If your monitor is calibrated and profiled, you can see an accurate view of what you will get on paper or in a JPEG converted from raw. The conversion from a wide gamut color space like ProPhoto RGB to a smaller color space compresses saturation and can cause annoying color shifts. The conversion from the camera bit depth to any smaller bit depth can, potentially, (usually does!) lose something. The conversion from the camera color space to any other space can, potentially, (usually does!) lose something. You are reducing the full range of tones in the raw file to something you can see on a monitor or print on paper. The idea is to rein in the outlying information so you can see it. The controls in the conversion software you use allow shadow recovery, highlight recovery, exposure adjustment, white point set, black point set, color temperature and hue adjustment, and many other subtle adjustments. Processing in a wide gamut color space in 16 bits simply allows ALL recorded information to be considered in what to "stuff into" the sRGB color space with 8 bits. Don't we loose anything because the original was a RAW? What happens when we convert a file with 12 or 16 bits to 8? What happens when we have a wide color space and convert it to a much smaller one? Don't we loose something? These are questions that NOBODY has answered for me and I have been to many workshops and discussions concerning both files. What I do not read very often is what happens to a wide color space and a RAW file when we have to sooner or later convert it to JPEG.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |