system will be speaking the same color language, when the neutral gray you see on your monitor comes out magenta, you have no idea where the disconnect is. If a gray is off, you know it. if a red is a little too cyan, that’s a lot harder to tell to tell at all, but gray is gray, period. If it’s has color in it that was not intended the first it’s not truly gray, and second you are not working in a color manged workflow.
Great article – I have been trying to go to the dentist, er, I mean learn more about colour management and this really filled in more than a few gaps. Any thoughts on what is the best montior/printer/paper combo for showing the widest gamut. Thanks.
All these posts about color management are great, yours is very clear. But i now know all the basics an theory about that stuff.
What is more challenging is making the good choices (and setup) for our workflow to be color managing compliant. I mean i would really love to see a post telling me how to caliber my screen (and why), which gamma to use on my mac (and why), what settings i need to change to photoshop and lightroom preferences (and why…), what color space i should use when i export my pictures for web/print, well … you understand i looked around these matters, but i never found a complete explanation that don’t focus on a particular hardware/software setup.
Thanks anyway, these are just my feelings
Steve – Mac Holbert, one of the fellows who literally invented digital printmaking as we know it today, sent me the following as a reply to your query about the combo that will provide the widest gamut on screen and on paper.
“NEC 2690WUXi (w/calibration device) or it’s latest incarnation, an Epson 2880 or greater, Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper”
Mac, along with his partner in crime JP Caponigro, offers a week-long intensive workshop “The Fine Art of Digital Printing” (find the link in the resources section above). I attended FADP last fall. There is no better investment that you could make to take your craft to the next level than attend FADP.
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Outstanding post! It really helps to visually see the different scope of the color gamuts. Another thing that will improve your prints is to use a printer with more inks. I use an older HP 8450 that has 8 inks and produces 96 millions colors. My photos look incredibly better from it than from a six color printer. Of course with more inks, the cost to print is higher.
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Thanks for this excellent introduction! This filled in a lot of missing information for me as well. Can you tell me how you were able to determine, and then graph, the gamut available to different devices and papers? Perhaps a better question is, “How can I find out the gamut available to each of my own devices and papers?”
Larry — The gamut graphs were created in Monaco GamutWorks – which came as part of the Xrite Pulse ColorElite package that I use to profile my monitors and various printer/ink/paper combos. ColorElite was discontinued by Xrite after they merged with / acquired Gretag Macbeth. Xrite’s flagship product is now the Eye-One series. (Although I’ve not used it, I’ve heard good comments about the new ColorMunki by Xrite.)
In GamutWorks, I can load a number of ICC profiles (that I create or download) as well as images. The graphs were created by turning various comibinations of the profiles and the image map on and off.
Many programs for creating ICC profiles come with a similar feature. For a stand-alone solution that’s affordable, I’d check out ColorThink at Chromix.com.
Vincent
Thanks for the information.
[...] written on color management of photos and why your images may look terrible on the internet. Pixsylated is an incredible website filled with lots of great articles on photography and the [...]
Thanks for the great explanation. However, one thing still eludes me. Is there a way to use this knowledge about colour spaces and get a better photo on screen?
I’ve seen and read this topic explained many times but your explanation with the graphs were probably about the easiest to understand than any of the others.
[...] And: If you want to learn more about ICC-Profiling and color management, there’s a nice explanation about it to be found over at Pixsylated. [...]
Thanks for the article, it helps to make things clearer.
One thing that I’m not so sure about. Going by your article, we should use the widest gamut available at the point of shooting the image. However it’s a bit miss leading, as although you have a wider gamut, the available number of 1s and 0s used to encode the image (bit depth) stays the same. So you will have a wider overall gamut, but the gap between one colour and the next will be greater and can lead to posterisation.
I’ve found it explained in this article here. http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-space-conversion.htm
The recommendation is that you should use a colour space that is appropriate for the distribution of colours in the image, if you are shooting landscapes with lots of green tones then you may benefit from RGB over sRGB, but of you are shooting lots of red and blues, there is no benefit from the increased gamut of RGB, but you will get a greater range of red and blue tones from sRGB.
