TIL that professional photo lab rejected my prints because of color space settings

I sent 20 photos to a lab in Austin last week and they came back with an email saying my sRGB files were "flat and lifeless" on their end. Switched to Adobe RGB and the difference in shadow detail was night and day. Anyone else get slapped by a lab for this?

2 comments

2 Comments

emeryfox5h ago

I read something about this on a photography forum where a guy said labs actually prefer Adobe RGB because it gives them more room to work with in post. That makes sense to me now after hearing your story. sRGB is fine for web stuff but I guess when you go to print you're basically choking the colors before they even get there. The "flat and lifeless" thing really hits home because I had a batch of prints come back looking the same way and I just thought it was the lab screwing up. It's wild how much subtle detail gets lost in those shadows when you're not using a wider gamut. I switched to Adobe RGB for everything I send out and haven't looked back since.

taylor822h ago

Huh, I gotta push back on that a little bit. I've been printing for years and honestly, most good labs I've worked with just want sRGB because it's the standard for their machines. Adobe RGB is great for editing on your own monitor, but if you send it to a lab expecting them to "fix it," you're just hoping they've got a monitor as good as yours. Half the time they just convert it to sRGB anyway during processing, so you're not really getting that extra color range in the final print. I think the bigger thing is your monitor calibration and the paper you're using, not the color space.