What Color Space Should I Be Using In 2021?

[RichardSwearinger]

What is the recommendation for color settings in the Adobe Photoshop/Lightroom/Premiere/InDesign universe—both the Color settings panel (⇧⌘K) and the monitor profile? 

I woke up this morning and realized it has been way too long since I set them (like 22 years) and I'm sure we've come a long way since then. 

The last time I checked (in 1998!) the advice was to use one of the North American prepress presets, but that can't still be right, can it? 

My stills work goes on the web and into print; my video goes on the web, broadcast, and very, very occasionally a movie theater.

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

There isn't really a "one size fits all" recipe for color settings. It depends on a lot of factors. The best advice I can give if you don't know, is don't do anything. The default settings are safe. Don't change anything until you know why you want to change it.

The working space doesn't really matter. It's just a fallback default. The embedded document profile should always override it. Just keep policies set to "preserve embedded profiles" and you'll be fine.

The monitor profile is more critical. Ideally you should use a calibrator to make that. Until you get one, just use the system display profile. It will generally work well. In other words...don't do anything.

Photoshop's color management works out of the box. There is no special action required.

For web, convert to sRGB and make sure the profile is embedded. Done. For sending out to print, most printers generally want Adobe RGB, but ask first (or check the requirements). ProPhoto is risky for a number of reasons, stay away from it until you understand all the implications. ProPhoto should never leave your machine under any circumstances.

[michelew83603738]

There is no one setting that is correct, sort of depends on what you are doing. Photoshop's default settings are good, but if you are printing something professionally, they should give you their settings, for example. Is there a reason you are asking? Are you having color problems suddenly? Make sure your monitor is calibrated and that you are color managed across programs. 

[RichardSwearinger]

Great advice. Thanks. 

I ask because I see people are using ACES (Academy Color Encoding Systems) and Rec.2020 as well as ProPhoto, there's also what's called "scene-referred" color editing now. 

[D Fosse]

That's in the film and video world. Traditionally they haven't used any color management at all, and it's great that a new standard, tailored for that environment, seems to gain traction.

For the web/print world, ACES (OCIO) doesn't apply. We alreaydy have icc-based color management, which solves all the problems it's supposed to solve, and there's no need for anything else. It works for us. OCIO works for them. Different worlds, different standards.

Both work on exactly the same principles. The only real difference is in choice of reference color space. For OCIO that is the ACES color spaces, for icc color management it's Lab or CIE XYZ.

[D Fosse]

Oh, since you mention Lightroom, a little heads up. It will send ProPhoto to Photoshop by default. What I said above applies here. IMO this is an extremely unfortunate choice of default, and people get into trouble over this constantly. Here, the default settings are not safe, and you should change it in Lightroom Preferences. It doesn't have to match Photoshop - any profile will be correctly treated in Photoshop - but sRGB or Adobe RGB will be much safer. The profile you choose here will be preserved and used in Photoshop.

[NB, colourmanagement]

Hi Richard, Photoshop's defaults are just that - defaults for newly created documents or when opening images with no embedded profile. If you are converting from RGB to CMYK for print, then please check with  the printer actually doing the job you're working on. Really, a good CMYK default doesn’t exist because it’s effectively a moving target, i.e. different press types and madia (papers) need different ICC profiles - but, many users do manage using a geographically relevant standards based profile*.

*There are 'standards based' CMYK profiles for use these days and they are much better than, say, the old Euroscale or SWOP, as they are actually made from press data. e.g. the European FOGRA based ICC profiles from the ECI and the US GRACoL.

You can read more about that here https://www.colourmanagement.net/advice/prepress/

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
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