Andy
Andy –
I understand your thinking that the allocation of a greater bit depth to a narrower color space will reduce the risk of posterization. Based on my experience, my recommendation is the opposite. By using broad color gamuts (like ProPhoto RGB) and greater bit depth (16-bit is my standard in Photoshop), the rendition of color occurs in much finer steps.
Check out the article on Cambridge in Colour about Adobe RGB vs. sRGB. http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sRGB-AdobeRGB1998.htm You’ll see that Adobe RGB has a wider gamut than sRGB at all luminance values. There is no portion of the spectrum where sRGB renders more colors than Adobe RGB.
My strategy is to shoot in as wide a color space as possible – even if my printer can’t take advantage of it today. The color gamut of ink jet printers continues to expand. I’m certain that, in a few years, I’ll be able to render more colors than I can today. Shooting in sRGB limits the gamut of colors to a relatively small set and limits my future options.
My reading of the article you cited is that the topic is color conversion — such as what happens when my digital capture in Adobe RGB has to be converted to the more limited gamut of CMYK for commercial printing. Unfortunately the article has no date. This is an important factor to me when evaluating technical pieces. No mention is made of soft-proofing in Photoshop or the use of appropriate printer/paper/ink profiles to manage color conversion.
Thanks for bringing this up. And thanks for reading PixSylated.
Excellent post. Thanks for writing so clearly.
[...] home safely and in the process of sorting (read finding) all my gear and photos. I just read an awesome article on color management by Syl Arena. His blog has an amazing amount of information and is a definite must [...]
Awesome information. Thanks for sharing. It’s so hard to find people who’re willing to share such top notch info!
[...] mad genius that is Syl Arena – posted one of the best articles on color management I’ve seen in awhile. It’s so good I want you to stop reading this post and go read his. [...]
Syl,
Great post, pretty intense but easy to digest.
You mention massaging the pixels to be gamut-safe, my question is ; how do you take (or make) photos that are production gamut-safe ? can you elaborate.
BTW i just came across your blog and love. You’re the latest addition on my mobile phone RSS reader
Shadi – The world is full of out-of-gamut colors – ie: colors that can’t be reproduced in print or on a computer screen. Heck, from a bumblebee’s perspective, human vision has a limited gamut because we can’t see ultraviolet like she can. When it comes to making photos, I worry about the contrast (difference between the highlights and shadows) of the scene at the time that I’m making the shot. I don’t worry about the color gamut – because there’s not a lot that I can do about it in the field. Color gamut is defined by the means of output. So, I control that in post-production through Lightroom and/or Photoshop. Ciao! Syl
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There are some things about your post that are questionable. First of all, you mention that Adobe 1998 should be what you set your camera too. What you set your camera to is irrelevant if you are shooting Raw. Second, using ProPhoto as your space is not always the best thing, especially since it is not popular with professional photograpers, designers, editors, etc. If you must choose one, choose Adobe RGB, since 9 times out of 10 that is what their working space is, and if it’s not that, it’s sRGB. I have never ever had a stock agency tell me to submit photos tagged with ProPhotoRGB. Not mention that posterization that can occur when you use ProPhoto, do your adjustments, then change it to an 8bit TIFF for submitting.
Mike – My fundamental view about color management is that one should use the widest color space available until it is necessary to convert to a specific means of output. So, my master files are in ProPhoto and my derivative files are in the color space needed for a specific means of output. Why? I’ve learned the hard way that I should keep my color options open for the future. My Epson 3800 can print a wider range of colors than the printer I had five years ago. Who knows how wide the gamut will be in another five years? Using a smaller color space today gives up these options for more vibrant / more accurate color down the road. Here’s the hard way… I have an archive of chromes that were drum-scanned directly into CMYK (which was the state-of-the art a decade ago) that will have to be re-scanned if I want to maximize the amount of color I can render on today’s (or tomorrow’s) printers. Preparing print files from these scans today leaves out so many colors that are visible in the original chromes. I think that ProPhoto is THE space to work in… until something bigger comes along.
