Is there any way to get Lightroom Classic to display the Color Space of images?

[NormanStormin]

I understand that Lightroom converts images color spaces internally for display into ProPhotoRGB.

I fairly often use Lightroom for viewing and exporting generated images, like scans, photoshop files and so on. 

Sometimes I would like to be able to see what the color space of a image is, to make sure its correct. And sometimes to compare various colour spaces. (not very often, to be sure.)

But I cannot find any way to make LIghtroom display the colour space of the original image. 

I realise I can look in Bridge, but thats flipping to other software that is not displaying images the same way as Lightroom. 

So... Is there anyway of showing the color space of images in Lightroom?

Thanks

[dj_paige]

Adobe has done the hard work behind the scenes to handle colors properly inside the program, so that you the human user don't have to worry about color spaces within the program. The only way I know of to determine how the image would look in other colors spaces is to export the image in whatever color space(s) you want, or to use soft-proofing.

[richardplondon]

The image within Lrc is not "in" any particular colourspace meaningfully, but it may be of interest to inspect the imported file or else to inspect an exported file. These files' 'Details' info can be looked at via the OS file browser, and include what colourspace ('representation', below) the file has been encoded to.

One other indicator may help you from within LrC, so far as camera JPG: by industry standard, the initial character of the picture filename switches to an underscore whenever the camera is set to shoot for AdobeRGB instead of sRGB.

Personally, so far as derived files (PS edits chiefly) I sometimes set 16-bit ProPhoto and other times 8-bit AdobeRGB, depending on the task.Probably file size alone would let me distinguish those two. But I don't know how I would conduct myself any differently within LrC, on having that information. 8-bit or 16-bit is probably more central than colourspace but this is not presented inside the Catalog either.

[D Fosse]

The image within Lrc is not "in" any particular colourspace meaningfully

By @richardplondon

Actually it is: RGB files are in their original color spaces; raw files in linear TRC ProPhoto. But the latter is strictly for internal processing and not really relevant anywhere else. For external use (Export or Edit in) the file is encoded into whatever color space the user chooses.

[richardplondon]

...my weasel word there was "meaningfully" - or if you prefer, "necessarily". For example: there is no option to generate processed output, that maintains each file's original colourspace. We must always impose a choice for that. This might happen to match the input, or not - but either way, it instantiates some output requirements.

[NormanStormin]

Well on Windows at least, I don't get any of that information for PSD files. TIFs it has a lot of it, but it doesn't show the color space. 

I'm really not expecting Windows to be able to parse proprietary Adobe formats, so I'm not expecting any information from PSD. Bridge finds that info for raster files.

But Bridge seems completely incapable of retrieving color space for vector files like Illustrator or PDFs. Despite those files having embedded color spaces, as best as I can tell. For Illustrator files, I found the document properties window that says what color profile is in it.

PDFs its anyones guess what color space its actually using. 

Some of this question came about because I have been trying to generate sRGB PDFs from Illustrator files using AdobeRGB color space. And the PDFs look more saturated than the files in Illustrator, or photoshop.

Anyway, that's nothing to do with Lightroom. I'll go and ask that question in the Acrobat section.

My point is, something is not quite right, so this was just a small part of trying to find out what is going on.

[Abambo]

PDFs its anyones guess what color space its actually using. 

By @NormanStormin

PDF data can be in multiple colour space and colour coding. So that information is attached to the data and not the file. 

[NormanStormin]

That is true. But I would expect the PDF to have an embedded working color space, like Illustrator.

Unless the file is not colour managed, then all the elements need to be converted to the working space of the PDF

[Per Berntsen]

The image within Lrc is not "in" any particular colourspace meaningfully, but it may be of interest to inspect the imported file or else to inspect an exported file. These files' 'Details' info can be looked at via the OS file browser, and include what colourspace ('representation', below) the file has been encoded to.

