Home Wikituition Browse all terms Categories
Random term
Colour & Colour Management

ProPhoto RGB

A very wide colour space that encompasses almost all colours a camera can capture, including some outside human vision.

In depth

Its size is its purpose: as an editing space it guarantees that no captured colour is clipped before the final conversion. That size also demands 16-bit files, because spreading only 256 levels across such a huge range produces visible banding. It should never be used for delivery, only as a working space.

Examples in practice

Heavy saturation adjustments on a sunset stay smooth in 16-bit ProPhoto and band badly in 8-bit.