- Lightroom Color Management Hints & Tips -

Summary
If you have a profiled monitor and you experience that Lightroom 2.1 renders the image
very different from the way Photoshop renders it, or that the Library and Slideshow modules render the image
very different from the way it is rendered by the Develop module, chances are that this can be solved by re-profiling your monitor and saving the new profile as a matrix-based profile rather than a LUT-based profile.
The full article
Read the full article at: http://photo.bragit.com/LightroomColorManagement.shtml, which describes the background, the problem, the solution and the results. There are also some hints on the use of test patterns, choice of gamma, color temperature and luminance.
I am sure many people may have opinions on these issues, so please run any discussions about the article in this forum.

To Richard Waters:
For normal mid-tone images (excluding shadows) viewed at 1:1, there should be no (significant) differences between Development and Library modules (and Photoshop). If you do see significant differences, there is something wrong with the calibration.
As for Photoshop vs Lightroom: Photoshop is better for printing because it has a proofing systems. What one can do is to open it in Photoshop (with Lightroom adjustments), then do the proofing, and perhaps some extra adjustments to compensate for the paper, and then print the result either from Photoshop or from Lightroom. Printing from Lightroom has the advantage that it does the resampling and sharpening automatically.
Choice of gamma when profiling is not very critical. 2.2 is reasonably okay (and the most common), although the sRGB gamma (if you have the choice) may be more optimal, especially for deep shadows. Color management works so that, in principle, if the bit depth from the graphics card to the monitor was infinite, it would compensate for whatever gamma you choose. Thus, in principle, you could choose any arbitrary gamma, and the image would look and print exactly the same. The only reasons to choice a "suitable" gamma are: (1) the bit depth is limited to 8 bits which makes it necessary to use a "reasonable" gamma so as to avoid banding and posterizations; (2) when viewing images from the internet that are not tagged with a profile, or using a lousy browser that does not understand CM, then the choice of gamma is critical since it directly affects the contrast of that image.

Similar Messages

Can't get Lightroom Color Management to select custom profiles

I can't get Lightroom Color Management to select custom profiles.
- I select "other" in Profile,
- a pop-up box shows me numerous profiles to choose from
- I select a profile and the selection is highlighted
- I press "OK" and the pop-up box disappears
- but if I go back to the "Profile" selection line, only "Managed by Printer" is available.
What's wrong here?
Is the inability to select a profile the reason that prints from Lightroom look way to dark when I print them?
Vick

Oh, I'm on Windows, XP with SP2.
The profiles are in C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\color
I used the .exe that was provided by Epson for installing the drivers.
Nothing fancy, nothing different.
For Lightroom, I installed it off CD, and got the 1.3.1 update off their Adobe site.
Any clues there, to solve the puzzle?
Vick

Logic of Lightroom Color Management

There are, I know, endless posts about Lightroom color management issues. This question, I hope, will be somewhat different, as I don't have a specific problem, yet, but am trying to understand the logic of the software in the hope of avoiding problems down the road (as when I add file types, e.g.) I am also reading a book on color management, but it is on general theory with specific references to Photoshop CS3 (or 2), not to Lightroom. So here are my two questions and I'm hoping that the answers, should I be fortunate enough to receive any, will help not only me but other neophytes.
First, the Adobe online manual says this: "For rendered files such as TIFF, JPEG, and PSD files, Lightroom uses the images embedded color profile to display the image, histogram, and color values. If the image doesnt have a profile, Lightroom assumes the sRGB profile, and the image may not look as expected on your monitor." Clear enough, but what does CS3 do when it is launched from Lightroom to do pixel editing on an image primarily managed in Lightroom? That is, if CS3 is used essentially as a Lightroom plugin does CS3 adopt the Lightroom color management or does CS3 independently have to be set appropriately for the image to appear the same in CS3?
Second, the online manual says this: "Raw photo files generally dont have embedded color profiles. For raw files, the Develop module assumes a wide color space based on the color values of the ProPhoto RGB color space. ProPhoto RGB encompasses most colors that cameras can record." This is confusing, at least to me. Consider the paragraph above in this post, where the manual explains (or at least intimates) that if you create a file with values of a broad gamut such as Adobe RGB but don't embed that profile Lightroom will think it has a narrower gamut, sRGB file and the display will be off (unsaturated and washed out, I presume). That makes perfect sense. But why, then, does Lightroom assume for RAW files the wide Prophoto RGB color space when a camera might not record across this gamut? Wouldn't a camera that records in a narrower gamut cause the same problems for the display as does an Adobe RGB file read as if it were an sRGB file?
Thanks in advance.

