Hi Everybody,
This may come as a surprise to many amateur photographers.A DIGITAL PHOTO DOES NOT CONTAIN A COLOR PROFILE
True enough, the EXIF data states that the color space chosen for the photo is sRGB. However, PhotoPaint X6 does not look at the EXIF data.
Here's how you can check this out. Open the default color management settings dialog. Check off the box so that a warning will appear if the photo is missing a profile.Now open a digital photo for the first time.Here's the warning.Note that you only get the privilege of "assigning" a color profile. It's used while you retouch. However, it is not saved because it has not been "embedded".So what happens if you have not enabled this warning. Usually, the image looks OK. Let's see what the settings for the document have to say.Lo and Behold. The document now has an "embedded" color profile !Photopaint has taken upon itself to "embed" the default color profile.MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be sure that the default color profile is SRGB (or whatever your camera uses).
Phil
Actually Phil this is no surprise, it's SOP for many digital cameras. There are many that do embed profiles, some are proprietary profiles, specifically we had a mid price Nikon that embedded a profile designed just for that camera.
In my book available at www.graphictechnology.com all of these things are discussed. I personally use a setting that warns of mismatched and missing profiles, my default RGB for Photo-PAINT is prophoto. If you go on line and read my article in, I believe the November 2014 issue of Signs and Digital Graphics Magazine it explains the use of prophoto and the 3 choices you should have every time you open an image, Use, Assign and Convert instead of just using an application based automatic setting.
The default settings in all images editors I've ever tested are in my opinion basically set to reduce tech support calls and produce acceptable results for the masses, not produce the best results possible from the device.