sRGB or AdobeRGB Colour Space?

Hello group.

If I wanted to just print photo's, I.E. Not commercial use, is it better to
use sRGB or AdobeRGB colour space?

Looking around the internet, it seems like AdobeRGB has a wider spectrum,
but apparently most labs are not capable of printing with a colour space of
greater than sRGB.

 

Like you state it depsnds on the lab, mine when I send files
for Lambda prints has informed me they get better results from
tagged Adobe 1998 files. Now when I send files for their other printers
they are untagged. One thing I try to always do is provide either an
optical reference or an inkjet reference depending on what I am doing
the print for (Retouching, etc).

AdobeRGB does have a wider gamut as others have stated, so you could
tag the files initially as AdobeRGB and then resave them when needed with
whatever profile you need.
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Here in the colonies this works for me:
For color management purposes consistency probably matters more than the
differences in color gamut between sRGB or AdobeRGB, presuming an inkjet
print is your ultimate purpose.
If you are using color management and stick to one space you will hopefully
get accustomed to the color gamut translations between image, monitor and
printer color spaces and be able to get more predictable printing results.
Monitor calibration is a vital part of the process, however, so that the
software has known reference points for translating between monitor, image
and printer color spaces.
If your digital camera only saves in sRBG, as most do, then it will make no
difference if you translate to Adobe RGB in Photoshop and work in that color
space forever after as AdobeRGB is a bigger color space.
If you take an image created in AdobeRGB in a camera or scanner and
translate into sRGB you can lose color information because sRGB is a smaller
color space. So if your camera or scanner creates images in AdobeRGB it is
best to keep the image in that color space even if you may never be able to
perceive that loss of color information in what you see on the monitor or in
your print.
Neither sRGB or AdobeRGB can be entirely reproduced by inkjet printers
anyway and software is going to perform a brute translation of your image to
the printer's color space when you make a print.
Consistent color management really does not let you control the hit that the
printer driver makes on your image but it significantly softens the blow.
Now, the real question is: if 24 bit AdobeRGB is already a wider color space
than inkjet printers can reproduce why are many photographers obsessed with
48 bit color?

 

You generally can't put a space as wide as Adobe RGB on paper. There
can still be a point in using it for editing -- it gives *you* rather
than the color management software control over what is done with
out-of-gamut (in sRGB) colors in the original scene. So a sensible
workflow could be to capture in Adobe RGB, edit in Adobe RGB, but edit
down to something that fits in sRGB, and pass the image to the lab in
sRGB (which, as you say, most-all of them want).

 

Probably because image editing in 48 bit keeps things a little sharper for
longer than editing in 24 bit

Aerticus

- snipped -

 

48 bit vs. 24 bit has nothing to do with 'Sharpness' It is the amount of
tones you have available. Working in 48 bit gives you greater control of the
tonal range when making adjustment in curves, or levels. Look up the
difference in what a camera sensor records in Raw vs. JPEG.