Epson printers and the color space

[Helvegr]

Hi -

I have just recently started to actually understand the relationships between the different color spaces like sRGB, Adobe RGB, and PhotoPro.

Currently my workflow has me shooting RAW, into Lightroom and Photoshop when needed. All of this happens within the PhotoPro color space.

Now when I upload images to smugmug, I know they are turned into high quality JPEGs, and assigned an sRGB color profile. This is the profile required by post commercial printers (I read this in SmugMug help).

However I was recently watching a video regarding printing on some Epson printers like the Stylus Pro 3880. I got the impression that these inkjet printers can actually print beyond the sRGB color space.

So if I wanted the absolute best print, with as many colors as I could possibly get, would I need to print directly from photoshop/lightroom to these printers?

Can the differences even be seen to the human eye?

Or is it just that sRGB prints come out very good, and the convenience of online printing, simply makes that the best choice in general?

Sorry for the rambling questions, but I'm not 100% I understand the print process when it comes to color space.

Thanks!

[colourbox]

You are most of the way there. Keep your originals in ProPhoto RGB, which is done automatically for you if you're in Lightroom.

When exporting to Smugmug, just set the output profile to sRGB in the Lightroom Export dialog or Photoshop Save for Web dialog.
When printing to the Epson 3880, just set the printer profile to the correct combo of 3880+paper profile.

That's really it. Since both only change the profile for the output copy, you don't mess up your originals. You leave those in ProPhoto.

The benefits of larger color spaces are not cut and dried. What is important is that if you are aiming for highest quality, you should go beyond sRGB, but you'll only realize the benefits if you didn't compromise color quality at any of the other steps of your process. You might see a difference between sRGB and a larger color space if you shot raw, process well, print glossy on nice exhibition paper, edit in 16-bit, and if your photo has colors that extend beyond the borders of sRGB. With certain images you may get even more out of your 3880 if you also turn on 16-bit printing and 2880 dpi. But you have to have the high-quality source material.