Color Space and Bit Depth - What Makes Sense?

I'm constantly confused about which color space and bit depth to choose for various things.
Examples:
- Does it make any sense to choose sRGB and 16-bits? (I thought sRGB was 8-bit by nature, no?)
- Likewise for AdobeRGB - are the upper 8-bits empty if you use 16-bits?
- What is the relationship between Nikon AdobeWide RGB, and AdobeRGB? - if a software supports one, will it support the other?
- ProPhoto/8-bits - is there ever a reason?...
I could go on, but I think you get the idea...
Any help?
Rob

So, it does not really make sense to use ProPhoto/8 for output (or for anything else I guess(?)), even if its supported, since it is optimized for an extended gamut, and if your output device does not encompass the gamut, then you've lost something since your bits will be spread thinner in the "most important" colors.
Correct, you do not want to do prophotoRGB 8bit anything. It is very easy to get posterization with it. Coincidentally, if you print from Lightroom and let the driver manage and do not check 16-bit output, Lightroom outputs prophotoRGB 8bits to the driver. This is rather annoying as it is very easy to get posterizaed prints this way.
It seems that AdobeRGB has been optimized more for "important" colors and so if you have to scrunch down into an 8-bit jpeg, then its the best choice if supported - same would hold true for an 8-bit tif I would think (?)
Correct on both counts. If there is color management and you go 8 bits adobeRGB is a good choice. This is only really true for print targets though as adobeRGB encompasses more of a typical CMYK gamut than sRGB. For display targets such as the web you will be better off always using sRGB as 99% of displays are closer to that and so you don't gain anything. Also, 80% of web browsers is still not color managed.
On a theoretical note: I still don't understand why if image data is 12 or 14 bits and the image format uses 16 bits, why there has to be a boundary drawn around the gamut representation. But for practical purposes, maybe it doesn't really matter.
Do realitze hat the original image in 12 to 14 bits is in linear gamma as that is how the sensor reacts to light. However formats for display are always gamma corrected for efficiency, because the human eye reacts non-linearly to light and because typical displays have a gamma powerlaw response of brightness/darkness. Lightroom internally uses a 16-bit linear space. This is more bits than the 12 or 14 bits simply to avoid aliasing errors and other numeric errors. Similarly the working space is chosen larger than the gamut cameras can capture in order to have some overhead that allows for flexibility and avoids blowing out in intermediary stages of the processing pipeline. You have to choose something and so prophotoRGB, one of the widest RGB spaces out there is used. This is explained quite well here.
- Is there any reason not to standardize 8-bit tif or jpg files on AdobeRGB and leave sRGB for the rare cases when legacy support is more important than color integrity?
Actually legacy issues are rampant. Even now, color management is very spotty, even in shops oriented towards professionals. Also, arguably the largest destination for digital file output, the web, is almost not color managed. sRGB remains king unfortunately. It could be so much better if everybody used Safari or Firefox, but that clearly is not the case yet.
- And standardize 16 bit formats on the widest gamut supported by whatever you're doing with it? - ProPhoto for editing, and maybe whatever gamut is recommended by other software or hardware vendors for special purposes...
Yes, if you go 16 bits, there is no point not doing prophotoRGB.
Personally, all my web photos are presented through Flash, which supports AdobeRGB even if the browser proper does not. So I don't have legacy browsers to worry about myself.
Flash only supports non-sRGB images if you have enabled it yourself. NONE of the included flash templates in Lightroom for example enable it.
that IE was the last browser to be upgraded for colorspace support (ie9)
AFAIK (I don't do windows, so I have not tested IE9 myself), IE 9 still is not color managed. The only thing it does is when it encounters a jpeg with a ICC profile different than sRGB is translate it to sRGB and send that to the monitor without using the monitor profile. That is not color management at all. It is rather useless and completely contrary to what Microsoft themselves said many years ago well behaved browsers should do. It is also contrary to all of Windows 7 included utilities for image display. Really weird! Wide gamut displays are becoming more and more prevalent and this is backwards. Even if IE9 does this halfassed color transform, you can still not standardize on adobeRGB as it will take years for IE versions to really switch over. Many people still use IE6 and only recently has my website's access switched over to mostly IE8. Don't hold your breath for this.
Amazingly, in 2010, the only correctly color managed browser on windows is still Safari as Firefox doesn't support v4 icc monitor profiles and IE9 doesn't color manage at all except for translating between spaces to sRGB which is not very useful. Chrome can be made to color manage on windows apparently with a command line switch. On Macs the situation is better since Safari, Chrome (only correctly on 10.6) and Firefox (only with v2 ICC monitor profiles) all color manage. However, on mobile platforms, not a single browser color manages!

