: Embedded display profiles vs absolute colorspace profiles inside pictures I'm trying to understand color management, and have stumbled across an issue: I've seen many people, and some tools (like

@Gail6891361

All color spaces are alike, theres is nothing special about the standard RGB color spaces as opposed to the device colorspaces. They are exactly the same, they both describe conversion form that space into an absolute color space (Neither sRGB or Adobe RGB are absolute spaces). You can then convert back form that absolute color space to any RGB space. Normal caveats apply. You would do this for a scanner, but you could do the same for a monitor.

Why standard spaces? Theoretically it gives you a target to calibrate against. So that you can make 2 monitors display the same even without color transformations (this is how web is supposed to work). It would also be possible to factory calibrate things. In practice this does not work, except perhaps for sensors, monitors not so much.

On the other hand if you are going to color transform you might as well utilize the entire size of your monitors space. Then you would just rely on profiling your device and convert to that space. Its a perfectly valid strategy, theres no need to calibrate as long as you have a profile. Un-profiled stuff is now wrong but theres no way to know what they were supposed to be anyway. And whaen you monitor travels in its color reproduction capability due to age and use you get different results but yes still valid (same would apply to standard spaces unless your monitor is significantly larger in size and can crop off some parts).

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