A color space is all the colors that can be rendered using a given technology.\u00a0 Think if it this way.\u00a0 You all enjoyed coloring with crayons when you were young. And I don\u2019t know\u00a0 about you but I was always envious of my friends that had the big giant boxes of crayons with 120 different colors.\u00a0 They had every color under the sun.<\/p>\n
We can think of the 120 crayon box as being the color space of the real world with every color under the sun.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now, you\u2019re reading this blog on your computer monitor or tablet display.\u00a0 It\u2019s using a color space that was defined specifically for the internet \u2013 sRGB.\u00a0 This stands for \u201cstandard Red Green Blue.\u201d\u00a0 It was jointly developed back in 1996 by Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.\u00a0 It\u2019s a color space that is designed to work on any display device and is thus the lowest common denominator.\u00a0 It cannot display all the colors we see in nature.\u00a0 It is like the 48 crayon Crayola box.<\/p>\n Two years later Adobe came along with their own color space definition, realizing that sRGB was not adequate for serious graphic design and photography.\u00a0 So they put forward AdobeRGB(1998).\u00a0 It was much better than sRGB and was more like having this 64 crayon box.<\/p>\n With AdobeRGB(1998) it was possible to render a far greater range of colors than were available in sRGB.\u00a0 And we were much happier.\u00a0 But as good as AdobeRGB(1998) is, someone always wants more.\u00a0 So along came an even larger color space \u2013 ProPhoto RGB.\u00a0 It was more like a 96 crayon box.<\/p>\n It still does not render all the colors in nature but it\u2019s much better than sRGB and marginally better than AdobeRGB(1998).<\/p>\n Now, don\u2019t take this comparison of Crayola boxes literally.\u00a0 I\u2019m not suggesting that AdobeRGB(1998) has a color space that is half again as big as sRGB (that is, renders fifty percent as many colors). I\u2019m just saying that it\u2019s more.\u00a0 Actually, it\u2019s quite a bit more.<\/p>\n These are just three color spaces that are in common use when we work on our photographs on our computers.\u00a0 But this isn\u2019t all of them; not even close.\u00a0 There are hundreds if not thousands of color spaces as we\u2019ll see later.<\/p>\n So with this in mind, what can we conclude.\u00a0 Well, let\u2019s start with your camera.\u00a0 Each camera has its own range of colors its sensor can capture, its own color space.\u00a0 Differences in the various sensors from one model to the next will result in slightly different color spaces.\u00a0 When you capture RAW images all the colors the camera is capable of capturing are in the RAW file.\u00a0 In other words, there is no defined color space for RAW files; it\u2019s just what the camera\u2019s sensor can capture.\u00a0 But when you capture JPEG the camera\u2019s processor will convert the RAW image from the sensor to JPEG format and you actually have a choice of color spaces.\u00a0 The default is sRGB.\u00a0 But you can change that to AdobeRGB(1998).\u00a0 Your camera has a menu option for that.\u00a0 Now, I don\u2019t recommend shooting in JPEG but if you do, be sure to set your camera to use the AdobeRGB(1998) color space.<\/p>\n The other place where this affects us is when we convert our RAW files to another format such as TIFF or PSD in raw image conversion programs like Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw.\u00a0 Again, you have a choice of the target color space and again, most programs default to sRGB.\u00a0 I recommend you change that to ProPhoto RGB.\u00a0 That\u2019s the color space I prefer.<\/p>\n Want to see what a color space actually looks like?\u00a0 Here\u2019s the sRGB color space.<\/p>\n There\u2019s (a lot) more to this topic but this is a good place to stop so you can get back to whatever you need to get done today.<\/p>\n We always enjoy hearing from you so feel free to join the conversation and leave a comment.\u00a0 Also, we encourage you to share this with your photographer friends.<\/p>\n Join me on an upcoming workshop.\u00a0 Click here for more details.<\/a><\/p>\n![\"crayons_120cnt\"](\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/crayons_120cnt.jpg\" "\\"crayons_120cnt\\"")
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