The basics of color and color management

[@johnduder7524]

Most tutorials tell you WHAT to do. It's really helpful to have an explanation of WHY...

[@samsonadikrobert3290]

cant believe it took me seven yrs on the internet after to see a video that gave me a better explanation on color. thank you sir

[@ProfessorPflaume]

Amazing how much time I wasted on understanding color management until I saw your great explanations. Straightforward, easy to follow, great teacher!

[@olifrancis8220]

From researching this subject, this is by far the clearest explanation I've come across. Thanks for taking the time to publish, this has really helped me to understand the concepts.

[@cdc12345]

Excellent best helpfull video. Take care always

[@p-r-i-v-a-t-e]

Excellent tutorial. Thanks for your time and efforts you invested into this video for us

[@sergeyscobich]

You are the best. Nobody describe LAB , all talk about color space, etc

[@MadissonStudios]

absolutely brilliant! ive been researching this for a few days and have just started to get my head round some complicated info, but wish i had come across this earlier. Brilliant job!

[@kohjb]

Wow, this is the clearest explanation ever! Thank you so ooo much! I never knew the role of LAB until now.

[@iamsiddhantsahu]

This videos is superbly explained about color management. Loved it!

[@BrianLindahl]

Wow! Super Excellent Video. Wonderful work and wonderful explanation.

[@bloveman]

Awesome! Thank you for simplifying the basics of color management.

[@likedis4089]

thank you, sir appreciate your lesson. keep up the good work.

[@TheECWay]

This is a really excellent video. It’s so good that I’ve shared with friends outside the print industry. I’ll try it on my kids next!

[@aikiburner]

Wonderful clear explanation - thanks

[@pameliapax]

well done . It's high time I begin learning this process of color management.

[@johnashford3076]

Thanks very much. I grasped that very well. And I am even keen to take the next step! I loved your examples of how the brain can be deceived by colours in everyday situations.

[@Jaszleemin]

This is very useful in the summary of for understanding color management 💯

[@jpkim692]

Awesome video. Greatly helpful! thanks

[@muhammedsakeels]

Best explanation I've ever seen.

[@erfut]

Thank You a very informative explanation.

[@ufo717212]

Informative and educational.

[@myblueandme]

brilliant presentation!

[@wernertschan320]

Very useful information. Thank you. 🙂

[@stefanocaretti4085]

Very useful and definetely easy. Thank you very much!

[@LeeLeeVonMwah]

Excellent presentation. I really enjoyed your video :)

[@kevinarchambault3349]

Your LAB diagram is better than typical spherical model used by most others Of course you have only touch on the tip of the iceberg concerning Colour Management and look forward to seeing what you got next. Have been playing around with this since late 90’s using Colorblind and other calibration tools like Densitometer and Colour Spectrometer

[@slbarsness]

Thanks! This will help my students learning online now during Covid-19!

[@eddieq1905]

Excellent video, unbelievable this has not had more likes??!!

[@cullylad9]

Brilliant clear explanation. Thank you

[@SunilThummala]

very good explanation. thank you

[@ian11hendri03]

thank you so much! Yes indeed it is useful Mr Boudewijn Krijger. Godbless you...

[@dawnchastain2030]

Answered a lot of lingering questions I had on color management! Thanks so much for doing this!

[@jeanmichelexactitude9362]

Very accurate and clear video ! Thank you very much !!

[@alexfang6784]

Great explanations.

[@quemino]

Wow! Thank you! You explain things so well!!

[@EDDIEGARAGE]

excellent tutorial Sir

[@jiajunliu6111]

Thank you so much,it's an amazing video!

[@ler5299]

Great way of tying it all together, thank you!

[@ccsas5398]

Not often i see a six year old video on YT that teaches me so so so much :)

[@koushikbhattacharya832]

its very helpful...thank u❤️

[@infoharvester]

what a fantastic video! thank you

[@ΠαύλοςΚιρκασίδης]

Thanks a lot my friend.

[@ajayparelkar]

Very informative. Explained nicely.