By @richardplondon

The Windows File explorer can only identify sRGB, any other color space will be reported as "uncalibrated".

The Mac Finder probably does a better job with this.

[richardplondon]

thanks for correction - I have tended to when needed, use a viewing utility instead - such as IrfanView - for this purpose and should have mentioned that. Also I should have checked out Windows Explorer's own capability more thoroughly!

[D Fosse]

First to clear up common misunderstandings about Lightroom Classic and ProPhoto:

• Lightroom does not convert into ProPhoto. All RGB files retain their original color spaces.
• Raw files are processed internally in a custom color space that uses ProPhoto primaries, but a linear tone respone curve. This is not the same as ProPhoto RGB.
• If you "Edit in Photoshop", you choose what standard color space to encode into. This does not have to be ProPhoto RGB just because it happens to be the default.

With that out of the way - no, I'm not aware of any way to get LrC to display the color space of RGB files.

[Conrad_C]

You might look for a non-Adobe plug-in for Lightroom Classic that can display an image’s embedded profile. I don’t know if one does, but there are so many useful plug-ins out there that it might exist.

A more immediate solution would be to right-click the image in Lightroom Classic, choose Show in Explorer to select it on the desktop, and then open File Properties to inspect the color profile. If you get into the habit, that can be a very quick two steps: right-click (to have Lightroom select it on the desktop) and then press Alt-Enter (to pop open Properties).

(For the Mac users reading this, choose Photo > Show in Finder, and in the Finder you would choose File > Get Info. Be sure to look at the Color Profile line, not the Color Space line.)

Advanced users could open the image already selected on the desktop directly into whatever color profile inspection software they have around, such as ColorSync Utility that’s included with every Mac.

[johnrellis]

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Several methods:

1. Make a smart collection for each of the common color profiles (Prophoto RGB, Adobe RGB, sRGB), e.g.

2. Use the Metadata Viewer plugin to view the field ICC_Profile:ProfileDescription.

3. Use the Any Filter plugin to view and filter the profiles for many photos at once:

[NormanStormin]

Thank you for those tools. Having looked at a number of files, its certainly going to be a challenge to try to find all the places that the color profile information may or may not be stored. So far, its DEEPLY inconsistent.

Cheers

[johnrellis]

"Having looked at a number of files, its certainly going to be a challenge to try to find all the places that the color profile information may or may not be stored. So far, its DEEPLY inconsistent."

For the non-raw image formats recognized by LR (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PSD, PSB), the industry standards are consistent and followed by LR:

- If the photo is sRGB or AdobeRGB, the field EXIF:ColorSpace could contain the sole indication that the photo is in sRGB or Adobe RGB.  Usually it's cameras that use just EXIF:ColorSpace, but some apps do too.

- If the photo is in some other color space, EXIF:ColorSpace will be Uncalibrated and the ICC profile will be stored in the ICC_Profile metadata section. The name of the profile is in ICC_Profile:ProfileDescription.  When LR exports an sRGB JPEG, it sets both EXIF:ColorSpace and ICC_Profile (as do many other apps), even though it's sufficient to just use EXIF:ColorSpace in that case.

The two plugin methods I listed above will show you EXIF:ColorSpace and ICC_Profile:ProfileDescription. LR's smart collection criterion Source Color Profile incorporates both EXIF:ColorSpace and ICC_Profile:ProfileDescription.

When you examine one of these formats in Windows File Explorer, it just shows you EXIF:ColorSpace, so photos with an ICCC color profile that isn't sRGB or Adobe RGB will show up as "uncalibrated".

When you examine these formats in Mac Finder Preview with Tools > Show Inspector, the General Info tab's field ColorSync Profile will show the combination of EXIF:ColorSpace and ICC_Profile. It's EXIF tab's ColorSpace field will show EXIF:ColorSpace.

When you examine these formats in Mac Finder, the Preview panel will show the combination of EXIF:ColorSpace and ICC_Profile in the field Color Profile.