It’s been another mad scientist day in the studio and as a warning, this is a very nerdy entry!  Left with no options, I recently upgraded our computer monitor and have been reworking the calibration of our capture-process-output workflow.  No options were left, because my slightly-past-warrantee Apple Cinema Display died, and projects were already piled high on the virtual desk…

Apple, as a brief aside, was terrible.  No customer support.  The best offer I got from the Mac people was a “flat rate repair” for $499…. yikes.  Is our little computer company outgrowing itself?

Also, I can say after much research, it turns out the dated Apple Display has a disappointing gamut by contemporary standards.  The range of colors it’s capable of displaying is pretty limited, at least compared to high-priced competition from a number of companies.  In shopping for a screen appropriate for a professional digital photography studio, Apple very quickly drops out of the race.

In researching better alternatives, I found that professional monitors are like cameras, you can pay as much money as you’d like, and the differences between cheap and exotic can be subtle.  There are significant stats that can very greatly, however, especially gamut.  I chose an HP screen that displays 100% of the AdobeRGB gamut and it is an awesome upgrade from the Apple (and for $300 less).

Most DSLRs are capable of capturing either sRGB or AdobeRGB.  I’ve set all our cameras to AdobeRGB, which is a wider gamut, offering more colors.  sRGB is critically limited in range, but sadly, it’s all we ever see, given that most monitors can’t display many more colors than sRGB and most printers can’t (or don’t) print more than sRGB.

THE FLOW

At some point, in every photographer’s work flow, you have to decide how to best discard excess tonal and color information the camera has captured…  perhaps “compress” sounds better…  Whatever you call it, there are a few options for when to do it:

1. Make “the dump” while capturing the image by setting the camera to sRGB and shooting JPG.  This is not a bad plan for informal shots…. heck, they’re ready for Facebook or Cosco printing right out of camera… but be sure to nail the exposure and white balance.
2. Make “the dump” while processing JPGs by, as one example, exporting 8-bit JGPs from Lightroom in sRGB.  This is how I most often present images to clients and it is the most appropriate workflow for Web-based viewing until more screens, servers, and browsers support a wider gamut.
3. Make “the dump” while prepping an image for printing by converting to an appropriate printer/paper profile and printing through Apple’s 8-bit print driver…

Never satisfied, and a little irked that what appears in camera never actually makes it to a client’s eyes, at least not all of it, I’ve really been working to minimize the dumping.  Here’s what I’ve managed to string together:

• Capture: 14-bit Nikon RAW files
• Processing: 16-bit ProphotoRGB files.  The extra space in the much larger ProPhoto Gamut offers more range for processing and minimizes clipping, like – in a physical workspace – using a big table to assemble a small photo frame.
• Monitor: Calibrated AdobeRGB gamut (for real what-you-see-is-what-you-get in AdobeRGB)…  And, after upgrading from the Apple Screen to a real wide-gamut screen (for $300 less, Apple!) it’s been disconcerting to see how much more color info was lying dormant in my files, clipped out of existence by a limited Gamut.  The revealed colors explain why every once in a while a print would go bonkers…the printer was rendering hidden colors the screen couldn’t show… not great for consistent output!  I’ll be first in line when a monitor that displays ProphotoRGB comes along…
• Web Output: 8-bit JPG in sRGB.  AdobeRGB files look sick and washed out in the virtual sRGB world.  So these dinky files are “locked-in” but they have certainly benefited from latitude in color correction, exposure correction, and tonal range while traveling through the process..  sRGB is the Web’s lowest common denominator, so to speak…
• Print Output: We print in-house using Canon’s relatively new 16-bit print plug in…  On the photo papers we use, the gamut of our Canon iPF printer contains colors even beyond AdobeRGB (in places).  The files, which are still ProphotoRGB, going in, look awesome, and really just like on screen… which is very useful..  (no excuse now for wacky prints).

It’s worth noting that when defining which pixel on screen looks like what dot on paper and the reach of the available printed gamut, a printer doesn’t use ProphotoRGB, AdobeRGB, or sRGB, but uses whatever profile has been selected during the print dialogue.  Many digital artists create profiles for their chosen printer, ink, paper, and print settings, and many simply use pre-made profiles provided by paper and printer companies and experiment to find print settings that match.

A very few high-end printers are designed to profile themselves while others (like our Canon iPF) calibrate themselves to a known color standard using an internal scanner.  I find Canon’s self-calibrating has, for me, made the process of home-building profiles not worth the effort, as the color output from our studio printer is likely very close to the similarly-calibrated iPF Red River paper used to build the profile they offer for download.

IMHO

So a few observations.  First, for the widest color gamut at capture, set your cameras to AdobeRGB and shoot RAW.  Second, to see what you’re getting: calibrate your monitor.  There are a wide range of options for hardware calibrators, many are very affordable.  Third, maybe it’s time to trade in that Cinema Display…

Let’s bring back the Fine Art Print in the digital age.  Photographers sometimes lament the passing of the darkroom, the real hands-on print making.  I’d say the art, science, and craft of photographic print making are alive and well after a brain transplant that took a decade…  The tools for capturing and reproducing color have never been more consistent and interesting.  There is certainly room for improvement as we move forward (ah-hem, Apple)… OK… back to my test printing..