[@julesberran3519]

This is very useful. Thank you so much!

[@akogepayo]

I am learning, this will help us manage our printers

[@MattScottVisuals]

Thank you! Perfectly explained :)

[@naturereporter2719]

Awesome video. Thank you =) !!!

[@videosagb]

very good video..

[@lokeshvenkatashiah]

Amazing Tutorials. What is the best ICC monitor ICC Profiles for Photoshop?Should i choose wide gamut/sRGB or Adobe for Color correction /work in Photoshop

[@ColorPlazaTV]

Have a look at this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/i3zJmGt9qblqa80. It should answer your question.

[@kutilkol]

great !

[@chrisraby1703]

really good. Thanks

[@grahamh7041]

Excellent !!! thank you.

[@aspirante.a.vagabundo]

Excellent tutorial. Thanks a lot. You should create a full course in color theory, or perhaps composition.

[@HikikomoriDev]

Magical...

[@slassie5558]

Useful indeed. You explain what so many so-called professionals are not able to (or willing to) explain. Still, further questions: 1. Why is an ICC profile (which I understand is some kind of "colour dictionary") embedded in a file? Wouldn't it be reasonable to have this ICC dictionary ONLY in the colour engine, which then translates incoming signals to LAB and outgoing signals from LAB to whatever colour model a device asks for? 2. Why does the colour engine translate RGB to LAB from cameras, if it then translates LAB back to RGB for monitors? Isn't this useless? Wouldn't it be enough to translate ONLY if the outgoing colour model differs from the incoming colour model? Any knowledgeable answers are highly appreciated!

[@ColorPlazaTV]

1) The advantage of embedding the profile is that in a single file, all relevant color information can be stored, without the need of having the icc profile separately. It's not mandatory, just convenient, although it does make the image file larger. 2) ONLY LAB colors aren't device specific. Any RGB value, be it linked to a camera, display or even printer is device specific. LAB is the colorspace each profile shares, and it's those LAB colors that are used to connect a source profile to a destination. So to go from camera to display, the RGB color goes from Camera RGB to LAB, and then from LAB to Display.

[@slassie5558]

@@ColorPlazaTV Wow. Amazing. And so fast!! Even PAID TEACHERS and quite a few books couldn't give me this information. Thank you ever so much. You deserve the Nobel Prize. 👍👍👍

[@michaelb2211]

Just a nit picky wonderance but is that color spectrum at the beginning upside down? Looks like shorter wavelengths at the top

[@dr.kstreak329]

It's so simple yet so complicated, it's perfect lmao

[@michaelb2211]

Love the fade to black but is that real black or just my mind used to lighter expectations? Subscribed. Great stuff

[@celticprogeny1569]

Your eyes aren't deceiving you, it's all in the mind.

[@guillaumecollombet]

Very interesting ! I do see the circle with the same color hovever (the red and the purple ones)

[@lour7753]

Wow! 👍🏻

[@mauz7152]

good job male, thanks!

[@love8arts]

Wondering how to save CS6 files that use mesh in CYMK. Adobe seems to be reverting to RGB, even files that once worked in CYMK (I've had this Illustrator mesh image printed several times) Once I've opened the file it seems to revert to RGB as default? Maybe I had a trick I used, that I've forgotten?

[@boudewijnkrijger346]

Can't you set color mode for the document? And why would you like to use CMYK? Unless you're driving your own imagesetter or press, I'd say RGB will give you more advantages than CMYK.

[@thanospletsas4488]

nice video indeed! May i ask why we need calibration tho? Thanks in advance

[@crazyhat117]

To download soft soft is the download free or do you have to pay for it?

[@MiSaLiAnW]

I am totally messed up with color management since i got a camera with full frame (nikon d610). I started doubting myself when arranging the colors, saving the photo and open it with my smartphone. My saturation is way off. Still i don't know where the fault is. I try to get there. I also don't trust my eyes anymore. My workflow with photos degreased by that frustration. I bought an camara profile for adobe camera raw that matches my camera. First it did work out well, yesterday i again had color management problems. It's hard to get family members to understand the frustration, often they don't see the colour difference.

