Colour Calibration *WORKSHOP*

Certainly not the easiest of things is understanding about colour space in regards to digital aspects of photography, in fact after today's lecture with Mr Farrington it made me realise just how important 'algebra' actually is in being able to explain the things that most of us throughout our life times will never grasp!

So here is what I believe to be true in what I now know in regards to Colour Space although please bear in mind this will be a very brief explanation as the depth of being able to understand everything in regards to this one subject I feel you'd have to be a specialised expect!

Gamut Diagram - A gamut is the colour field which can be created by a certain digital system, such as DSLRs, scanners and printers.

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.firefly-editions.com/firefly/images/gamuts.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.firefly-editions.com/firefly/ffScanningServices.shtml&usg=__oxiZa38mdz2xL-GDYQzzzCUD-Fw=&h=331&w=400&sz=40&hl=en&start=18&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=qvmO1sXmhGBkqM:&tbnh=103&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgamut%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1

There are three types of colour space formats which are:

1. sRGB (This colour space type should be used when uploading photographs to the web)
2. Adobe RGB
3. Prophoto RGB (This colour space type should be used for ultimate printing)

To understand the differences in colour quality of the three types of colour spaces in regards to uploading to the web we where asked to photograph our model George setting our DSLRs to capture images in both RAW and J-PEG formats, firstly shooting with colour space sRGB then with colour space Adobe RGB which are the only two options in regards to colour space set ups available on my Canon D50.

We then uploaded our photographs into Lightroom however before importing via 'External Editing' set the settings to view them in both RAW and J-PEG formats.

Then via the use of Adobe Photoshop we saved x2 of the images shot via sRGB as a Prophoto.jpeg and AdobeRGB.jpeg. We saved a further image which was shot via Adobe RGB as a sRGB.jpeg.

Please refer to my flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/43546527@N06/ and view the set titled 'Colour Workshop' to see the differences of colour quality.

I plan to go through this process again after photographing an object showing a vast majority of colours to which the difference will be a little more dramatic, therefore watch this space for further testing within the near future!