Lara Solanki...another place for photos

This is not an informative post for someone who wants technical details. This is for someone who's just like me who wants straight forward examples of how things work and why I should choose one thing over the other without having to sit for hours trying to wrap our mind around things like:

"Profiles describe the color attributes of a particular device or viewing requirement by defining a mapping between the device source or target color space and a profile connection space (PCS). This PCS is either CIELAB (L*a*b*) or CIEXYZ. Mappings may be specified using tables, to which interpolation is applied, or through a series of parameters for transformations." wikipedia

If you're more "left brained"/technically minded, you probably do understand the above but you're probably really bad at multitasking... (heh).

So this is my first informative post I've been inspired to create because I made a major mistake when I worked on some photos. And this subject has always confused me and despite going to workshops and researching on the internet, it had always remained unclear to me on WHICH PROFILE TO USE until I made the mistake several times (which I believe is the only way most of us learn anyway).

So starting off- most DSLR cameras have two profiles you can choose from:

sRGB
or
AdobeRGB

Even without fully understanding the technicalities of what made each profile different, I always shot with AdobeRGB because I read that AdobeRGB had a wider color gamut than sRGB- meaning, it encompasses more colors. So why not have MORE?!

Then I read that ProPhoto is another color profile that you can assign to your images once you're in Lightroom or Photoshop. I even got swayed by LR's own recommendation:

Then there's images that show how ProPhoto encompasses even MORE colors than AdobeRGB, so for the longest time I've been assigning ProPhoto to my images and they've just always looked awesome- in Lightroom and Photoshop. But I could never figure out why they looked so different once they were exported and displayed elsewhere-because the majority of the time, I'm sharing my images on the web. And I seriously couldn't find my answer on the internet until I understood WHY I needed to ask the question of what I'm doing wrong. So what I'm writing about has already been answered. I'm not saying anything new. Just putting this info out there. again.

Why color profiles are important:

The image I wanted to display had a ProPhoto color profile assigned to it. I call this a mistake because I did realize and learn awhile ago about color profiling and how I should no longer use ProPhoto based on the type of work that I do (posting on web, some printing). But for whatever reason, ProPhoto became assigned to it. My lesson has officially been learned and now I will ALWAYS double check on my color profile when I edit in Photoshop.

Above is a photo that should NOT be that dull and greenish. I was so excited while editing in Photoshop at the warmth of colors I had painstakingly tried to achieve and when I uploaded, I was surprised and annoyed and realized that I made an error.

Below is the image look of what I was really going for:

In order to achieve this image to upload like this is that I re-edited the photo with the sRGB color profile. The dull photo I uploaded was edited with the Prophoto profile. I had uploaded that photo through Instagram which made it's own conversion to the sRGB space because it couldn't read the ProPhoto profile. And that's the mistake.
I actually had to re-edit this image from scratch because after I edited the first one and then converted the image from ProPhoto to sRGB (within Photoshop), the damage was already done. It was just easier to edit from the beginning than to fix what the conversion did to the image.

The explanation:

To make things short and simple (without getting technical)- web browsers can't display images that are assigned to AdobeRGB or ProPhoto profiles- browsers will do their own conversion to sRGB and the image will become washed out and dull. sRGB MUST be assigned beforehand if you want to post on the web and display the colors you intend.

AdobeRGB and ProPhoto are for printing. But even then you will then have to make sure that wherever you print can accept ProPhoto profiles- most professional printers request that you submit images with sRGB or AdobeRGB. ProPhoto is for people who have their own crazy printers or outsourcing to crazy printers that can read ProPhoto profiles. I've yet to find an opportunity or reason to print something that requires a ProPhoto profile.

So what made me choose AdobeRGB for my camera over sRGB as something I thought as being better was me wanting "more". Because I wanted to cover my bases when I do print. And based on my left brain research, that's a valid reasoning. What it comes down to is that you need to be aware of how you are using your images. If you're never going to print EVER, use sRGB and be done with it. If you want to print AND display on web, use AdobeRGB as the setting in your camera but you WILL have to remember to add the step of assigning sRGB to the images before you export for display. If you edit in AdobeRGB and then export asking Lightroom or Photoshop to convert to sRGB, they do a much better job converting than a web browser does on its own. Photoshop also has the "Save for Web" which is another way to ensure proper conversion from AdobeRGB to sRGB.

So one question may be: Why use AdobeRGB at all if both web and printers do well with accepting sRGB?

Answer: You don't have to use AdobeRGB....BUT I like knowing that I'm still capturing a little extra in CASE I want to print something. I'm well aware that a reasoning like that doesn't fly with a lot of left brained (ahem, male) perspectives but who cares. I apparently shouldn't even be using the terms left brain and right brain. Left brain vs Right brain debunked

So maybe an easy way to remind yourself is this:

sRGB- s can stand for simple (simple upload to web)
AdobeRGB- Adobe can remind you that you DO want to do some retouching in Adobe Photoshop before you send to print.

Or you can come up with another association that works for you :p

Hope this helps whoever needed information in this form. I do recommend doing more research on your own but this is the conclusion that I came up with after trying to figure this thing out.