[@ColorPlazaTV]

MiSaLiAnW One of the most common issues with color management is that some applications do not use work with embedded icc profiles. This can lead to photo’s getting the incorrect profile tagged, causing saturation to shift. If over saturated, a file with sRGB could be processed as Adobe. If under saturated, a file with AdobeRGB could be processed as sRGB. Using RAW complicated things, as then it’s the raw converter in combination with your monitor and eyes that determine the colors. Just as an experiment, try set your camera to shoot sRGB JPEG or tiff and see if colors are more consistent. If you view pictures on your phone, then colors will almost certainly be different. Most phones have very little color consistency and even show colors different depending ambient light and time of day. Always use a calibrated monitor to judge colors.

[@1stgreensoul]

Thank you very much!

[@JeffreyHoganFriends]

Win 11. Lightroom editing. Spyderx Pro calibrator. High quality monitor. What specs could I add here in these comments that would enable you to advise me on why my print has a magenta cast with blues rendering as pink.

[@boudewijnkrijger346]

Your Spyder X Pro is a colorimeter; only capable of calibrating your display, not your printer. For a printer you need a spectrophotometer. The device you have is passive; it only measures light from your display. A spectrophotometer emits light and measures reflected color. This is needed to create a printer icc profile which can remove color casts.

[@ZachGroney]

I do have a question. The other day I edited a photo on Lightroom. When I exported the photo and viewed it on my computer, the colors looked way different. I looked to a Photoshop and Lightroom Facebook group for help as to why its doing that and how to fix it. A few different people told me that it was because the Windows Photo app is not color managed. What am I supposed to do with this? Are all my photos just going to look different and I have to just deal?

[@ColorPlazaTV]

Windows operating system now does include the ability to use color management, but it is true that this does not mean that all software uses color management, nor does it mean that your pictures will look the same on each system. For colors to match, you need to use software that does manage colors, like photoshop & lightroom, but you also need to embed an ICC profile when you save the picture, and only judge colors on systems that are calibrated. By calibrated, I mean that the display is profiled using the same standards on each system you view it on. Only then, colors will be fairly consistent, but not necessarily identical, due to differences in the gamut (color range) of your display and the embedded ICC profile. To avoid big differences when viewed on different systems, in general, I would recommend embedding an sRGB profile rather than AdobeRGB, as many displays have a gamut that is smaller than AdobeRGB. sRGB stands for Standard RGB, being the average of (then CRT based) displays. You also have to think about how end users will view your pictures; if they are viewing them using a web browser, chances are considerable that this browser does not manage colors either. Even companies like Adobe don't always fully use color management; when you export your pictures as PNG they theoretically could be having an embedded ICC profile, but in practice, current versions of PhotoShop export PNG files without an embedded ICC profile. I understand you would probably prefer an easier answer or solution, but it will be quite a few years before all software on all systems will produce and show matching colors. It will require vendors to agree upon standards and software to apply these, and developers to then adhere to the set rules in the standards. Until that time, color management is useful but can be complex.

[@muhammedsakeels]

. Thanks for the great explanation. I have a question related to G7. What is G7 and why is grey is considered to be an important colours in G7 and why not other neutral colours like black or white? I’m very new to the printing industry and colour consistency is very important for me. Can you please explain in very simple terms and also a detailed information regarding G7? Thanks.

[@ColorPlazaTV]

G7 is a way of printing with an emphasis on correct gray scale measured colors. It’s not an ICC standard and not commonly used and to be honest, I have never used it myself. It’s not supported by any standard digital printer.

