Colour Settings…?

Key: RGB Red, Green Blue. CMYK Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black).

This is a highly annoying topic to cover! Especially in the industries I’m in: Graphic (Print) & Web Design and Photography.
Colour Settings (or Profiles) are basically lines of codes and equations which interpret how colour is displayed. They are usually never the same though some don’t really differ result wise, but than some can completely change the Saturation and the true representation throughout your photo.
Colour settings you can’t avoid when it comes to colour and digital together! There are hundreds (Thousands if you include every Professional printers ones’) of them and pretty much every application uses their own as a default or use the two profiles that are pretty standard throughout the industries.

Adobe RGB or sRGB

Though there are plenty more out there that are just as common, theses two just pop up on most devices all the times.
For example; In my camera, I can actually choose either one of those colour settings.
I highly recommend using sRGB as its pretty well generic, and if you’re not sure what you are going to be using your photos for, this can change pretty well if you are going from print to web and visa-versa.

Eg. I take photos for a magazine most often, and the profile gets changed to our printers, and too CMYK and then back to RGB for web.
When we shift the colour profile, the reds aren’t as vibrant and often need bumping up. Shifting from sRGB usually just runs into the problems with the red profile which is easily fixed.

Most often in my experience, the reds, oranges and blacks are often affected by colour settings.
To get a better understanding of this, try going into a program with plenty of colour settings like Adobe Photoshop and play with them. To do this, when you start a new document, choose RGB where it says Color Mode and than click on advanced at the bottom of the dialogue box, and under Color Profile just choose a setting; firstly try ‘No Profile’ when starting and than add one later on.
Play with your images in it and if you would like to shift to another profile, go to Edit > Assign Profile and go nuts.
Just try using a photo with as many colours that stand out and change your settings and see if you can adjust it back to the original without reverting back to the original profile. This can come in handy if you’re forced to ever work in another profile and you need to change your colours. Often just changing Hue/Saturation (Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation) will get you close back to the original and maybe even Levels (or Curves if you prefer) for bumping up the blacks.
A setting to look out for is ProPhoto RGB. This is probably one that is my most favorite to work with; especially in Adobe Lightroom. The colours become very rich as well as your blacks and whites.

Perhaps even try changing from RGB to CMYK (Image > Mode > CMYK) to get a feel of a completely different range of colours.
CMYK is what printers use when… well printing. And CMYK is probably the worst when it comes to shifting colour settings. Especially when changing from one printer’s to another (Referring: Professional Printing). You get a whole array of problems with CMYK and RGB with Dot Gains, Ink Weights and what-have-you.
Just keep it simple for the moment and when it comes time to go that advanced… Google it!
Myself and those at work do because it just gets extremely complex when its another industry… Or call you’re printer. They usually (Should – but some don’t! Trust me!!) have an idea of what they need for colour settings; If unsure or even if printing at home, just use U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 in CMYK. That sometimes does the trick!
And remember… You’re home printer is in CMYK too if it hasn’t clicked with you previously.
Some people don’t know but if you try to print an image and your blacks appear like a dark-muddy brown, It’s because you’re trying to print an RGB picture on a printer that has a different ‘mindset’ when it comes to printing colours.

The following video thoroughly explains this process and what CMYK and RGB exactly is. WARNING: Science-e Content!

Thank you so much Leo Laporte and Ray Maxwell!

Here are some visual representations of how Colour Setting shifting affects your images.

So the last image above shows the edited image reverted back to its original colour settings and on the right hand side, show the original image un-edited straight off the camera.

This shows you that when you edit your images in a different profile, when you revert it back everything is completely different.

And now you’re as confused by Colour Settings as I am! Hahaha
But you will eventually get it!