Do you like Pentax colour?

Do you mind if I give you a link rather then explain it?
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sRGB-AdobeRGB1998.htm

Very short summary.
Adobe RGB has a greater colour range then sRGB, that's good you would think.
The problem is that JPG has 8bit colour space so the amount of colour steps remains the same. That means the steps of the greater colour space of adobe RGB are bigger then the ones with sRGB so the graduation, flow from one colour to the next is better then.

The only times you can see the bigger colour space of Adobe RGB is with certain prints and printers and special expensive monitors like Eizo.
If you've a normal screen or show them on the web you can only see sRGB.

So if you hardly print any photos or have the printer for it, sRGB might be a better choice for you.

I've found with my K20D going out and shooting with AWB on the colour balance is a little to cold and green tinted. I set up a couple of presets in Lightroom to change the RAWs to either 4800 or 5000 as required.

And I've definitely noticed colour changes in different lenses. It's subtle though.

You are seeing the sRGB space on your monitor reagrdless, you are printing the sRGB space on your printer and you need sRGB for web images.

If you mix Adobe RGB and sRGB in your workflow you will get weak colour in your images. Whatever you do, check that the camera and Photoshop are both set to the same colour space.

There are possible reasons for using the wider gamut of Adobe RGB but I don't find it necessary.

Both my K10&20D are set to "natural", they both produce horrible over saturated images on "bright" I also find AWB gets it right most of the time.

One thing no one has asked yet, is your monitor adjusted correctly? your camera may well be producing images that are just fine on "natural" but its your monitor thats throwing a spanner in the works. Do all the images you see posted on this forum look OK on your monitor or do you find some of those a bit iffy too?

All these comments very interesting indeed, esp on lenses. I only have the kit pentax lens that came with the k-x to compare with the Sigma, and from what I can remember the Sigma seemed a lot cooler and clearer and more attractive.

Tried out JR's settings prescription yesterday and got some nice natural looking results - so thanks very much JR. - interesting that daylight WB should work well in a shady room indoors - neither shade nor cloudy much good at all, to my eye. Also shot RAW+ to see what the jpg conversion does - mostly seems to bring out contrast and create more depth in the image, and in some cases that tones the colour down somewhat. RAW looked strangely shadowless.

Re the monitor- it's a macbook and the colour on pics taken by my compact fuji is lovely - even if it is only a cheap camera, so I don't think the monitor's badly adjusted.

Anyway, feeling a lot happier about the camera since airing my frustration on the forum and very grateful for all your comments

The K200D also goes wrong, especially when there is a lot of green. Many pictures will have a greenish cast, while the warm colours are suppressed.

In Photoshop Elements I make a layer and use levels. Then the Blur, average, color 5% option and the colour cast will have gone.

Sorry to pick you up on this John... you can mix colour spaces to your heart's content, if you have a properly managed colour workflow

But, for the sake of simplicity and overall compatibility sRGB is a much easier approach and can lead to far less pain and frustration (since most domestic items assume sRGB)

...you can spend/waste your life in colour (mis)management issues

Matt

My K10D is set the way JR describes except for "Switch off the variable setting for WB and change to fixed value" I am not sure how you set.

I am still a bit disappointed with printed results for anything that is a strong red colour. Does not seem to matter where I get the prints done. These are images straight from the camera. Everything else in the picture prints the way I see it on screen except the reds. So someone might have a red santa hat on, the picture looks fine but the red on the hat is too oversaturated and the different shades in the red are lost and completely overblown.

Has anyone else experienced this with the K10D? Should I get the camera checked out by a specialist?

If you're seeing the results correctly on screen but they're failing to print then the problem lies between your computer and your printer - not the camera.

I'm no expert on colour management so hopefully someone else can explain what you need to do to sort it out.

There is a lot of good advice here and Matt is right, you can spend/waste an awful lot of time in colour mis/management issues. IMHO, however, it has always seemd ironic that some folks are willing to spend "loads a money" on cameras, lenses and accessories but remain reluctant to invest in a decent screen and, or at the very least, a monitor calibration device; which can be had new for around £80 - £120, depending on what you go for. Other things that can be done for little or no outlay include paying careful attention to the sources, types and intensity of light in the room where you work and the position of your screen in relation to them.

Producing images and prints that approximate closely(cf Matt's comments again) to the actual colour of the subject(s) photographed is important to me because my main interest is plants and insects and, increasingly, birds. I have now settled on Adobe RGB throughout and stick to the manufacturers inks and papers (making sure I download and use the relevant ICC profiles for them) or papers from other reputable manufacturers, e.g. Ilford. Most of the time this results in a colour match between what I see on screen, in print and in the real world that I can easily live with and most people to whom I show my images think looks 'natural'.

I know some would advocate getting the printer professionally profiled too, but as I take, edit and print photographs for enjoyment and not for commercial reasons I don't feel the need.

Jon

As Matt says you can spend your life trying to master Colour management and never quite get there.

I initially experimented with Argb but decided it was a waste of effort as all my prints need to be Srgb and monitor viewing is Srgb - I retain all RAW files though in case this changes one day !!

I personally prefer now to keep things to Srgb - one issue with this however is that I've noticed the K20D often captures colour outside of the Colourspace (mainly yellow/green) and to try & ensure that my prints reflect what I see on screen I often de-saturate these slightly to pull them back into Srgb. Most prints I get back represent the screen image pretty well now

Simon

I must admit the colour issue has bugged me quite a bit, I have read quite a lot of conflicting advice on the subject. Most of my images are currently taken in Adobe RGB and print out from Photoshop perfectly, however when I convert them to the srgb for the web I have to re-saturate the image in an attempt to make it look anything like the printed version.

Graham

You would be surprised, only the specialized monitors come from the factory quite well calibrated but it's know from LCD that the colours need to settle so there is quite some difference between a brand new screen and one that has some hours under his belt so even those you need to calibrate monthly to keep your colours accurate.

You can get a basic calibration device for your screen for around £60
I didn't thought it would make a big difference either but it does.

If you want your colours to be spot on you can get one of these but you need to shoot in RAW though I believe. link

Nobody bothered about any of this when we used film. How many colour correction filters do you have? Did you test every new batch of film to establish a new correction for it?

My colour correction consists of using sRGB throughout, daylight or whatever colour balance I choose, and then using the Photo Filters in CS2 to produce the colour I want. The last step only when necessary...

So I use the 81A series to warm the image and the 80A series to cool the image, until I like it.

I would only take a more specific approach if I was doing a job where the actual colour values were critical - and that's a different matter altogether.

I really don't think there is any need to spend lots of money on colour calibration, unless you are doing a lot of printing.

There are several free tools that do a perfectly good job, if not quite as good as the best paid-for ones.

Unfortunately, people have been conned into thinking they need to spend huge amounts of money on this. It really isn't so, in my view.

G