He actually says
In any case, it makes a noticeable difference on colour images and gives smoother transitions.
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DxO PL6
- Thread starter Joanna Carter
- Start date
He actually says
In any case, it makes a noticeable difference on colour images and gives smoother transitions.
This is where things get a little foggy for me... I was always led to believe the human vision is unable to see colours beyond AdobeRGB
You and me both
I guess the best way is to show two screenshots of the same (colour) image in PL6.The "legacy" (AdobeRGB) colour space…
The new Wide Gamut colour space…
From what I have been able to gather, the idea with wider colour spaces is not necessarily just the limits, but, also, how many "steps" you have between two limits.
In this particular image, if I start processing in the Wide Gamut space, I can better separate out similar tones of the same colour.
You really need to play to see the differences.
Or we can return to B&W and not worry
Apart from the limitation of the human vision, we also have another bottleneck in the workflow which is the limitation of the monitor.
My iMac is only 97% AdobeRGB so anything beyond that is never going to be seen on screen.
Now for printing, I do accept that with a good ICC Profile, some printers and paper can print colours just outside the AdobeRGB 1998 colour space but no printer to my knowledge can go beyond ProPhoto which begs the question of why they need to have a working space which they claim to be larger than ProPhoto.
I am unable to also establish what Gamma value this "wide space is in" Why the secret?
My iMac is only 97% AdobeRGB so anything beyond that is never going to be seen on screen.
Now for printing, I do accept that with a good ICC Profile, some printers and paper can print colours just outside the AdobeRGB 1998 colour space but no printer to my knowledge can go beyond ProPhoto which begs the question of why they need to have a working space which they claim to be larger than ProPhoto.
I am unable to also establish what Gamma value this "wide space is in" Why the secret?
Once again, you are going beyond anything I have ever worried about in many years of digital processing.
From my memory of PS CS3, I used to set the default profile to ProPhotoRGB for editing and, with a calibrated screen and appropriate paper/ink profiles, I never had any problems with prints matching the screen - which, quite honestly, was all that mattered.
Obviously someone at DxO, with more brain power than you or me, decided this was a "good thing™" and just like PS, you can now choose the working space that you prefer.
All I know is it works for colour images as long as you don't change spaces mid-edit. During the beta test of PL6, a couple of "brainy" folks tried to explain all this colour science stuff but most of us left even more confused than before, but with the common feeling that "it just works™".
As for Gamma, I believe the standard for Macs is 2.2 but there is an adjustment below the Tone Curve if necessary. Once more, I tend to take the view that, as long as what I see on the screen is what comes out on the print, I am a happy bunny.
Getting back to B&W however, choice of colour space becomes a lot less relevant and I can see no perceivable difference to anything once an image is in B&W.
In fact, I never adjust a colour image that I want to convert to B&W until it is already in B&W.
I have just printed an exhibition of some of my B&W Jazz photos and printed them on my Canon Pro-1000 A2 printer, using the Canon B&W mode, on Canson Baryta Photographique II - they came out exactly as I expected, if not better.
Suffice to say, whatever the theoretical numbers say, the results are simply stunning.
Talking of black and white, if the original image is in Gray Gamma 2.2, does it remain in that space or does DXo convert it to RGB
Hmmm. I haven't a clue. It's a long time since I generated any greyscale images. I do have an Epson V700 scanner for LF work but, mostly, even for LF, I have a copy stand setup and use my Nikon D850, in 5x4 mode, which gives me more than enough detail for A0 sized prints without interpolation.
I just converted an old TIFF file to Grey Gamma 2.2 in Affinity Photo to try out.
PhotoLab is a non-destructive editor so, of course, the original file never gets touched, but I could certainly tint the image in PL if I wanted to.
You can always generate an edited greyscale copy by exporting, using a greyscale profile.
I think its marketing spin, to try and imply a differentiation / advantage over LR or others. The truth is its marginally different ( aka not better) and frustratingly moves away from a standardization.
This was my point but you managed to say it better than I could.
We have a good standard to work with and ProPhoto is such a large working space, no device can even touch its boundaries so I fail to see what advantages this new one has to offer.
Since any file opened in an image editor gets translated into the working colour space of the editor (whatever that might be) and then translated from the working colour space when it is shown on screen, printed or exported, I don't see what effect any "standard" would have. There are also licensing costs and restrictions on using certain technologies within an app.