>For rendered files such as TIFF, JPEG, and PSD files, Lightroom uses the images embedded color profile to display the image, histogram, and color values. If the image doesnt have a profile, Lightroom assumes the sRGB profile, and the image may not look as expected on your monitor.
Funny but if this came from the manual it is actually incorrect. For tiff, jpeg and psd files, the image is rendered into the linear lightroom color space using the embedded profile or assuming sRGB if there is no color tag on the image. The histogram Lightroom shows is always based on the Lightroom color space with a gamma 2.2 toning curve applied no matter what the source of the file. To answer your question, if you do an "edit in CS3" from Lightroom a copy of the file is rendered in the color space that you requested in the dialog and CS3 uses that space if your Photoshop is correctly set up to respect embedded profiles.
>Raw photo files generally dont have embedded color profiles. For raw files, the Develop module assumes a wide color space based on the color values of the ProPhoto RGB color space. ProPhoto RGB encompasses most colors that cameras can record.
The manual is again not correct here! Embarrassing. I have never seen a RAW file with an embedded profile so generally is incorrect. Also, for RAW files, the module DOES NOT assume prophotoRGB color space. The actual primaries are actually stored in a internal database that is based on calibrations that Thomas Knoll and other ACR engineers did of the specific type of camera. They ARE not the prophotoRGB primaries. The RAW files are rendered into MelissaRGB using those primaries. MelissaRGB has ppRGB primaries but a linear gamma instead of 1.8.
>hat makes perfect sense. But why, then, does Lightroom assume for RAW files the wide Prophoto RGB color space when a camera might not record across this gamut? Wouldn't a camera that records in a narrower gamut cause the same problems for the display as does an Adobe RGB file read as if it were an sRGB file?
See above, the manual is wrong. Lightroom knows the actual gamut of your camera and uses that, not prophoto.

LightRoom Color Management

Apart from the unique color space and behavior on certain export operations, Lightroom seems rather closed mouthed about color management. (This is a bit unsettling for someone used to all of the control offered by Photoshop) For instance, 1) is there any way to reveal the embedded profile of legacy PS files which have been imported? (all I can presently find for profile is "embedded") 2) what profile (and what gamma) is sent to a printer when printer color management is selected? 3) Is ColorSync enabled? and 4)Finally, is there any source which might make all of this clear?
Bob Hesse

Raw files have no color space, they are essentially Grayscale data.
Existing rendered images have their own embedded profiles and thus color space but IF you apply ANY corrections using LR, you're converting into its internal color space to apply the edits. At that time, you're basically now in ProPhoto RGB (with a linear tone curve) so you might as well export back to 16-bit ProPhoto RGB.
IF you don't apply an edit, the embedded profile will be honored if you open it in Photoshop.
You might want to read this:
http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200701_rodneycm.pdf

All my prints using: Lightroom 5, printer color management turned off, and non-generic ICC profile (e.g. Epson Premium Glossy) have magenta tint or cast

I'm using PC with: Windows 8.1, 64bit, Lightroom 5.4, Epson R3000, 6.75 (latest) driver, color management turned off in printer settings, Lightroom configured to manage color. If I use a generic ICC profile such as Epson sRGB, the prints look OK. But when I use any ICC profile dedicated to my paper and printer combination, such as Epson Premium Glossy, or one created using ColorMunki print profile, the prints all have a medium to heavy magenta tint or cast. The effect can be seen before I even print in the Epson Print Preview. Yet when I soft proof, I don't see this effect. I suspect the problem lies somewhere in the CMM process, but I can't pin it down. Any tips or suggestions are appreciated.

