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Holmes' Color Spaces: Creative Nirvana or hardly worthwile? Who is a user and why?

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Every so often I come across someone who's work impresses me and I find they use Joseph Holmes' RGB Working Spaces and Chroma Variant Sets.

One such photographer is to be found in California and has a passion for landscapes. His name is Douglas Dolder and his site is worth visiting here.

For sure they ability to open up shadowed areas and enrich the chroma is wonderful, but who else uses this routinely in the times of Lightzone, SilkyPix, Lightroom, Aperture and more!

Is this something you would fight for and build your workflow to accomodate or not?

Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
one of lightroom's negatives for me is that i can only use argb space :( whereas aperture allows me the freedom to choose. i still use c1 most of the time but i have been trying the other 2 out seriously. lightroom's inability to use other spaces is a big drawback to me...

Actually the approach I recommend is to use ProPhoto RGB in Lightroom, one of the 3 options you have (the two other are sRGB and Adobe RGB). ProPhoto is the largest color space one can export to in Lightroom, thus the safest since the least likely to clip colors.

I also recommend you turn the clipping warnings on after selecting ProPhoto as it will show you if something is clipped in the highlights or shadows or not. You turn this on by clicking on the small icons at the top left of the histogram palette.

In fact you can use the clipping warning with the two other colorspaces provided in Lightroom, sRGB and Adobe SGB, and see if colors are clipped in either of them. Not all photographs have a wide range of colors. In fact, if you try this approach you will be surprised at how many photographs have all their colors fit into Adobe RGB or even sRGB. Just make sure to turn the clipping warnings on and refresh the screen by choosing a different photograph then returning to the one you were working on. Otherwise the software does not always refresh the screen after a color space change.

It is a common misconception that the clipping warning show just overexposed and underexposed areas. The fact is that they also show clipped areas, meaning areas that fall ouside of the chosen colorspace. The warnings work together with the color space chosen as destination for the conversion. They will show different clipped areas when different color spaces are selected. Capture One, and other raw converters, work the same way.

There are two reasons why an area might exhibit a clipping warning:

1-because it is overexposed or underexposed and contains no detail whatsoever. Nothing in this area was recorded by the camera except perhaps image noise.

2-because the color in that area falls outside of the chosen color space. When this is the case, it is usually a single color that is clipped, and not all three. Often, reducing the saturation of that one color will fix the problem.

Once you have exported to ProPhoto you can actually use Holmes Chroma Variants for ProPhoto if you want, since Joseph Holmes has made variants for ProPhoto available last year.

All in all, you lose nothing and have all the advantages of a large colorspace and of the Chroma Variants. Using a large colorspace presents no drawbacks in terms of quality if you stay in 16 bit all the way to the time you send the file to the printer, and if you let the printer do the conversion from the ProPhoto color space to the printer/paper profile color space.
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Alain,

That's good information. Are you using them to give a film look you are used to?

Asher

No, that's not the goal when chosing a color space. For that (film look) the best tool right now is probably the new DXO film pack. It comes with DXO 4.0 and is also available as a plugin for Photoshop.
 

Herman Teeuwen

New member
Alain,

I agree with you on DxO film pack.

About Lighroom and color spaces:

AFAIK the histogram in Lightroom and color numbers are based on Melissa RGB and the histogram is independent of export/output space (Melissa RGB is a matrix profile with ProPhoto RGB chromaticities and sRGB tone response curve instead of gamma 1.8 TRC). This works very much like histogram display in LightZone.

I'm not sure about the clipping warning though, but it seems to me that it is also based on Melissa RGB (and thus on ProPhoto gamut).

Herman
 

Marian Howell

New member
Actually the approach I recommend is to use ProPhoto RGB in Lightroom, one of the 3 options you have (the two other are sRGB and Adobe RGB). ProPhoto is the largest color space one can export to in Lightroom, thus the safest since the least likely to clip colors.

I also recommend you turn the clipping warnings on after selecting ProPhoto as it will show you if something is clipped in the highlights or shadows or not. You turn this on by clicking on the small icons at the top left of the histogram palette.

All in all, you lose nothing and have all the advantages of a large colorspace and of the Chroma Variants. Using a large colorspace presents no drawbacks in terms of quality if you stay in 16 bit all the way to the time you send the file to the printer, and if you let the printer do the conversion from the ProPhoto color space to the printer/paper profile color space.

i've experimented with going to 16bit/prophoto and i like that for the shots that are worth the time and effort. one of the best things about lightroom for me was the working with the histogram, in fact, and it is the reason i may ultimately spend the money for lightroom! unfortunately, a great deal of what i do is quantity and for less than fine art purposes :) so adding steps to the procedure does not increase efficiency in my everyday workflow. i also have been somewhat challenged to make the argb of lightroom come close to the colors of the argb of c1 with magne's profile. and this is without chroma variants, just plain argb. this was a recent discovery when i processed the same shot in both programs so i haven't explored this much. perhaps another thread at a later time...
 

Alain Briot

pro member
a great deal of what i do is quantity and for less than fine art purposes :) so adding steps to the procedure does not increase efficiency in my everyday workflow. i also have been somewhat challenged to make the argb of lightroom come close to the colors of the argb of c1 with magne's profile. and this is without chroma variants, just plain argb. this was a recent discovery when i processed the same shot in both programs so i haven't explored this much...

For overall speed, nothing beats Capture 1 (C1) in my estimate. You are right to continue using it for this purpose. Plus you can choose the camera profile of your choice and the output profile as well.

There is a new version of C1 coming out, but it has been delayed for different reasons, including significant changes at C1 regarding the software part of the business. When the new version comes out it will most likely bring new capabilities to C1 as far as color control and other aspects of the conversion process.
 

Stephen_Pace

New member
i also have been somewhat challenged to make the argb of lightroom come close to the colors of the argb of c1 with magne's profile. and this is without chroma variants, just plain argb.


I agree.

It may be more significant/noticeable for Canon shooters (I'm one). I also haven't found a system I like more than C1 with Magnes camera profiles. I'm inclined to think, but haven't tested, that the benefits of Joe's colorspaces and varients are greater using C1 and Magne's profiles.

YMMV

Stephen
 
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