For users of PL, it is an advantage because we only ever had AdobeRGB before. Having beta tested it and used it for six months, I am just content to have a wide gamut working space and I'm really not bothered about the name. I guarantee that the average Joe or Jill wouldn't be able to tell one from the other, as long as it is wide gamut
This is perfectly true but personally, I like to know 2 things when working in an editor whether it be a RAW converter or other.
- The working space
- The Gamma value of that working space
If PL6 documented the Gamma value of this new Wide Colour Space then at least the user could make a judgement call when dealing with gray scale tonality.
Hmmm.
Your experience of printing seems very different to mine. If I can repeat what I said earlier - with a calibrated screen (27" Apple Cinema Display) and a calibrated printer/paper/ink (Canon Pro-1000), in B&W mode, I have never had a problem with mismatch, be that in PS or PL.
I have sent a message to a contact in DxO about the Gamma and will let you know his reply.
Am I right in assuming you use an ICC profile for printing? Do you want to send me a file and a copy of the profile so that I can try exporting to it?
Your experience of printing seems very different to mine. If I can repeat what I said earlier - with a calibrated screen (27" Apple Cinema Display) and a calibrated printer/paper/ink (Canon Pro-1000), in B&W mode, I have never had a problem with mismatch, be that in PS or PL.
I have sent a message to a contact in DxO about the Gamma and will let you know his reply.
Am I right in assuming you use an ICC profile for printing? Do you want to send me a file and a copy of the profile so that I can try exporting to it?
I never use an ICC for printing grayscale, the printer is a greyscale gamma 2.2 printer which is why I send the image to the printer in greyscale gamma 2.2.
If I was to edit in ProPhoto then the image would print darker because of the Gamma difference. This is not an issue so long as I am aware of that when editing in ProPhoto.
Now with the PL6 Wide colour space, not knowing the gamma value could cause issues and one doesn't know what the output will yield so knowing this up-front allows the end user to compensate should they so wish during the editing stage if working in RGB
If I was to edit in ProPhoto then the image would print darker because of the Gamma difference. This is not an issue so long as I am aware of that when editing in ProPhoto.
Now with the PL6 Wide colour space, not knowing the gamma value could cause issues and one doesn't know what the output will yield so knowing this up-front allows the end user to compensate should they so wish during the editing stage if working in RGB
How about you send me an image for editing, along with a copy of what you would normally get, and I will post the result so that we can compare it with what you expect?
Coolio- I’ll check it out- although I will say I can’t see any virtues in 5 over 4 but they have mucked about with the UI in a way I don’t appreciate ( and I told them so)
Perhaps 6 has fixed that
TBH nowadays I use it so rarely it’s probably not worth it to me.
I tried DxO because frankly I find photoshop a chore but didn’t find DxO less so even after giving it a fair go, same affinity photo, and other offerings like RAWPower ( or whatever it’s called) in fact I found their UIs less palatable ( deliberate pun) than Ps.
Since getting properly to grip with LR I find I use it 90% of the time and it does what it does well, not perfectly, but well. DPP ( canons offering) gets more accurate colours but apart from that it’s like driving a tractor compared to LR’s Ford Mondeo
The only time I use Nik is with Ps ( I know it can be used via LR but if converting to Tiff anyway I might as well use Ps)
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Re: colour spaces and different programs
Idont think it matters terribly which wide colour space we use as we probably can’t see the difference visually but there are two things I’d take into consideration: even though I can’t see the differences twixt Adobe RGB and pro photo in any measurable or consistent way that doesn’t mean the virtue of having more headroom is lost as the program or app has more information to crunch which should mean from an editing pov more scope for finer editing and hence a smoother result and better results when converting and, the other thing is we should have consistency because there will always be crossovers between programs used by various users
Idont think it matters terribly which wide colour space we use as we probably can’t see the difference visually but there are two things I’d take into consideration: even though I can’t see the differences twixt Adobe RGB and pro photo in any measurable or consistent way that doesn’t mean the virtue of having more headroom is lost as the program or app has more information to crunch which should mean from an editing pov more scope for finer editing and hence a smoother result and better results when converting and, the other thing is we should have consistency because there will always be crossovers between programs used by various users
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Hi @ian barber I just got a reply from my contact at DxO and he confirms the gamma of the new colour space is 2.2