Thank you kindly for your insightful response. As it turns out, the answer is half correct. I've found others who'll say the same thing, that double color management will lead to a very magenta result. I believe this was certainly the case when I first started playing with the settings, Where I went wrong, is that after I corrected my settings by turning off printer manages color and letting Lightroom do the color management, is that the Epson Print Preview was still showing magenta with certain profiles. Not wanting to waste more money on paper and ink, I used the preview to gauge whether I was going to get a normal print or not. Then one day I ignored the print preview's magenta cast as a 'warning' and I went ahead printed the photo anyways. Because I used a profile that I created with ColorMunki Photo, the picture came out perfect (i.e. a very good match to what I was seeing in Lightoom on my monitor). The lesson learned is that for judging the final color correctness, the Epson Print Preview can be way off target and your best bet is to ignore it.

Color management in hp 8500 officejet premier pro so I can use Lightroom or Photoshop?

When I print what I see on the Monitor is not what I get on printout. I don't seen to be able to use the icc profile in either application. If I let the printer manage the color, they are blue-green overtone.

Hi ssprengel,
Thanks for the reply. I didn't know how these things work but now realise that my profiles seem to have been sitting in windows/system32/spool/drivers/color since I bought the computer in 2010.
The guide you referred to suggested that at least one of the profiles on my computer, GL3, should be suitable (there was no mention of GL2) In fact I ended up trying most of my profiles but they all had a very distinct red tint which was completely unacceptable. I even tried specifying and downloading a new profile from Ilford (I can't see where to get these from Canon) but this had the same red tint. When using the profiles I did switch off Color Management in the Print Preferencies, or rather i set it to manual and left all the sliders at zero.
When i used "managed by printer" there was no red tint and the print looked reasonably good although not quite matching the screen, particularly in brightness.
It may be worth mentioning that, for the profiles, the red tint was obvious in the print preview. I did not have to wait until the actual print, although I obviously did print to check.
I did try printing my RAW files to JPEG then printing via Explorer and this ended up around the same quality as "managed by printer" directly from Lightroom
Any ideas about what causes the red tint when using the profiles?

Lightroom (ACR 4) color management problems

Lightroom (or ACR 4) has some color management problems. When I develop a DNG into Photoshop (sRGB) everything looks great. Then I proof colors for the web (monitor RGB) the reds become oversaturated. I don't see this problem when I develop the same DNG using Bridge (ACR 3).
Any picture that I develop using LR that looks great in Photoshop, becomes way too red when published on the web.
Whats going on here?

I have confirmed this finding using Photoshop CS3 beta - same problem in converting to the web - too red!

Invalid Color Management in Lightroom? (RAW)

I've noticed the strange thing, how Adobe Camera RAW 4.1.1 displays the same image differently in Photoshop CS3 & Lightroom 1.4.1
Here are the screenshots from both programs:
What I've got in Lightroom/develop mode:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/956c3d6537871
What I've got in Photoshop:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/17a67c6537874
Notice the reds on the face and oranges on the trees on the background. 1) Face on second, photoshop variant is more reddish. 2) The contrast differs as well!
3) There is more orange on the leaves on the second image.
That's all happens in the preview in Lightroom - if I export image as a JPEG and open it in Photoshop - the images will be the same. But BEFORE the export they're DIFFERENT! What's wrong?
(Image is shot on Sony Alpha 350, white balance and all the settings in Camera RAW are the same in two programs).

