From the course: Retouching and Color Correcting Photography Portraits

Introduction to color

From the course: Retouching and Color Correcting Photography Portraits

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Introduction to color

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- [Instructor] Before we get much further into the course, it may help to have a basic conversation about digital photography and the terms we use. Our cameras capture color data with red, green, and blue sensors. That data is then preserved in red, green, and blue color channels. Red, green, and blue combine in different proportions to make all the other colors. The amount of color data stored in an image is referred to as bit depth. In general, the higher it is, the more information there is to manipulate when retouching. JPEGs are eight bit files and contain only 256 shades of each color. Think of it as making a drawing with a small set of colored pencils. Raw files are 12 to 16 bits depending on the camera and can contain over 65,000 individual colors or an almost unlimited number of colored pencils. Color space is a way of defining color information. It means an image will look the same on different devices as long as they're color calibrated. The most widely used color spaces for photographers are sRGB and Adobe RGB. ProPhoto is also popular. All have three channels, red, green, and blue. sRGB is smaller, used for JPEGs and designed for viewing on computers and other digital devices. It's also the color space used when making photo prints. Adobe RGB is larger with more combinations of colors. ProPhoto is even bigger and records colors beyond what a printer can print or the human eye can see. CMYK is a color space for press printing of things like brochures or magazines. A photo file is translated into four channels, cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Color correction starts with color management. If the computer you're working on doesn't have accurate color, the file you're working on won't have it either. LinkedIn Learning has many courses about color management, so be sure to check them out. So here's what I recommend, capturing raw, work in Adobe RGB, retouch in 16 bit and save and TIFF but there is no absolute right or wrong way, just find what works best for you.

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