sRGB color space from the S2?

[Tom V]

According to what I read on "Mike Chaney's S2 Pro Review" (see the "Reviews" link at this site), the Fuji LE RAW Converter program makes sRGB files. This is good to know, but:

How can I tell that? I don't see that information in any manual. Is there some way someone can delve into a file's guts and see what kind of color space it is? Is there a test one can do to determine the color space?

What should we do with our sRGB images? I have been led to believe that sRGB is, for the most part, the least desireable color space to have images in. I have always been led to believe that AdobeRGB is one of the preferable color spaces. When I brought LE Converted files into my Macintosh's Adobe Photoshop 6.5 program, it told me that the files did not have any color space. [I instructed the program to consider the incoming files as sRGB and convert them to my working space of AdobeRGB, but I am not sure if that is the best way to handle all that.]

Does the S2 process all its images (excluding RAW files) in sRGB?

Does the S2 save its RAW files without any preset color space?

Does converting a supposed sRGB file to AdobeRGB loose data or color fidelity? Is anything saved by just importing LE Converted files as AdobeRGB?

[Dan Z]

Thanks for the tip, Tom. Didnt know that. Does the EX also export RAW files as sRGB. Since its a basic extension of the LE I would assume so. If so then Qimage or another converter would be better, assuming that they dont export as sRGB as well.

Dan Zimmerman

[amazingthailand]

Hi Guys,

Doesn't anyone use RAW File Converter EX? The hyper utility came with my S2.

Anyway, EX asks you which color space you want (AdobeRGB or sRGB). As far as I know the camera does not embed any color space into any files it creates.

On RAW and TIFF files I would not expect any info to be lost in converting color space (actually, I don't think color space info is ever embedded into RAW files, only the files created FROM the RAW). But with JPGs, from what I have read, information could be (is) lost.

Some programs will tell you which color space is embeded into the files. Maybe QImage, but I don't recall off hand. I know Photoshop will ask if the embeded profile is different from the working space.

FYI: Qimage does excellent and painless color printing. It has it's quirks though (still learing to use properly). But over all it is very easy to use. I had been using Photoshop for all my printing needs, but I may end up using Qimage now.

Hope that helps.
Declan

[gillaroo]

In the UK camera, only the LE, light edition, converter is included- The hyper utility is available as an extra- at quite a premium price

[jknights]

I've been doing a test of all the RAF file converters. Bibble, QImage Pro, Fuji Hyper Utility and Fuji RAW FILE CONVERTER LE.

I will be publishing results in new 10 days.

FYI.
Hyper utility outputs 16 bit TIFFs in either sRGB or Adobe 1998 (your choice)

Fuji LE outputs an 8 bit TIFF in sRGB only .

As far as I can tell Bibble and QImage output in 16bit sRGB TIFFs only.

[memobug]

Originally posted by Tom Voegeli
According to what I read on "Mike Chaney's S2 Pro Review" (see the "Reviews" link at this site), the Fuji LE RAW Converter program makes sRGB files. This is good to know, but:

How can I tell that? I don't see that information in any manual. Is there some way someone can delve into a file's guts and see what kind of color space it is? Is there a test one can do to determine the color space?

When I asked Mr Chaney years ago why Qimage didn't mark D1 Jpegs with a color space, his excuse was that no one should be doing any post processing on Jpeg files anyway, because it's a lossy format.

Drop him an email and ask him why and if the answer is the same, maybe tell him he's wrong.

AFAIK, you can't tell the intended colorspace from an unmarked file.

Regards,

Matt

[jknights]

Matt,

I agree with you.

I process my Nefs and now my RAFs to JPG as it saves me space.

However for editing/printing I make a TIFF file as I want top quality. If there are large amount sof editing I then save a PSD or TIFF an keep that way but I could also save a JPG, again to save space.

I cant wait for JPG2000 to come into play on cameras and in Photoshop.

[bjnicholls]

Since sRGB is a small gamut colorspace, you can convert to Adobe RGB without loss. But going the other way, you lose color gamut.

If you don't have the option of a wide gamut space with a raw converter, you don't get the benefit of the high bit image and its superior color and tonal rendering for printing.

sRGB should really only be used for web images.

If you have the full version of Photoshop, you can set up the gamut permissions so that you will be asked what to do with an image not in your RGB colorspace. You can also go into image, mode, convert to profile and you'll see the source space of the image. An asterisk appears next to the display mode if it isn't your default colorspace. I don't know what Elements offers for managing color spaces.

[Super 2]

As I understand it, if you are shooting jpeg you are confined to srgb colour space, if you shoot tiff you are in the adobe 1998 colour space.

I have found that converting jpeg into 1998 adobe works very well, once in that space you can then convert to any colour space/icc profile such as a fuji frontier profile, and see the result of your conversion via softproofing.

I have used this for awhile now and the printing results are fantastic either via the canned fuji profile available from fuji website, or using the epson 7600 canned profile for a your choice of paper type.

One of the tests I did when I had my colour management head on was to print a test chart using various colour spaces, remarkably srgb did actually provide a nice print. You can spend huge amounts of time and effort on this and end up disappearing up your own a...


The best way to go, is to ensure your monitor is profiled, and use the correct profiles for whatever system your outputting to.


Regards

Nick

[cadams]

Could someone clarify for me...Will converting an image captured in sRGB into Adobe RGB restore all the gamut you would have had by saving in Adobe RGB originally? Wouldn't such an image fail to take maximum advantage of Adobe RGB's wider gamut?

Thanks,
Chuck

[ballroom_boy]

Hi there

Please pardon my ignorance :) but could someone explain what "gamut" is? Or if there is a good explanation on the web, can someone post a URL?

Thanks
Roel:)

[cadams]

I believe that "gamut" is a term which describes the range or extent of colors which can be reproduced within a "colorspace" such as Adobe RGB or sRGB.