>yes they are, but in practice PDF causes lot's of bugs.
My experience is opposite in that pdf is usually the only thing that actually works for multipage documents and things containing vector graphics. For single page photos of course tiff always works, but there are lots of clueless operators that do not know their behind from a color profile.
>In my experience colors will be different even for an eye of a consumer. On some printers red will be more reddish, on others green more greenish etc. The contrast will differ either. Maybe you and we use different printers. BTW I work on Windows, maybe that's the point.
I have always had basically perfect results. There was a time when Lightroom interacted wrong with printer drivers when you used profiles inside of the program instead of having the printer driver manage for you. This has long been fixed. Of course there are subtle differences between printers and it would be good if Lightroom had some sort of soft proofing to judge this in advance. The differences are usually pretty minor though nowadays.
>Well, Noritsu, as I know, for example, uses its own color management profile, which you cannot tune even in Photoshop. If you use sRGB, it will be ignored, and you'll get a very low contrast print with desaturated color and you have to be there when it's printed to tune it with the lab assistant. Usually they do it themselves ... well... good. I have SOME good experience with Costco. But for many cases I can't get my colors and contrast without being there when it's printed. And it depends on paper - is it metallic, for example, or matte. The picture will be different. The colors will be different. And you can't check it exactly on your monitor being at home, or in office.
I tested this extensively. If you do this right, it is very hard to see the difference between a sRGB print and a print converted to the profile. With well-tuned Noritsus, you get a small difference in oranges, and a tiny difference in greens - independent of the paper you use. This is the whole point of these machines. If you feed them sRGB, they should give you great results. Maybe my local costcos is very good, but I doubt they are very different from other labs. I tried both Matte and Glossy and they both showed the same result. This is borne out by softproofing in Photoshop that shows exactly the same effect. Note that I wrote about using lab profiles with Lightroom extensively and always tell people to use the profile, but in reality it really is not that important.
See for example: http://lagemaat.blogspot.com/2008/05/great-prints-from-labs.html
If you see large differences in contrast and saturation, there really is something wrong with your calibration workflow or your lab. FOr good prints, the only thing they need to do is to turn off their auto color correction, which with most labs you can do automatically in the online submission pages. I should tell you that you do have to judge prints under good lighting. Often these differences are simply caused by one day being sunny and the other overcast when you walk out on the parkinglot and take out your prints. This is not a real difference. Use a good high color rendering index lamp of high color temperature and you will see that they were the same. My local costcos is calibrated by drycreek photos every month and the profile hardly changes at all over time.
>I don't know, Jao, maybe your point in photography is different, and you don't pay so much attention on colors. These things are subjective! Maybe you pay more attention on other components of photo. In my experience it takes lots of time to prepare a 40"x30" photo for print and then it takes more time and money to colormatch it.
Actually my work is almost always about color. Perhaps I don't sweat it as much. I'd really like Lightroom to have some kind of soft proofing though showing how anal I am about color. I don't use costcos for prints larger than 12x18 as they don't do it locally, but I usually use smugmug's lab (EZprints) for the really large prints. They color manage for you and supply a profile that you can soft proof to if you want. They also appear to scale and sharpen the prints somehow. I've always had outstanding results from them and you can send back the images that you don't like at no cost, although I have never had to do that. I also use smugmug for galleries that clients can order from directly. They have always been very happy with the prints.
>And I work in Windows, maybe your Mac does it better, maybe that's the point of my sad story. But Windows is my karma for many reasons.
The point maybe, also, you print every time on the same printing hardware in Costco - that can explain it all.
I have been happy with my costcos and with EZprints, but I doubt that it is much of an issue. As said, I don't use inkjets very often as they are so darn expensive and annoying to operate but I have never had much issue with bad prints. There is no reason why you could not get windows to behave better. The only thing that you need is to calibrate regularly. I have seen on this forum that windows tends to corrupt monitor profiles over time. The issue is always fixed by recalibrating regularly. Once every month should be plenty.

Lightroom's color management paper options don't match any paper i can buy from Canon

Up to now I have been using "managed by printer" for printing on my new Canon MG8250. But i have seen several suggestions that i should let Lightroom manage the colors so i decided to give this a go by choosing "other" instead.
This gave me a list of papers to choose from: Canon IJ Color printer profile 2005, fine art photo rag 2, GL2/SG2, GL3/SG3, MP2, Other fine art paper 2, PT1, PT2, PT3. All the names being preceded by MG8200 series apart from the first one
However, when i looked up the papers available from Canon, these were all different: Photo paper pro platinum (PT-101), photopaper pro luster (LU-101), photo paper plus glossy II (PP-201), photo paper plus semi-gloss (SG-201), glossy paper everyday use (GP-501), Matte photo paper (MP-101)
There are some papers here which look as if they they might relate to the lightroom list eg PT-101 and PT1, SG-201 and SG2 but, at the moment, i am particularly interested in which option should be used to match the photo paper plus glossy II (PP-201) paper which I have bought - GL2 looks as if it might be a contender
Any help would be most appreciated

Hi ssprengel,
Thanks for the reply. I didn't know how these things work but now realise that my profiles seem to have been sitting in windows/system32/spool/drivers/color since I bought the computer in 2010.
The guide you referred to suggested that at least one of the profiles on my computer, GL3, should be suitable (there was no mention of GL2) In fact I ended up trying most of my profiles but they all had a very distinct red tint which was completely unacceptable. I even tried specifying and downloading a new profile from Ilford (I can't see where to get these from Canon) but this had the same red tint. When using the profiles I did switch off Color Management in the Print Preferencies, or rather i set it to manual and left all the sliders at zero.
When i used "managed by printer" there was no red tint and the print looked reasonably good although not quite matching the screen, particularly in brightness.
It may be worth mentioning that, for the profiles, the red tint was obvious in the print preview. I did not have to wait until the actual print, although I obviously did print to check.
I did try printing my RAW files to JPEG then printing via Explorer and this ended up around the same quality as "managed by printer" directly from Lightroom
Any ideas about what causes the red tint when using the profiles?

Important Hints on Color Management under Windows XP!!

After struggling for several hours, I have learned a couple important tidbits I have not seen elsewhere in these forums. As much confusion as I read in here about color management and color issues, this might be quite important to some.
If you want to skip the story, jump down to the last few lines of this entry for the summary.
I recently built a new computer, and when I copied my catalog over to the new drive and opened it, all my files as viewed in Lightroom had a distinctly "yellow" tinge, as compared to their exported JPEG brethren (as viewed in Windows Explorer thumbnail view). I realized, aha, I haven't set up color management on the new system yet, so this is to be expected. Lightroom internally uses a different color space than XP, so without some color management they won't match.
Well, after going around and around setting up monitor profiles and so forth, I was getting nowhere. Nothing was changing the appearance of the yellowish images in Lightroom!
Abandoning the effort for the time being, I switched to other tasks, and imported an old catalog to see if I wanted any of the old work before I deleted it. Then i did a double take... my color problem was fixed! Could color profile info be stored with catalogs? Surely not.
So I started experimenting. Removed all monitor profiles. No change. Switched back to the newer catalog. The colors changed. Put the monitor profile back. No change. Restart Lightroom. No change. Click load catalog, and then pick the same catalog I'm on. No change. Load the old catalog, the colors changed. After several rounds of experimentation, I am now sure of the veracity of this new discovery.
Here is the moral of this story, in two bullets:
(1) Some color management changes in Windows XP are only apparent in Lightroom when you load a catalog. Even restarting Lightroom, or restarting Windows isn't enough. Only loading a catalog makes the changes show up.
(2) You can't simply reload the catalog you are on. You have to load a different catalog, so Lightroom offers to Relaunch, in order to get the changes.
I hope this helps someone.
Vaughn
http://vaughnsphotoart.com

>I recently built a new computer, and when I copied my catalog over to the new drive and opened it, all my files as viewed in Lightroom had a distinctly "yellow" tinge, as compared to their exported JPEG brethren (as viewed in Windows Explorer thumbnail view). I realized, aha, I haven't set up color management on the new system yet, so this is to be expected. Lightroom internally uses a different color space than XP, so without some color management they won't match.
Since Windows Explorer is not managed, they will NEVER match, even if you use sRGB in your exported jpegs as you should. This is even true if you calibrate your monitor. You can only get a complete match when your monitor's primaries correspond precisely to sRGB, which basically never happens. In unmanaged apps, calibration only impacts the contrast (i.e. gamma and blackpoint) of the monitor. This is why the use of managed apps is so important.
>So I started experimenting. Removed all monitor profiles. No change. Switched back to the newer catalog. The colors changed. Put the monitor profile back. No change. Restart Lightroom. No change. Click load catalog, and then pick the same catalog I'm on. No change. Load the old catalog, the colors changed. After several rounds of experimentation, I am now sure of the veracity of this new discovery.
This is weird. Lightroom for me always picks up on a new monitor profile after a restart. I don't need to load a different catalog. Definitely not normal and unexpected behavior.
>How could a monitor profile do this? Monitor profiles effect the image as it's sent to the monitor, so how could LR even "know" what monitor profile is selected? This still isn't making sense to me.
Actually it does have to know. The way color management is implemented on windows (and Mac OS too), is that apps are responsible for doing the translation to the monitor profile. The OS just tells the app about the monitor profile and the app can deal with it as it pleases. This way the app can either use a system library such as ColorSync or the windows equivalent, or its own profile conversion code such as all Adobe Apps do. This is why unmanaged apps are not suddenly magically corrected. The only thing that gets corrected for unmanaged apps is the grey response because this is handled by a LUT (lookup table) in the videocard.

