AdobeRGB(1998) working space/monitor

Question

A photographer had asked me, whether the offset
print reproduction of his (originally) RAW photos
would be improved if he used AdobeRGB(1998)as
working space and an expensive monitor with
AdobeRGB gamut, instead of generally sRGB.
Does anybody know a printed book which demon-
strates the loss in an sRGB workflow compared
to an AdobeRGB workflow (not talking about
ProPhoto).
Common sense is here not a good recipy. Real
world photos, for instance landscapes, are
very different to academic test patterns.
I'm not much interested in opinions (I'm knowing
these). I'm more interested in printed examples.
Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann

Answer 1

Gary (Ballard),
thanks for your informations. Now let's think
about the argument 'in a wide gamut color space
we have larger color distances between 1 bit
steps'.
Correct, but didn't we use (I'm still doing it)
8bpc images in the working space AdobeRGB(1998)
for many many years ? Very satisfying, therefore
it cannot be wrong to send these data directly
(or with very tiny changes) directly to such a
monitor.
The problem how to show raw sRGB data on an aRGB
monitor can be solved, for instance like this:
1) Adjust the monitor visually by monitor controls
very near to aRGB.
2) Calibrate and profile for aRGB, but don't use
for instance Eizo's ColorNavigator. Do it in
the traditional way, which results in modified
graphics card LUTs.
3) Calibrate and profile again for sRGB, without
changing the monitor controls .
Choose the respective profile by GMB Display Profile,
which defines the system monitor profile.
Load the respective profile by GMB Calibration Loader,
which affects the LUTs.
Check LUT contents by GMB Calibration Tester.
The aRGB mode should cause small deviations from
the straight lines, the sRGB mode larger.
The disadvantage is that one has to choose the mode
deliberately.
IMO a good argument for sticking to sRGB monitors ..
Aandi,
I had given a link to a doc which describes the
whole workflow for camera calibration, which delivers
as well a kind of gamut description.
The calibration is valid for fixed camera settings
and fixed lighting (here for the reproduction of
paintings).
The three sensor types R,G,B may have well defined
spectral sensitivity functions, but results appear
always after a multiplication by the light spectrum,
which is not flat and for fluorescent light spiky.
There are shown gamuts (planes L=constant) which
differ, depending on the intermediate data format,
which is in this test, one after the other, sRGB,
aRGB and pRGB=Prophoto.
These gamuts are not identical. The targets (two
different were used) are NOT wide gamut targets
(like some printed spot inks). Thus the indicated
gamut is IMO to some extend extrapolated, an
educated guess by the calibration system.
Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann