Destination Gamut Warning considered harmful

[J Isner]

I only consider it harmful to those who misunderstand the nature of the "warning."

When you turn on the Destination Gamut Warning in soft proofing, a red overlay identifies colors that are out-of-gamut for the chosen ICC profile.  Many Lightroom users have been taught that they must do something to bring the colors into the gamut, making the red overlay disappear.   This is a misunderstanding.   The colors have already been brought into gamut by the rendering intent.  If you turn off Destination Gamut Warning and examine the colors underneath, you will see the colors that will be printed if you do nothing.  You should only "do something" about destination gamut warnings if you think you can do better than the rendering intent has already done.   In my experience it is often difficult to do better.  Your changes may eliminate the warnings but make the result worse than if you had done nothing. 

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

I tell people in my classes the same thing. Look at what the image looks like In the soft proof. Does it look like the color is so blown out that there is no detail or structure left in the out-of-gamut area? If not, ignore the warning. Trying to fix it will likely ruin your image. People get way to fixated on the out of gamut warnings. Of course this is just another example of too strong fixation on there being "rules" for editing pictures.

[TheDigitalDog]

The Out Of Gamut Overlay in Photoshop and Lightroom

In this 25 minute video, I'll cover everything you need to know about the Out Of Gamut (OOG) overlay in Photoshop and Lightroom. You'll see why, with a rare exception, you can ignore this very old feature and still deal with out of gamut colors using modern color management tools.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00O-GTDyL0w

High resolution: http://digitaldog.net/files/OOG_Video.mp4

[J Isner]

Excellent video!  I did not realize that the OOG is old and buggy technology that predates rendering intent.

[Ioannis5E6D]

This is really very interesting as it had always troubled me whenever i was getting these blue and red warnings (monitor and destination).

Can be taken with some precaution but its true that sometimes that i tried to eliminate reds, the printed result was either dull or far from the desired outcome.