Color management through Lightroom

I'm using Lightroom and getting poor results from my new iP8720 printer. How do I turn off color management in the printer?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

KISS
EOS 1Ds Mk III, EOS 1D Mk IV EF 50mm f1.2 L, EF 24-70mm f2.8 L,
EF 70-200mm f2.8 L IS II, Sigma 120-300mm f2.8 EX APO
Photoshop CS6, ACR 9, Lightroom 6

Lightroom 3: cannot access color management / print dialog

Whenever I go to print anything in Lightroom 3 (or CS5 for that matter), I cannot access the print / color management settings in the print dialog box. The words are there with black lines through them, with the warning that the bundle doesn't match the architecture - or something like this. I have installed the newest print driver software (Epson 2200, work horse). Help! I have not been able to solve the problem with Adobe either.

After trying to figure this out for weeks, I did find a related post on Lightroom's Facebook page. It is the 64 bit issue. To solve, highlight the application icon, go to "Get Info" dialog box, and click on "open in 32 bit mode". Same applies for CS5. Good Lord, what a hassle.

Color Management With CS2 & Lightroom

I think I have finally figured out how to sync all my color management settings with CS2, Lightroom, my Nikon300, and my jpg viewing software. All are set to color profile sRGB and a picture looks almost exactly the same in every program.
My main use with these programs and the desire for good color is shooting a ton of basketball game pictures and color correcting and painting them in Photoshop.
My question: Is sRGB the best choice color profile, or does anyone have an opinion on an alternative profile.
Thanks for your opinions.

Okay, that's what I'm looking for is an opinion or two. I take these "Photoshopped" files and print 8x10's on my Epson R800 and I'm still fighting a little with what's on my screen versus what prints. I know that's another whole issue, but I just wanted to feel I was at least on the right track with the color management and color profile choices.

Is Lightroom 2.2 color managed? How to soft proof?

I was just told that LR 2.2 is not color managed and softproofing is not possible... is this true?
I also have PS CS4... What is the best way to use LR 2.2 for you image editing in a color managed workflow if you also want to Soft proof before printing when you also have PS CS4?

It is correct that LR does not have soft proofing. But you don't have to print from PS to use soft proofing.
For color images, when I've finished with Develop in LR, I then edit in PS and do the soft proofing there. I have recorded some actions (two per paper type - one for each rendering intent - relative and perceptual) which I then apply as appropriate. The actions apply two adjustment layers - a curve and a hue/sat (to do a saturation bump - not necessary for all papers). I then tweak if necessary, flatten the layers and save the result.
I then print the PS edited file in LR. In my case I also rename the file to indicate the paper and rendering intent, plus I keyword it accordingly.
It's a pain but works very well. By printing in LR you can take advantage of the built-in output sharpening, and it's generally more convenient to set up - at least for me.
I have an Epson 2880 - when printing Black and White I use Eric Chan's profiles for the 3800 ABW mode - they seem to work fine for the 2880 - at least for me - I get results that match what I see on screen. For B&W I do not need to use PS at all - I just print directly from LR - no need to soft proof.
Selby

