ICC Colour Profiles, AdobeRGB & sRGB, and "Colour Management" on Windows. "The Nightmare" Part 1

Part 1 of the Colour Management "The Nightmare" series.
Colour Management is a giant pain in the bottom, especially on Windows.
"How do the colours look different?"
"What's a colour profile?"
"What's the difference between between assigning and converting a colour profile?"
"AdobeRGB or sRGB?"
I talk about assigning or embedding a colour profile in Affinity Photo and Photoshop, inspecting images to check their colour profile on Windows and Mac, how to properly tag images that come out of Blender, and rant a bit about the current state of Colour Management.
The question never end, as it's an eternal struggle to tame the beast that is currently still untamed! Come on Microsoft, FIX THIS!
Download the ExifTool (Windows) here:
exiftool.org/exiftool-12.49.zip
More info on the Exiftool:
exiftool.org/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExifTool
Follow me on Twitter:
/ mpetrikas
People worth following (but are not responsible for any potential mistakes in this video, that's all on me!):
Thank you, Troy:
/ troy_s
Thank you, Gez:
/ gez
Support my experiments via Patreon:
/ studiopetrikas
Thank you for sharing your photos:
unsplash.com/photos/3kBtYrZ0-hw - Kristin Brown
unsplash.com/photos/L0XjknJKgcI - Aidan Smith
unsplash.com/photos/K_xXdh4lNJM - Etty Fidele
unsplash.com/photos/AmPRUnRb6N0 - Oscar Keys
unsplash.com/photos/XMg8GBzNmgA - Nick Page
Thank you for your music:
LATASHÁ - Castille Soap
Video segments:
00:00 - 00:28 Into: why Colour Management is important
00:28 - 03:36 Why does my image look different on different software?
03:36 - 04:30 How to tag an image with an sRGB colour profile
04:30 - 06:30 How to tag an image with your display's colour profile
06:30 - 07:30 How to convert an image from your display's profile to sRGB
07:30 - 09:09 Inspecting an image
09:09 - 11:46 Closing rant and why Colour Management is a nightmare
#tutorial #windows #colour

[@bclaus0]

Great! Don't be scared of making these videos too in depth. It's such an important topic to educate creators on.

[@StudioPetrikas]

It is scary, that's for sure. Just because you're never 100% sure you're correct.
Anyway, it's incredibly difficult to balance correct terminology and still make the video somewhat understandable to most.
Hopefully, I'm not going to get scolded too much for using "colour" where I should've used "stimulus" or "tristimulus".

[@g0odnite]

It is rare to find these kind of videos talking about color issues even though it is an obvious issue; most people just don't emphasize enough and I find that odd. Thank you very much.

[@PunamDevi-rv8ml]

boy I was looking for this video for ages!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@LizStClair]

You are a life saver! Thank you for solving my uber frustrating problem!!!

[@emmypuss4533]

That was interesting - seeing if Darktable exported a colour profile.
Thanks again.

[@badbunny_uk]

Hi, I have spent so much time trying to figure this out on a couple of occasions over the past few years and failed. There are loads of threads on the internet where people are having issues with blender and its display of colour not being what you see in other software. None of those threads actually gave the solution, and none explained the issue so clearly. I now have control of how my renders are looking. Thankyou so much.

[@Calavera00]

This video capture my experiences perfectly, and I haven't found many people going deep on the subject. I suspect many give up trying like I did many times. I wanted to work on a wide gamut display so I could see and edit a greater range of colors in my photo editing, but it's just asking for trouble if you do a lot of snipping tool and if you send images and photos back and forth with colleagues. I reverted back to sRGB workflow for my day job, but a good thing with the Benq SW321c, you can store 3 different calibrations and switch between them on the handy puck that comes with the monitor. So I store sRGB on calibration 1, Display P3 on 2 and Native gamut on 3. it's a very small effort to change to my wide native gamut calibration when I want to edit photos in a wider gamut, then switch back to sRGB after I'm done.

[@StudioPetrikas]

Honestly, switching to sRGB mode makes everyone's life easier.
Unlucky if you're stuck with a wider gamut laptop display like some poor souls (me).
Don't forget that not only do you need to have a calibration profile, but also switch the monitor's "mode" to sRGB, otherwise you will be seeing colours that are too pure.

[@jakubniemczuk]

Oh god I was so frustrated with my first photo editing. I was puzzled why the images in software like LR or darktable looked good but the system image software showed slightly different colors.

[@msandersen]

I was curious about my Mac's screenshot feature, so I checked. It embeds the calibrated monitor profile. Good to know. Btw, I use Exiftool extensively as a photographer, esp with all my manual lenses, as well as correcting metadata from Sigma and Tamron Canon-mount lenses, which both have minimal info, and so don't get recognised properly in Raw editors. I also have a script with default photographer and copyright info I run over my files, and one that tags my compressed Fuji raw files based on the accompanying jpgs, because PhotoMechanic doesn't support tagging compressed Fuji files, but does tag the jpg files.

[@StudioPetrikas]

Yep, life with macOS is a bit easier, if you're a creative. It's still recommended to convert the screenshots to sRGB for maximum compatibility.
Exif tool is a godsend!

[@msandersen]

@@StudioPetrikas I only use screenshots for myself, not the web, but genererally true for ppl who do them for online articles. Personally I feel sRGB is deprecated for most things, given that it was made for the lowest common denominator of 1990s cheap CRTs for the average PC. These days, every smart phone has a screen capable of wide gamuts, like Display P3 on iPhones, same for Samsung etc, and every LCD display with your average PC are better than those 90s CRTs. The only photos I make for the Web are exported for Social media in 2048px and sRGB via Capture One, everything else tends to be in AdobeRGB. I've been experimenting with Darktable, but once you start adding a few edits, it slows to a crawl on a Mac due to poor optimisation of GTK and no GPU support on M1 Macs.

[@EgorKlimenko-]

I always try to use professional color correction in my TH-cam videos, but it takes so much time (8 hours per 153 scenes on average). Any tips on how I can speed up this process?🙃

[@StudioPetrikas]

Difficult to say, without knowing your full pipeline.
Best practice is to avoid 'recording on auto' and using NLE (non-linear editor) to store and re-apply grades. Something like DaVinci Resolve, etc.

[@TheEbrahim07]

Thanks for the great video and the simple explanation of a complex topic. I have a question regarding the Exiftool in your right click menu (windows) minute 8:55 , how did you add the following options:
EXIF Info
EXIF Remove Info
EXIF Attach Colour Profile
Convert to sRGB JPG
especially the last two options, would be a amazing to be able to do that without opening Photoshop!
Thanks a lot for the video and the other great videos too!

[@StudioPetrikas]

Thanks! Glad you find these useful.
Those context options require quite a bit of tinkering. First you would need to get familiar with Exiftool commands, then implement them via a context menu editor. It's a bit too finicky for me to make a tutorial on, since it includes messing with the system registry.

[@TheEbrahim07]

Thanks! This helps a lot already 🙏🏻

[@fedounet38]

I regret so hard buying a expensive Eizo screen with Adobe RGB, windows 10 cant event display it on the explorer.. client cant see the "nicer color".. gone back to full sRGB process 😞

[@StudioPetrikas]

Thats terrible, I'm sorry. But hey, at least you have the option to switch back! People with AdobeRGB laptops are stuck with AdobeRGB ""workflow"".