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Affinity Photo color management when processing RAW files


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I don't know much about color management, so I always find photo colors are not accurate when processing them.

My monitor is not wide-gamut. Colorspace of my camera RAW file can be set to sRGB or Adobe RGB. Which one should I choose? Photos are mainly used for web, but I occasionally pick some of them for printing.

 1. When the raw file is sRGB, how should I set the default value of color option in Affinity Photo, and the exporting option when exporting a jpg for web, or exporting other format for printing?

 2. When the raw file is Adobe RGB, then how should I set them?

Thank you.

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RAW files don't contain or transport any colorspace. - So your cam colorsettings only affect the JPG bitmap image generation here, either using sRGB or Adobe RGB for them then. Which to use depends on the way you want to tweak images afterwards, Adobe RGB offers a slightly wider gamut (more possible supporting colors) than sRGB, but the later (sRGB) is the common defacto standard for common screen devices and the web.

1. + 2.  As said the RAW file doesn't have a color space, instead the developed bitmap image out of the RAW file will mostly have an associated colorspace. The default is sRGB here, though you can use and switch over to Adobe RGB for image manipulations. - For exporting in order to share via the web etc. sRGB would be the way to go.

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2 hours ago, SeanZ said:

I don't know much about color management, so I always find photo colors are not accurate when processing them.

My monitor is not wide-gamut. Colorspace of my camera RAW file can be set to sRGB or Adobe RGB. Which one should I choose? Photos are mainly used for web, but I occasionally pick some of them for printing.

 1. When the raw file is sRGB, how should I set the default value of color option in Affinity Photo, and the exporting option when exporting a jpg for web, or exporting other format for printing?

 2. When the raw file is Adobe RGB, then how should I set them?

Thank you.

Hi Sean, best advice is not to touch the default colour settings in Preferences: leave the RGB/RGB32 colour profiles set to sRGB.

RAW files are not mapped to sRGB/Adobe RGB etc, the camera setting is used for the in-camera JPEG and may also be used to dictate the initial output profile with RAW development software.

After demosaicing, the colours are translated from the camera's colour space to a working space, then mapped to the output colour space which you get to choose. By default this is sRGB. If you wish to use a wider profile, check the Profiles option in the Develop Persona and choose an option from the dropdown. If you want to edit in ProPhoto, you can pick ROMM RGB which is the equivalent that ships with the Affinity apps.

2 hours ago, SeanZ said:

1. When the raw file is sRGB, how should I set the default value of color option in Affinity Photo, and the exporting option when exporting a jpg for web, or exporting other format for printing?

As mentioned above, the easiest option is to keep everything as sRGB. If you choose to work in a wider profile like Adobe RGB or ROMM RGB and you export to JPEG/TIFF etc you will generally want to convert to sRGB during export because other apps/web browsers/image hosts may not be colour space aware or colour managed. To do this, click More on the export dialog, and from the ICC profile dropdown choose sRGB IEC61966-2.1

There is a good argument for using a wider colour space if you tend to print your work, but you also need to be able to see these colours on your screen—do you know what coverage your monitor has of Adobe RGB/ProPhoto RGB, i.e. have you profiled it? If not, the safest tactic is simply to stick to sRGB again.

Hope that helps!

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1 hour ago, James Ritson said:

Hi Sean, best advice is not to touch the default colour settings in Preferences: leave the RGB/RGB32 colour profiles set to sRGB.

RAW files are not mapped to sRGB/Adobe RGB etc, the camera setting is used for the in-camera JPEG and may also be used to dictate the initial output profile with RAW development software.

After demosaicing, the colours are translated from the camera's colour space to a working space, then mapped to the output colour space which you get to choose. By default this is sRGB. If you wish to use a wider profile, check the Profiles option in the Develop Persona and choose an option from the dropdown. If you want to edit in ProPhoto, you can pick ROMM RGB which is the equivalent that ships with the Affinity apps.

As mentioned above, the easiest option is to keep everything as sRGB. If you choose to work in a wider profile like Adobe RGB or ROMM RGB and you export to JPEG/TIFF etc you will generally want to convert to sRGB during export because other apps/web browsers/image hosts may not be colour space aware or colour managed. To do this, click More on the export dialog, and from the ICC profile dropdown choose sRGB IEC61966-2.1

There is a good argument for using a wider colour space if you tend to print your work, but you also need to be able to see these colours on your screen—do you know what coverage your monitor has of Adobe RGB/ProPhoto RGB, i.e. have you profiled it? If not, the safest tactic is simply to stick to sRGB again.

Hope that helps!

It helps a lot. Especially about how to choose the color space when the photos are used for printing, it completely relieves my doubts and is really very helpful.  Thank you.

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1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

RAW files don't contain or transport any colorspace. - So your cam colorsettings only affect the JPG bitmap image generation here, either using sRGB or Adobe RGB for them then. Which to use depends on the way you want to tweak images afterwards, Adobe RGB offers a slightly wider gamut (more possible supporting colors) than sRGB, but the later (sRGB) is the common defacto standard for common screen devices and the web.

1. + 2.  As said the RAW file doesn't have a color space, instead the developed bitmap image out of the RAW file will mostly have an associated colorspace. The default is sRGB here, though you can use and switch over to Adobe RGB for image manipulations. - For exporting in order to share via the web etc. sRGB would be the way to go.

I got it. Thank you. 

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