As for converting from a wide working space, like ProPhoto, down to a small output space like CMYK for press or sRGB for screen, if you are getting posterization, then you need to revisit your workflow. Posterization is not a function of color space. It’s a function of file management. JP Caponigro has a wide range of free info on the subject. I suggest that you take a look at his site for a wealth of info on color management and workflow. Also check out JP’s DVDs and Mac Holbert’s DVD at Acme Educational.
Finally, I can think of no reason to set my cameras to sRGB rather than Adobe RGB — even if I “always” shoot in RAW. I’ll admit, I’ve inadvertently shot in JPEG, when I thought I was shooting in RAW. The most recent time happened after I set my camera to Small JPEG so that I could shoot a 24-hour time lapse at 10-second intervals and get all the frames (8,640 total) on one CF. Afterward, I missed the RAW setting and selected the adjacent one – which is Large JPEG. Fortunately, because I’d set my camera to Adobe RGB rather than sRGB, I was still maximizing the color in my files. For point-and-shoot photographers, sRGB is fine. For DSLR shooters, the better practice is to choose the wider color space. Right now, that’s Adobe RGB. Ciao!
Not a bad explanation….. though I would disagree with the implication that the flower photo you posted is bad because the red gamut is clipped. I don’t mean that as an insult… I am saying that having an increased gamut will not fix bad pictures. (switching that photo to prophoto would not improve it one bit.)
I would also challenge the assertion that argb makes much of a noticeable difference in real world prints (unless you are doing some sort of blown saturation deal [sunsets, certain landscapes]…). Prophoto is mostly useless in photography as it mainly adds unrealistic “florescent” like colors that will not show up in your pictures unless you are digitally painting them. In return for this you are getting a greatly increased chance of posterization in 8 bit mode.
90% of photos will not show Argb producing noticeably better prints than srgb when proper softproofing is done on both. (cmyk on the other hand does takes a serious dump on color if you are not careful…) That not to say it does not have it’s place, only that it is not the huge hindrance to good photos that seems to be implied by the articles title.
Wide gamut monitors are NOT for everyone and can make your life miserable if you do not know how to use them. If you DO now how to use one.. the NEC 2690 WUXI Spectraview is by far the best out there under 2k [it runs 1200ish] (26in S-IPS AT-W). The Srgb version is the 2490.
Also… For the new photographer…. if you plan to post your photos on the web, SRGB is the only format you should use for web display…otherwise your photos will look very poor and desaturated to most people’s monitors.
Once again I think you did a nice job explaining the basics and you obviously know what your talking about, I just felt the need to take issue with the idea that more must ALWAYS be better and if a person doesn’t have it they can’t take good photos. It is kind of like the megapixel race…. the average consumer thinks 15 MP must be better than 10 MP, when what the don’t realize is that the 10 MP actually has better IQ and Noise due to larger pixels. Srgb (web, most prints)/argb(some commercial work, sunsets ect)/prophoto(digital painting) all have their place.
Thanks for reading my rant!
This was very helpful indeed and I’ve taken most of what you’ve written at heart, but there is a single thing I really can’t wrap my head around:
What is the use of importing into ProPhoto if your camera only can do AdobeRGB? While this will allow for a potentially larger number of colors, it will not make any difference to the number of colors actually captured, so where is the advantage?
Or does the camera captures more than the AdobeRGB colorspace and just uses that when creating JPG in-camera, basically meaning that colorspace has no meaning when talking about RAW? I’m confused, because the RAW-files from my Canon DSLR has the AdobeRGB colorspace registered and seems to be using it during conversion.
Otherwise, thanks for a good read – your blog has been bookmarked.