Color Management Confusion-Photoshop and monitors

Ok, so I am asking this question because I am literally at my wits end with this color management stuff. I have become so confused in the past few days that I can’t even think straight. Anyway, I am hoping you all can help me “understand” how it all work. Let me start with some background information (since I know it will probably be asked)
am a photographer, I utilize Lightroom 4 and CS3 (I know its old but I am planning on getting CS6 soon).
put my pictures on the web that I will assume will be viewed on multiple different browsers.
also will be sending my pictures to print at mpix or whcc. I may decide to print my own but haven’t really made that determination at this point.
have a mac book pro that I work from.
Ok, so I need to get a monitor to work with but I am unsure if I should just buy the thunderbolt mac monitor or get a wide gamut monitor. I have heard so many people say that the wide gamut monitors just messed them up. Also, I am bit confused on the nature of monitor profiles and how they work with photoshop and lightroom. I would assume the monitor applies a profile at all times? I also don’t understand the existence of the prophoto and wide gamut profiles for the mac monitors… they clearly are not wide-gamut monitors, so how do these profiles exist for them, and why would they be useful (if you set the profile to prophoto for example, it is all washed out as expected). Are these profiles “assigning” a profile to the color? I am assuming so because if they were converting them to just a standard rgb then you wouldn’t have the faded colors (correct?).
I just am so nervous that I am going to create something that looks great in Lightroom or Photoshop but that looks awful on the browser, or worse, on a different monitor (standard monitor) and I would have no idea that it looked bad. Or, if I send something to a printer only to get a mess back.
Also, please let me know if I correct in this. If I am in photoshop and I have an untagged image (send via a friend), and lets just say it is really a prophoto image (although my friend didn’t tell me) and I say to assign the prophoto profile (upon import to photoshop). If that truly is the correct profile, the image should look correct. Now consider two scenarios from there: 1) I embed that profile in the image, if I upload that to the web (I know to be cautious, you should always use srgb for web), if the person has a color managed browser, the image would properly appear, because the browser would recognize the profile (in this case “prophoto”) and convert it to whatever it needed to be. But, if it was not a color managed browser, I run the risk that the web browser will just assign a profile, which will wash the photo out most likely, correct? Ok… and scenario 2) after I get the image from my friend and assign the prophoto profile (since that is the correct profile the image was actually created in, although it was untagged when it was sent to me), the image will look correct… BUT, is photoshop displaying the prophoto profile, or is it converting to RGB for my viewing, or is my monitor converting it to rgb for my viewing? I guess I just don’t understand how the monitor fits into all of this. You HAVE to use your monitor to see your images, and since most monitors (including my current one are standard gamut) it would make sense that you actually can’t see anything in the prophoto profile, and you are truly looking at an srgb profile since that is all your monitor can display.
Oh ya, and what benefit is the color match rgb? It seems everyone speaks of the srgb, prophoto, and argb.. but never some of the others.. so maybe I am just lost. I would even appreciate a link to some tutorials if you think those would be helpful.
I am seriously confused.. I would really appreciate the help.