[@goldkerux]

Hi, thanks for the video! I do have a question. Regarding Graphics Cards, NVIDIA for example, it has the ability to use its own color settings. If we take the model you presented, where will this fit in? DLSR(Adobe RGB (1988)) - Graphics Card (NVIDIA 1070(YCbCr444 or 422 10bpc) - Color Engine (Photoshop (Adobe RGB)) - Display Profile (LG screen (Adobe RGB (1998)) Would it be correct to state that by using the Defualt Colour Settings on the Graphics Card and not applying a Color Setting Like YCbCr444/422 10bpc this leaves the LAB interpretation to the Display Profile? I am just a little stuck regarding ICC profiles and when to apply them as a Graphics Designer/Video Creator. For example, it is best to work in Adobe RGB (1998) or ProPhoto RGB in the Color Engine (Photoshop)? Would I also need to apply a Colour ICC profile to the Operating System/Display like Adobe RGB (1998) or ProPhoto RGB to be able to view the spectrum of Adobe RGB(1998)/ProPhoto RGB on my Display? How would 10-Bit workflow be implemented here if the Display and Graphics Card has the ability to handle 10-Bit? Looking forward to your reply! Thanks.

[@ColorPlazaTV]

Hi Chryso Kerux, video cards themselves cannot be profiled, the combination of card and monitor can, making a display profile. The settings on your card can affect the outputted color, so in any case, you should not change card settings (or monitor settings) after making a display profile. You are correct that not limiting the card will likely leave the greatest output gamut; if you restrict what your card outputs, the resulting display profile will have a smaller gamut also. The operating system does not have a profile, only your camera, display and printer do. What your operating system can do in combination with icc aware applications, is apply the used profiles, to obtain managed colors. But that only works for applications that are icc color profile aware; if an application opens or saves a file without using the embedded icc profile, colors can be off. Pro Photo is a very theoretical color space, that no device can show or capture, so only in very very specific cases is it useful. The amount of bits in your files have no influence on color, merely on how many steps can be distinguished; a 10 bit image does not have more colors than an 8 bit, just a finer method of defining color steps. 8 bit files allow over 16 million different colors, which is more than any human eye can distinguish. You will have a hard time seeing a benefit of 10 bits over 8 bits. Many systems rely on 8 bit calculations, so they don't even use more and generate perfectly fine and managed colors. Hope that helps.

[@paulinewilsons62]

13:35 can you please explain a little bit more about how to do colour management from camera to LAB, from LAB to display?? Where is the table?

[@boudewijnkrijger346]

ColorManagement is hardly ever from Camera to LAB, it's usually from Camera to Display using LAB. ColorPlaza TV has a video on making a camera profile using the color checker chart. If that's not what you mean, let me know.

[@andrasnagy6347]

Is it a bad sign if I did not see color for even a sec in the example with the castle?

[@boudewijnkrijger346]

The trick is to keep your eyes focused on a single point; as soon as you look at another point in the picture, the color disappears.

[@Atokxn]

Hi, thanks for your excellent video. I have a question about how my display renders the colors... maybe can you help me ? If I work on a large color spectrum like the Adobe RGB but my screen only support sRGB, what happens ? 1. Do the values of the colors are conserved and those who are too "far" to be displayed just won't be (and by what are they remplaced ?), or 2. will the screen display all the colors values by "compressing" the Adobe RGB colors in the smaller sRGB ones, that allows me to see all the spectrum of colors but with less "color dynamic range" ? Thanks a lot :)

[@boudewijnkrijger346]

On a display that has a gamut smaller than AdobeRGB (which is virtually all displays) colors are scaled to the gamut available using perceptual rendering intent. To put it simple; maximum red in your file is scaled to the maximum red your display can show. This also explains why using sRGB solves a lot of color issues, as sRGB is derived from the average gamut of (CRT) displays, do not much scaling is needed. Only in rare cases, where your file contains colors outside sRGB gamut you can sometimes get better results with AdobeRGB. Hope this helps.

[@muhammedsakeels]

Hi. Thanks for the great explanation. I have a question related to G7. What is G7 and why is grey is considered to be an important colours in G7 and why not other neutral colours like black or white? I’m very new to the printing industry and colour consistency is very important for me. Can you please explain in very simple terms and also a detailed information regarding G7? Thanks.