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I've asked this in a couple other places online as I try to wrap my head around color management, but the answer continues to elude me. That, or I've had it explained and I just didn't comprehend. So I continue. My confusion is this: everywhere it seems, experts and gurus and teachers and generally good, kind people of knowledge claim the benefits (in most instances, though not all) of working in AdobeRGB and ProPhoto RGB. And yet nobody seems to mention that the majority of people - including presumably many of those championing the wider gamut color spaces - are working on standard gamut displays. And to my mind, this is a huge oversight. What it means is, at best, those working this way are seeing nothing different than photos edited/output in sRGB, because [fortunately] the photos they took didn't include colors that exceeded sRGB's real estate. But at worst, they're editing blind, and probably messing up their work. That landscape they shot with all those lush greens that sRGB can't handle? Well, if they're working in AdobeRGB on a standard gamut display, they can't see those greens either. So, as I understand it, the color managed software is going to algorithmically reign in that wild green and bring it down to sRGB's turf (and this I believe is where relative and perceptual rendering intents come into play), and give them the best approximation, within the display's gamut capabilities. But now this person is editing thinking they're in AdobeRGB, thinking that green is AdobeRGB's green, but it's not. So any changes they make to this image, they're making to an image that's displaying to their eyes as sRGB, even if the color space is, technically, AdobeRGB. So they save, output this image as an AdobeRGB file, unaware that [they] altered it seeing inaccurate color. The person who opens this file on a wide gamut monitor, in the appropriate (wide gamut) color space, is now going to see this image "accurately" for the first time. Only it was edited by someone who hadn't seen it accurately. So who know what it looks like. And if the person who edited it is there, they'd be like, "wait, that's not what I sent you!"
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ssprengel Apr 28, 2015 9:40 PM
PS RGB Workspace: ProPhotoRGB and I convert any 8-bit documents to 16-bit before doing any adjustments.
Why does one convert 8-bit pics to 16-bit? Not sure if this is an apt comparison, but it seems to me that that's kind of like upscaling, in video. Which I've always taken to mean adding redundant information to a file so that it 'fits' the larger canvas, but to no material improvement. In the case of video, I think I'd rather watch a 1080p movie on an HD (1080) screen (here I go again with my pixel-to-pixel prejudice), than watch a 1080p movie on a 4K TV, upscaled. But I'm ready to be wrong here, too. Maybe there would be no discernible difference? Maybe even though the source material were 1080p, I could still sit closer to the 4K TV, because of the smaller and more densely packed array of pixels. Or maybe I only get that benefit when it's a 4K picture on a 4K screen? Anyway, this is probably a different can of worms. I'm assuming that in the case of photo editing, converting from 8 to 16-bit allows one more room to work before bad things start to happen?
I'm recent to Lightroom and still in the process of organizing from Aperture. Being forced to "this is your life" through all the years (I don't recommend!), I realize probably all of my pictures older than 7 years ago are jpeg, and probably low-fi at that. I'm wondering how I should handle them, if and when I do. I'm noting your settings, ssprengel.
ssprengel Apr 28, 2015 9:40 PM
I save my PS intermediate or final master copy of my work as a 16-bit TIF still in the ProPhotoRGB, and only when I'm ready to share the image do I convert to sRGB then 8-bits, in that order, then do File / Save As: Format=JPG.
Part of the same question, I guess - why convert back to 8-bits? Is it for the recipient? Do some machines not read 16-bit? Something else?
For those of you working in these larger color spaces and not working with a wide gamut display, I'd love to know if there are any reasons you choose not to. Because I guess my biggest concern in all of this has been tied to what we're potentially losing by not seeing the breadth of the color space we work in represented while making value adjustments to our images. Based on what several have said here, it seems that the instances when our displays are unable to represent something as intended are infrequent, and when they do arise, they're usually not extreme.
Simon G E Garrett Apr 29, 2015 4:57 AM
With 8 bits, there are 256 possible values. If you use those 8 bits to cover a wider range of colours, then the difference between two adjacent values - between 100 and 101, say - is a larger difference in colour. With ProPhoto RGB in 8-bits there is a chance that this is visible, so a smooth colour wedge might look like a staircase. Hence ProPhoto RGB files might need to be kept as 16-bit TIFs, which of course are much, much bigger than 8-bit jpegs.
Over the course of my 'studies' I came across a side-by-side comparison of either two color spaces and how they handled value gradations, or 8-bit vs 16-bit in the same color space. One was a very smooth gradient, and the other was more like a series of columns, or as you say, a staircase. Maybe it was comparing sRGB with AdobeRGB, both as 8-bit. And how they handled the same "section" of value change. They're both working with 256 choices, right? So there might be some instances where, in 8-bit, the (numerically) same segment of values is smoother in sRGB than in AdobeRGB, no? Because of the example Simon illustrated above?
Oh, also -- in my Lumix LX100 the options for color space are sRGB or AdobeRGB. Am I correct to say that when I'm shooting RAW, these are irrelevant or ignored? I know there are instances (certain camera effects) where the camera forces the shot as a jpeg, and usually in that instance I believe it will be forced sRGB.
Thanks again. I think it's time to change some settings..

Color Space and Bit Depth - What Makes Sense?

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