So what do you send us?
What do you give your clients ?
We have a list on the wall of all our clients and their preferred colour space so when we run your job it is done in the space allocated to your name. As we can run both ADOBE and sRGB here this is not a problem, we just need to know how you work your files originally.
The ADOBE98 will give you a wider colour gamut but its important to remember that again – This depends on your process. For example if you process all your files as sRGB then convert them to ADOBE98 at the end - this process will be pointless.
If you are a photographer who deals primarily with families and deliver digital files then you need to ask yourself . “What will they be doing with these?“ They will be putting them online – facebook etc , and if they get them printed chances are it will be at a big chain store like HN. Both of these applications require an sRGB file for the best output. So if this is you then process and deliver as an sRGB file.
Something to consider as a photographer outputting and archiving sRGB as a best option for your clients. If you like to enter awards with physical prints, such as those run by the AIPP, you are going to get much more from the printing process with an ADOBE98 file. Again, do not pull your client file and convert to ADOBE98 for printing as this is pointless - either start your processing again from the RAW with the fine art print in mind, have archived an ADOBE98 set of images before creating a duplicate copy to deliver to your client in sRGB, or finally just send your sRGB file finding peace with the fact it is not the best option for fine art printing.
Going back to client delivery, the worst possible result is to deliver your client files in Prophoto and for them to have these printed on an sRGB machine. All of the information which is “out of gamut “ …which will be ALOT , is squished into the edge of the sRGB space – especially in the greens. This will be far from a desirable outcome and you wont even know that’s what your image looks like in their home. They will end up with a print that looks nothing like the image on screen or that you intended.
If you process using Adobe Lightroom then bear this in mind because the default is automatically set to Prophoto when exporting files.
We hope that this has cleared up the differences between colour space options and highlights this main takeaway - it is important to process for the intended output.
Have a great week! Tristam