Subject: Converting to SRGB color space
Hey to all,
Just wanted to put my two cents in on PFLI's color space requirement of SRGB. A quick description of color space here might be helpful. The color space of your document is much like a language such as Italian or Spanish. If you use an electronic translator for spanish to english and type in an Italian word you're not likely to get the correct result. Although there are many similarities between the two languages they are definitely not the same. Most color spaces are similar that way but are definitely not the same. Photoshop is a very powerful program and it has a translator that automatically recognizes virtually all color spaces (languages). When you open an image in photoshop it automatically recognizes the embedded color space of the image and displays it correctly on your monitor - assuming you have your RGB color settings set "preserve embedded profiles". Unfortunately other programs such as most web browsers and the program that PFLI uses to project images do not have this translator. These programs only recognize the SRGB color space (language).
It doesn't really matter what color space you use when editing your images. Many of use like to shot and use Adobe RGB or Pro Photo RGB for editing because it has a wider range of color and will preserve more information during the editing process. If you shoot in RAW you may even edit in 16 bit color mode. The trick is to convert the document to SRGB before sending it off to Ken. So here's my procedure for preparing the image for digital presentation.
1- Choose 'image>mode>8bit'
2- Choose 'edit > convert to profile and for destination space choose 'sRGB IEC61966-2.1"
This will make sure that photoshop properly converts your image to the sRGB space with little to no change in color.
4- Next you want to resize your image down to the maximum 750 pixel dimension and be sure to have it set to 72 dpi just to be safe. Also you should use 'Bicubic Sharper' when doing this step.
5- Your document is now ready to be saved. You can save it as is, or even better use the 'Save for Web' command. This will strip out all the EXIF information that normally travels along with the document and takes up additional storage space. For quality I usually pick 'high'. For an image this size (750 pixels) the space savings is usually around 25% over the standard JPEG 'high' save mode.
Steve Zimic
From Marlene Piskin
