What is Lab Color in Photoshop

What is Lab Color in Photoshop

If you’re a photographer or graphic designer like me, you’ve probably heard of RGB and CMYK colors. RGB stands for Red, Green, Bue, and it’s a color mode commonly used for screen displays. CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) is often used in print artwork.

If the Lab color mode sounds a bit new that’s ok. Lab stands for Lightness, channel a, and channel b. It’s a global color model where you can specify any color by giving numeric values across these three different channels to edit image colors. 

I’ve been working in the graphic design industry for over ten years and I manipulate images just as much as I create graphics. Photos never look exactly the same as the actual object, that’s why we always need to touch up the photos to make them look as similar as the original as possible.  

In this article, you will have a better understanding of what lab color is, how it works, and two quick ways to change image color to lab color mode in Photoshop. 

Keep reading. 

Quick Facts about Lab Color 

1. Lab Color is used for many things outside the realms of photography, digital & print to specify colors because of its accuracy.

2. It is used widely across industries such as the automotive industry, the textile industry, and more because it has a wider color gamut than RGB and CMYK.

3. Lab Color is used as the global color mode that can be matched with all the rest. A business that needs to match its brand color in print, digital, textile, paint color, etc could use lab color values to make sure its brand color stays the same across multiple applications.

4. Unlike the other color modes there is no output from Lab Color, whatever the item it would need to be changed into a different color mode for output – such as CMYK if it were to be printed.

How It Works

Most of our color modes are based on how much of a certain color is needed to be displayed for a certain device. 

For example, RGB shows how much Red, Green, and Blue need to be displayed to show the correct color on a digital screen and CMYK values show how much color is needed for a four-color print. 

The Lab color mode is designed to approximate human vision. How much color there is on the green to red axis combined with how much color there is on the blue to yellow axis, combined with a lightness value from light to dark. 

2 Ways to Change Image Color to Lab Color in Photoshop

There are two quick ways that you can change an image color mode from the overhead menu in Photoshop. Let’s look at an example of this blueberry image. 

Note: Screenshots are taken from Adobe Photoshop CC 2021 Mac version. Windows or other versions might look slightly different. 

1. Image > Mode > Lab Color

The same as the screenshot shows, go to the overhead menu Image > Mode > Lab Color. 

2. Edit > Convert to Profile > Lab Color

Maybe you’re not working on an image and still want to change the color mode. You can go to Edit > Convert to Profile and a window will pop up. Change the Profile setting to Lab Color and click OK.

When an image is in Lab color mode in Photoshop, you will see 3 models working together in the Channels panel. The top channel Lab shows all channels working together and below it is split into the other 3 channels of Lightness, a and b.

If you don’t see the Channels panel on the right side of your Photoshop document, go to Windows > Channels.

The Lightness Channel holds all the information for how light or dark the image is, so it has no color information at all. Looking at this channel is very much like looking at the grayscale version of an image going from values of 0 which is black and 100 white.

By turning off the visibility (eye icon) next to the channels you will be able to see each channel as a larger view on the canvas.

Channel A is responsible for color information on a scale from green to red. When other channels are hidden, channel A would look something like this. 

For example, I want to see what channel a looks like with Lightness, so I hide channel b, only showing Lightness and channel a

Channel b is responsible for color information on a scale that goes from blue to yellow. Channel b by itself looks like this. 

If I hide channel A and keep the Lightness on, the image will look like this.

Now when all channels are visible, you’ll see the image in much vivid color. 

Conclusion

Nice colors make a big difference in visual effects, and different color modes deliver different visual effects. Lab Color Space has a larger range of colors that allows you to enhance color in photos, and make them more vibrant and lively in a way that you just can’t do in RGB or CMYK. 

About June
June is an experienced graphic designer specializing in brand design. Photoshop is the essential tool that she uses every day along with other Adobe programs for her creative work.

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  • Keith Koch

    only one question – if the lab gmut is larger than cmyk how can lab colors be printed in cmyk?

    Reply
    • June

      Hi Keith, from what I understand, Lab color covers a larger range, including the CMYK colors.

      Reply
    • Jose Correa

      Hi Keith,

      CMYK does not encode the colors contained in the Lab space. Values ??on channels A and B above +70 and below –60 are typically out of print gamut (CMYK). Therefore, you must take these parameters into account when treating images in Lab mode.

      Reply