Imaging Working Group

Hi Jen

This is a good question. The settings that control color management in Photoshop/ACR/Bridge and Lightroom tend to be quite hidden away, and this does not reflect how important they are for users to set and understand and how drastically they can transform images.
There are two steps I would recommend, firstly standardising the color settings windows in all your apps (in fact creative cloud will tell users if the color settings are in sync on all of their apps). In photoshop you find these by navigating to Edit > Color Settings.
I recommend setting AdobeRGB as the RGB working space, then US Web Coated SWOP V2, then Grey gamma 2.2 then Dot Gain 20%. Then make sure preserve embedded profiles are set for RGB, CMYK and Grayscale .Tick all the boxes for profile mismatches and missing profiles. Use the Adobe color engine and relative colorimetric rendering intent. Tick the three boxes under this. And blend text using gamma 1.45.
It's possible to save these settings as a CSF file and then distribute this for other users to load.
As part of this standardisation I would specify the ICC profiles which should be embedded within each image type. For example we embed AdobeRGB98 into all RGB images, then X-radiographs are greyscale with no embedded profile, then greyscale images (for example scans of black & white film) are greyscale with grey gamma 2.2 embedded. This means that alike images can be compared without worrying about different images having different gamuts and gamma values due to the profile.
Second step I would consider would be to stop communicating in RGB numbers and start communicating in CIELAB (referred to simply as Lab in photoshop). RGB number are device independent, they differ depending on the device (and it's profile), they are essentially a relative way to describe color. Whereas CIELAB is a device-independent  absolute way to describe color. For example R255G0B0 in sRGB creates the same very colorful red as R179G71B27. This is an extreme example, but what it points to is the fact that RGB is really not a very good language when us humans need to communicate color. A far better language is CIELAB, for example this same colorful red is L*54A*80B*69 and it is this value whether the image has the sRGB or ProPhotoRGB profile embedded. Not only this, but CIELAB is a perceptually uniform space, so for example you will notice that the neutral patches on a colorchecker (which go up with perceptually consistent steps in lightness as per Munsell's research) will each go up by 15L* . A couple of years ago for we switched from noting all of the specs for our imaging processes in RGB to using CIELAB.
Hope that helps
Andrew

Sorry, dyslexic moment - that should read RGB number are device dependent!
:)

Hi Jen

This is a good question. The settings that control color management in Photoshop/ACR/Bridge and Lightroom tend to be quite hidden away, and this does not reflect how important they are for users to set and understand and how drastically they can transform images.
There are two steps I would recommend, firstly standardising the color settings windows in all your apps (in fact creative cloud will tell users if the color settings are in sync on all of their apps). In photoshop you find these by navigating to Edit > Color Settings.
I recommend setting AdobeRGB as the RGB working space, then US Web Coated SWOP V2, then Grey gamma 2.2 then Dot Gain 20%. Then make sure preserve embedded profiles are set for RGB, CMYK and Grayscale .Tick all the boxes for profile mismatches and missing profiles. Use the Adobe color engine and relative colorimetric rendering intent. Tick the three boxes under this. And blend text using gamma 1.45.
It's possible to save these settings as a CSF file and then distribute this for other users to load.
As part of this standardisation I would specify the ICC profiles which should be embedded within each image type. For example we embed AdobeRGB98 into all RGB images, then X-radiographs are greyscale with no embedded profile, then greyscale images (for example scans of black & white film) are greyscale with grey gamma 2.2 embedded. This means that alike images can be compared without worrying about different images having different gamuts and gamma values due to the profile.
Second step I would consider would be to stop communicating in RGB numbers and start communicating in CIELAB (referred to simply as Lab in photoshop). RGB number are device independent, they differ depending on the device (and it's profile), they are essentially a relative way to describe color. Whereas CIELAB is a device-independent  absolute way to describe color. For example R255G0B0 in sRGB creates the same very colorful red as R179G71B27. This is an extreme example, but what it points to is the fact that RGB is really not a very good language when us humans need to communicate color. A far better language is CIELAB, for example this same colorful red is L*54A*80B*69 and it is this value whether the image has the sRGB or ProPhotoRGB profile embedded. Not only this, but CIELAB is a perceptually uniform space, so for example you will notice that the neutral patches on a colorchecker (which go up with perceptually consistent steps in lightness as per Munsell's research) will each go up by 15L* . A couple of years ago for we switched from noting all of the specs for our imaging processes in RGB to using CIELAB.
Hope that helps
Andrew