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What is Color Space??

What is Color Space??

Posted by Paolo Capili on 2021-09-13

Understanding Color Space

Color spaces are mathematical models describing the way colors can be represented. The easiest way of visualising them is to think of a box containing all the possible colors that can be produced by mixing the three primary colors of light: red, green and blue. Or in other words, Color space is just a specific range of colors that can be represented in a given photo.

SO… what does it mean and which one should I use as a Photographer??

What does it mean?

There's only 2 choices for most digital cameras in terms of choosing between 2 color space, SRGB and Adobe RGB. Most photographers would only have to choose between the two when they shoot JPEG files only. If they shoot in RAW format(highly recommended, When shot using AdobeRGB) they can interchange between the two formats when they do post processing of their photos.

sRGB VS AdobeRGB

sRGB was created in 1996 by HP and Microsoft for use on monitors, printers and the Internet. It’s the default color space in all digital cameras and scanners as well as photo printing kiosk monitors, and may be the only color space supported by many of these devices.

The sRGB gamut (range of colors that can be reproduced) meets or exceeds the gamut of almost all inkjet printers and computer monitors as well as most TV screens. This makes it the best color space to use for images that will be viewed online or on computer monitors or TV sets, or printed outside the home.

Adobe RGB was developed by Adobe Systems in 1998 to encompass most of the colors achievable on professional color printers. It covers a slightly wider color gamut than sRGB, mainly in the cyan-greens.

To show how much colors a human eye can see vs adobeRGB and sRGB

Which one is right for you?

As a landscape photographer, I personally shoot with my color space set to AdobeRGB as I would have more color gamut available to my image especially when printing pictures. Although when posting on social media, I convert the files to sRGB Color Space so the colors would be more universally pleasing to the eye as sRGB is a commonly used color space as mentioned above.

Paolo
Your Resident Photographer at Broadway Camera

What color space are you using on your camera? Please comment and share your thoughts!!