[@notsmallworld]

Need help here, if you could please. When I open a photo (shot in aRGB on canon 6D) in Canon Digital Photo Professional (workspace colorspace set to aRGB) with color matching for display set to sRGB, colors appear more vibrant than when it set to 'Monitor Profile' (monitor profile is color calibrated aRGB 6500 profile on 4k Panel). This is not logical and should not happen. It doesn't seem to be just display, as it also affects colors all the way to prints I make. Not sure where am I getting it wrong. Tried the same in GIMP and results were the same.

[@ColorPlazaTV]

When you assign a profile instead of convert it in an App like Photoshop, you will get different saturations, or if you like more vibrant colors. It's hard to say without knowing the details, but the issue could either be that a profile is assigned instead of converted, or the rendering intent is different; using Perceptual will give a more vibrant image than relative, as it maps the RGB values to the extremities of the chosen destination profile.

[@shyamsundermayengbam3221]

Do you have a video showing how to edit softs????

[@shrikantharlapur6985]

tq.. it was very useful

[@jager_cosmos_tv4668]

I'm too busy reading these comnts and not paying attention again.....and I'm Nice tutorialgh

[@daniiltabacari]

Thank you !

[@AvatarKalki192]

i self taught myself photoshop cs6... i wish i knew about tNice tutorials when i was in the self teacNice tutorialng mood

[@1DaytoDay-089]

I know this might be old vid.. but worth the shot to ask... It's the same a color space than a color model? I used to think it wasnt the same but now Im lost

[@ColorPlazaTV]

Hi James, I would say that RGB is a color model and sRGB is a certain color space within that model. But the terms might be mixed. The main thing to understand is the principal behind colormanagement based on ICC profiles. I hope that helps.

[@1DaytoDay-089]

@@ColorPlazaTV Thank you! But Im having a real hard time to understand color picker color space (in Ps and SD) for example 3ds max uses a linear color picker, that's the numbers rgb it gives you, are without gamma correction. But since it gives you rgb 8bits per channel I don't see any benefit. I have heard that Ps don't have a linear color picker. but now Im lost to understand.. because srgb its by default non linear, and thats... Im lost

[@ColorPlazaTV]

@@1DaytoDay-089 Any Application that has built in support for ColorManagement, will show the colorpicker colors using the display profile that is active; so if your display is calibrated, you should get a color that is within the colorspace of your monitor. But 3D applications often have no color management, as colors are "fictional"; they have no reference to real world lighting conditions, as they are rendered using an algorithm, not actual light of a particular color temperature. To avoid the confusion and likely differences between two or more monitors, sRGB has been invented, which should be used as a standard (hence the s) for any files for which you do not known on which system they might be viewed. Using sRGB is often the easiest way to avoid issues. And yes, you might use less colors than your monitor might be able to display, but you're not making things just for your monitor; you want it to look good on preferably all monitors. A good picture with an sRGB profile embedded will look good on all monitors, even the ones that claim 99% Adobe RGB gamut.

[@1DaytoDay-089]

@@ColorPlazaTV Thank you again!!! This it's being so much usefull. Now, I know That the software I use (substance and 3ds max+Vray) works with a linear workflow, that's it to get a pbr workflow. In wich any image that's 8bits, like jpg, png, will be gamma "de"coded, so the software can work with linear values and get the right calculations (only some images would be treated as linear if only contain data information such as roughness). Now, the thing is I like to start my workflow by defining the right albedo of the material I want to create. For example I want to have certain amount of diffuse reflection, let's say a 0.35 for an old concrete, if I work with a texture in jpg for example and opened in Ps I need to work with an inverse gamma so I can actually use the color picker and meassure the right diffuse color it has. I know I have to do this because I have already been told that Ps doesn't have a linear space in regards the color picker values. But honestly I need to understand better how to check that for myself in order to check any new software I use. (LOVING THIS CONVERSATION)

[@ColorPlazaTV]

