[argyllcms] Re: Beta RGB As a Color Workspace

  • From: Ben Goren <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: argyllcms@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 20:58:28 -0700

On Jul 19, 2014, at 2:34 AM, Chris Lilley <chris@xxxxxx> wrote:

> After the first mapping, then keeping stuff in a wide space is
> certainly a benefit.

I don't see how this can be the case.

Presumably, when you're doing any sort of post-processing on an image, you know 
what you're going to be outputting that image to -- and, in practical terms, 
it's going to be a _very_ short list: your own display, one or two printers, 
and sRGB (for the Web) at the absolute most. Except in some extremely unusual 
circumstances, none of those devices has a gamut (significantly) larger than 
BetaRGB.

So, let's say you've taken some images of some maximally saturated colors -- 
say, the spectrum reflected off a CD. You might be thinking, "Gee, gotta 
preserve all that color." For what? You're not going to be able to see it, not 
even on your wide gamut monitor and _certainly_ not on your printer. Do you 
really want to be doing all your edits on your monitor to colors it's not even 
showing you? Maybe you wanted this image to have lots of "punch," and so you 
bump up the saturation...to what effect? The colors are _already_ maximally 
saturated, by definition. Maybe you're thinking you want to preserve 
detail...but most of the detail is in the value, not the saturation.

Much better to get it directly into your working space -- and that space should 
ideally be a good match for all your output devices. That way, you can see the 
actual colors represented in the file displayed on your monitor, and then you 
can make an intelligent decision that, yes, this is already as saturated as 
it's going to get.

Unless you're doing really radical edits after RAW conversion, you don't have 
to worry about posterization or noise or the like -- and, if you _are_ doing 
those sort of radical edits, better to do them with the RAW converter and 
re-import the image.

And if you're worrying about future-proofing the work for a time when we have 
multi-spectral displays or what-not...well, that's why you keep the RAW files, 
right? Because I can guarantee you, whatever edits you _think_ you've made to 
those out-of-monitor-gamut images, they're not what you _actually_ did, so 
you're going to have to re-visit all those files regardless. At least if you 
did your work on in-gamut images, they'll still look the way they originally 
did on your old-n-busted monitor.

Cheers,

b&

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