Potential issue with color management and ProPhoto RGB

[jl_678]

Hi,

I am trying to get my arms around a color management issue which I think is a reflection of my lack of understanding. Note that I am using the latest version of PL. I am hoping to get guidance from the experts here. Here is what happens:

1. I am using Lightroom 4.1 and it is set to output images in ProPhoto color
2. I open a16-bit TIFF image exported by LR in PL and everything looks good and I see that it shows "ProPhoto" in attributes
3. I edit the image and export it to JPEG after flattening layers and reducing depth to 8-bit. The result is a horribly mis-colored picture with a terrible greenish tint when opened in a web browser or traditional image viewer.

Reopening the image in 3 using PL and GIMP shows the correct image. Additionally, if I turn off local color management in PL, it shows the same horrible greenish tint in both the original TIF and the JPEG. If I open the original TIFF in GIMP, it looks fine and it exports normally into a JPEG.

After much trial and error, I found that the issue is due to the ProPhoto color management and if I set LR to export into sRGB, everything works as expected with PL. (LR recommends ProPhoto color management due to its broad range of color tones.)

Can someone please explain to me what is going on here and how to address it? Ideally, I would want to export from LR in ProPhoto and then edit in the same format and then export the completed image to JPEG with a color profile that would work with non-image editing programs. However, as described above, exporting a ProPhoto TIFF seems to result in a horribly miscolored JPEG. Is there something I am doing wrong? Is this a bug>

Thank you,

JL

[bkh]

1. I am using Lightroom 4.1 and it is set to output images in ProPhoto color
2. I open a16-bit TIFF image exported by LR in PL and everything looks good and I see that it shows "ProPhoto" in attributes
3. I edit the image and export it to JPEG after flattening layers and reducing depth to 8-bit. The result is a horribly mis-colored picture with a terrible greenish tint when opened in a web browser or traditional image viewer.

Very common problem. If you save a JPEG, it's still in the ProPhoto colour space (and has an appropriate colour profile). If you open this image in an application using colour management, the colours get translated to the right monitor colours, and all is well. However, if you open your image in a program which doesn't do colour management, the colours are passed to the monitor "as is", and things usually look horrible.

To avoid this, use "Web export" in PL and tick "embed sRGB profile". This will convert a copy of the image to the sRGB colour space. Since sRGB is reasonably close to the average monitor colour profile, the image should look acceptable even if there is no colour management. The embedded sRGB colour profile ensures that the image will show correct colour (esp. on wide gamut monitors) if colour management is active.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[jl_678]

Burkhard,

That works perfectly!

Thank you,

JL