@@1DaytoDay-089 I think what you have encountered is a good example of how theoretically colormanagement solves all color issues, yet in practise, particular software works in their own proprietary way of converting colors, which "breaks" the theory. I would be highly surprised if the color systems used within 3D software is aligned with applications that have been using color profiles since they were invented, such as Photoshop. There are several color engines, which all work with ICC profiles, yet all have small differences, especially when it comes to perceptual rendering intent. Rendering intent has huge consequences on the color generated based on exactly the same RGB values. I think I understand what you are trying to do, but I also think your expectations of interchangeability of color pickers and use of color is beyond what is offered today. It would be great if manufactures came to better standards in color exchanging. But manufacturers usually prefer to stick their own methods, and taking color values from a picker in application A, will not be the same as those from application B. That said, if you can choose sRGB as an output result for any file you save, you are more likely to get correct colors than by using device specific profiles. To get the least amount of issues, I would suggest using sRGB as an ICC profile wherever possible, and profiling your monitor, so the colors you choose visually or by setting RGB values using a picker, have a reference.

[@SHAZIAMALIKPHOTOGRAPHER]

how can I change color profile in cup lab?

[@stygiandesolator2246]

Unfortunately sir, it is quite ironic that your skin tone has too much red considering that your video is providing tips about colour management. I assumed it was my laptop screen not being calibrated properly, but it seems the issue persists on both my phone and oled tv too. I guess i can rest easy now, knowing there is nothing wrong with all my screens. I see your other videos don't seem to have this issue, but i can understand that this is an older video so it's not necessary to re-grade it. Thanks and godspeed!

[@ColorPlazaTV]

Dear Stygain Desolator, Video color management is not the area I was focussing on in these videos. If your screen is calibrated to 5000K ( the industry standard for digital printing) the colors are not perfect, but very acceptable, considering these videos are now 8 years old :-)

[@lukasbeacon372]

Thank you

[@aidagamemnon]

What if monitor and camera work in diferent color spaces. How to interpret colors whith exist in one device and absent in another and vice versa?

[@ColorPlazaTV]

That's where ICC profiles and LAB comes in; each device has(or should have) a profile, and they can be linked through the LAB color model. For instance, an iCC profile can be created for your camera and your display. colors are then calculated by going from camera to display through the LAB. So it goes from CameraRGB > LAB > DisplayRGB

[@ColorPlazaTV]

And to add what happens when colors of one are outside the range of the other; that's what rendering intent is for. Look up my video on rendering intent on this channel.

[@kornelijekovac9793]

OK, so why don't we just use LAB model for everything?

[@jpkim692]

Since every device, either RGB or CMYK based, perceives colors differently, the same lab value is expressed differently. It's called color gamut. So we need to convert RGB or CMYK values to lab values and then they are converted into RBG or CMYK values that were originally intended.

[@thekaiser4333]

Why is colour management not automatic? This is crap. Good video on the fundamentals. Thank you very much.

[@apmanti12]

d.o.p.e.!

[@tommasjay6020]

Sorry, but the color scale that you are showing at 1:12 is wrong. Purple (390nm) should be at the lower bottom of your scale and red(750nm) at the top. The colors between (from purple to red listed) are: blue, light blue, green. yellow, orange and pink. Incidentally, the shorter the wavelenght of the electromagnetic ray is, the highter is the energy of the wave. Thats why x-rays and gamma rays kill and radiowaves do not

[@claudioabado6246]

I always thought that color is a sensation.

[@ColorPlazaTV]

I actually had a color specialist training from EFI that elaborated on color being "an emotion". But fact is we all perceive colors differently.

[@Douglas_Gillette]

The reds look the same to me.

[@giacomomarchioro3455]

Excellent video! But the visible spectrum on kzbin.info/www/bejne/nKKQnIGqrM6ZfM0 seems wrong

[@scary-ez6gz]

Turns out they aren't for . SO I hear literally notNice tutorialng inside soft...

[@SHAZIAMALIKPHOTOGRAPHER]

cpu