I am not surprised you are confused about colour management because its a confusing subject. Luckily you own a Mac so you can get to grips with what the problems that colour management solves using the "colorSync Utility" and you will find this in Applications >> Utilities >> colorSync Utility. If you own a windows computer then I am sorry but you will be out of luck here and you should know better when you buy your next computer!! I am not sure why Apple gave us this application but it is really useful and all will help you understand Color Management.
1. Launch Applications >> Utilities >> ColorSync Utility.
2. You will see a list of "Installed ColorSync Profiles". Choose Adobe RGB 1998 which I hope you have chosen in you camera preferences.
3.You will see a 3D representation of the Adobe 1998 Colour space. This represents all the colors this colour space will hold.
4. Top left hand corner you will see a little arrow pointing down next to "Lab Plot". Click on this and a drop down menu will appear.
Choose "Hold For Comparison"
5. Now somewhere in the "Installed ColorSync Profiles" list you will find the profile for you monitor. Choose this.
6. You will now see a new colour space inside the Adobe 1998 Colour space. If you have a cheap monitor the colour space will be small
inside the Adobe 1998 profile. This means that you monitor cannot show you all the colors that are missing.
7. Now choose a printer profile say, if you use them a profile for an Epson paper or any printer profile you have and you will see another profile in the Adobe 1998 box which shows you the only colors that your printer can print. If you like choose your monitor profile then hold for comparison then the printer profile and it will clearly show the mis match between you monitor and printer.
8. Now choose SRGB and this will show you what colors a person using an average Windows monitor can see, poor people.
So this is the problem, all devises can reproduce only a certain range of colors. The adobe 1998 profile does not show all the colors our eyes can see " choose Generic Lab" profile, then "hold for comparison" then Adobe 1998 and you will see Adobe 1998 is a small profile but is a good average of our collective colour vision.
So how to solve all these missing colour problems. Well if you think of each devise, including you camera as speaking a different language from you monitor and printer then it is easy to understand that you need some sort of translator so that they all know exactly what colour is being talked bout pixel by pixel in an image. This is held in the ICC profile, but an ICC profile has o do more than this.
Say you camera can produce a specific red we will call for demo purposes "001" and your monitor cannot produce it, how do you solve this? Well it is very easy to fool our eyes. Our eyes work by comparison so if the profile maps red "001 to the nearest red that the monitor can show and then proportionally remaps all other reds to fit within the reds the monitor can show us then we actually think we are seeing a full range of reds. The problem comes if we use the wrong profile for this. The red 001 could be re mapped anywhere and could be outside what the monitor can show. Say that happens but the printer can reproduce that red 001. We would see an image on the monitor with not many reds and when we printed it we would be shocked to find reds on the print. Worst, we would see an image on the monitor without reds and would correct for this and end up with a print with heavy reds and would not be able to work out why.
So to solve this we should:
1. use the correct camera profile when we are opening "Raw" files.
2. Make sure you have the correct monitor ICC profile selected in "System Preferences" >> Displays.
3. In photoshop we should make sure that the " Edit >> colour settings " are set to Adobe 1998 for RGB.
4. If you are going to print you own photo in Photoshop go to "View >> Proof Setup >> Custom" and a box will
open. Choose the profile of your printer and paper and choose "Perceptual" for rendering intent and then " OK". If you cannot find
a profile for you printer and paper go to the printer of paper manufactures web site and download the profiles and instal
them.
5. You can now adjust the colors and contrast and photoshop will simulate how the output devise will deal with this. If you
are using an outside printing house, they will supply you with their ICC profile to download so just follow the same procedure and
choose their ICC profile and and do you colour correction.
If you have a cheap monitor you will still not get a 100% result but you will get closer. You really need a monitor that you can calibrate
regularly because generic ICC profiles are just that. They are made from the results of many monitors and so are 90% or worse accurate.
If you want to see a flag ship monitor at work go to http://www.eizo.com/global/support/db/products/software/CG223W#tab02 and go
to the bottom of the page and download the Eizo Coloredge CG223W monitor profile, instal it on your mac then open then ope
Launch Applications >> Utilities >> ColorSync Utility choose Adobe 1998 the hold and compare it with the Eizo Coloredge CG223W
profile. This is not the top of the range Eizo monitors that we use but you will see that this monitor will show most of the missing colour you monitor does not. This is actually a good tip if you are buying a monitor. Download the monitors profile and see how good it really is.
The weak link still is printing. The colors you see in RGB on a back lit RGB screen are very hard to reproduce by CYMK inks on paper. Here you really should have a profile made for your printer and chosen paper. If you don't want the expense of buying a calibrator and doing it yourself, there are on line services that will do this for you.
One final point you must remember. If you are using soft proofing in Photoshop ( "View >> Proof Setup >> Custom" as explained above), when you print you MUST choose in "Colour Handling" "Photoshop Manages Colour" and in the next step when the printing box appears
you will see a drop down box with "Layout" in it. Click on this and choose "Colour Management and choose "Off No Colour Management". If you do not do this Photoshop will manage the colour then the printer will do it again and the print will be a disaster.
This is a starting point really. Colour management is difficult but just try to remember that you need a translator between each step in the process to make it work so you have to make sure the correct profiles are being used by you camera, the program you use for opening the Raw photo files (Please don't use jpegs straight from the camera, but thats another subject), the correct monitor profile and output profile. If you don't check these it is like chinese whispers and your picture will be printed in Double Dutch!!.
Hope that helps. I am on location In Italy for a couple of months so will be unlikely to be able to reply to any questions for a while. Will try to check back and see how you are getting on. Drop me a line at [email protected] if you have any questions. Good luck.
Paul Williams

- Lightroom Color Management Hints & Tips -

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