Bill,

It is my understanding that Pro Photo RGB is a larger gamut than Adobe RGB, so I can understand some people would apply the old saw 'bigger is better'. But I personally don't see it that way.

The reason is this, Adobe RGB is already a larger color gamut than can be reproduced by all but a few rare and very expensive displays. So some of the color dimension subtleties in an image file from a raw digital camera or a scan cannot be seen on screen in the image displayed with Adobe RGB as the workspace profile. If the workspace gamut is even larger then even more of the image values may remain "invisible". So how can you accurately adjust and edit color you cannot see???

Not very well in my estimation, and the result is that you can push values out of the printable gamut and create distortions that are invisible until printed, and then show up with unexpected disappointment.

This only happens rarely but is in cases where a lot of corrective adjustment is needed to bring the values of the original into a range that is printable, does create distortions that show up badly in print results as a sad surprise.

Adobe RGB is a bit larger than what can be displayed by a good LCD, and also larger than what can be printed. Making the workspace even a larger gamut with Pro Photo RGB than Adobe RGB is to me just inviting correction mistakes that are invisible in the displayed image, but become a disaster to a printed image.

Thanks, David. Since I'm mainly interested in making prints, I'll stay with Adobe RGB. I guess size doesn't always matter, after all.....

Indeed More is Not always better. The Adobe RGB also has more colors than the human eyes gamut range as well. Using PRO RGB is not going to make your work look better. YOU make your work look better. As hard as it may seem, I have seen good work in SRGB. ITs not the printer, computer or camera, its what you can produce from what you have.

For work produced from sRGB to be good, the judge of that has to be a little bit color blind as sRGB is a very much smaller color gamut than what is encompassed by what is considered the average human sight spectrum.

See:

Understanding ProPhoto RGB

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/prophoto-rgb.shtml

Bruce Fraser, rest his soul, did much to promote a better understanding of color management. However Bruce was not a photographer, his expertise was entirely in the realm of publishing and pre-press, and color correcting original images made with a digital camera was not something he did, because it was not his work to photograph, but to process images of all kinds for reproduction by an offset press.

Today, even the best LCD displays rarely even reach a color gamut equal to that described by Adobe RGB (1998) profile. Then if you work in a colorspace greater than Adobe RGB (1998) by any amount, much of the color content you are attempting to correct and adjust is not reproduced on-screen. So tell me just how one works effectively and accurately with color that cannot be seen on your computer's display screen????????