Anders – I use ProPhoto for my post-capture image processing because it’s the biggest color space I can find (at present). Don’t think of this in terms of the colors captured by your camera. Rather, think of the colors that can be created in post-production. A quick example with Lightroom… run the “Saturation” bar all the way to the right and you will instantly have colors that exceed the gamut of AdobeRBG. If you actually wanted to retain all those colors, you’d have to save the file in a color space that’s bigger than AdobeRGB.
Also keep in mind that printer manufacturers are continually developing high-end printers that expand the gamut of colors they can print. Here’s an example from Epson — the UltraChrome HDR ink used on their new 7900 and 9900 printers. The colors that can be printed with this ink are amazing — especially in the saturated greens and blues. I guarantee you that not too many years from now this technology will become standard on desktop units. So I want to keep my options open for the future by using the widest color space I can today.
Ah – of course, that makes sense. Thank you for the clarification.
Hey Syl,
I thoroughly enjoyed your post! Some very valuable info for any photographer.
If I’m using a display like the 2490wuxi (sRGB) does it make sense to import raw photos to proPhoto or aRGB? Or how do I know I’m looking at accurate colors of an sRGB image when using a wide gamut display?
Thanks!
Harv
Harv – I follow the late Bruce Fraser’s advise of using ProPhoto as my editing space. Why? To future-proof my images as much as I can. Gamuts of printers and monitors continue to expand. I may not be able to see or print all the colors of ProPhoto today, but keeping my working files in the widest space possible keeps my options open for the future. When I’m ready to output to a specific device, such as the new Epson 9900 or to the web, I’ll take my working file an convert it into the profile of the destination and export that derivative file. Ciao! Syl
Thank you for breaking this subject down so well.
Hi, great article. I know you are a Canon guy but I think this question is pretty straight forward. I have a Nikon D3x. Inside the menu I can set the color space to either sRGB or Adobe RGB. Right now mine is set to Adobe RGB. I shoot everything as RAW files. So… that’s my camera set up.
If I then take my RAW files into Photoshop or Lightroom which has it’s default setting set to the ProPhoto RGB color space, do I somehow gain additional ‘crayons’ even though my camera only captured them as Adobe RGB? or do I only gain ‘crayons’ if I then edit the photo in that larger color space (which could then allow additional ‘crayons’ to be added to the original image taken)?
Thoughts?
Also… as an aside. If I have a custom DNG profile for my camera set up in both Photoshop and Lightroom (via x-rite color calibration), is that a completely different set of ‘crayons’ or rather a set of codes that are letting my software programs know how my camera views the Adobe RGB set of crayons? Hope that makes sense.
-Jason
I heard you mention this post on Photofocus podcast and headed over to see if I could figure out this issue I’m having. So far, I’m still stumped. I have calibrated with an i1 unit. All looks well on my LCD monitor as far as colors go, but my black and whites have a definite green cast when viewed on the monitor. Even if I do a straight desaturate, it is still quite green. Any idea on what I could be doing wrong?
Brook — If your whites are not white on your monitor, then you need to head back to step one. The reason to calibrate and profile a monitor is not to get good colors on your monitor. Rather, the reason is to let Photoshop know how to translate the colors you are seeing on your monitor into the colors produced by other devices — particularly printers.
So, if you have a green tint to the whites on your monitor, round up the manual to your monitor and the manual to the eye-one. The reason is hidden somewhere between the two. Good luck!
Syl,
Thanks for the quick response! I don’t thing I explained that the way I meant to. In actuality, in CS4 the whites appear perfectly white, it is the black and gray areas of a black and white photo that appear green (gives the entire image a green cast). What I can’t figure out is why in CS4 the completely desaturated image appears to have a green cast, while the gray menus and borders in PS still appear in correct grayscale (with no green cast).
If this makes any difference, I am using an external Dell u2410 monitor with my Macbook and the external monitor is the one which seems to have the green cast (but again, only in photos, not menus, etc).
Syl,
You can see a screenshot of what I’m talking about here: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1074/4731681081_7a161a0f86_b.jpg
The image in PS is the MonitorChecker(v4)_LAB I downloaded from http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/documents.html
-B