Windows Print Screen / Screen Capture Color Management

JKLionheart

I'm working in LR2 and I did a print screen showing the compare view (before/after) in order to show a friend the difference in post-processing. All I did was hit Print Screen and opened PS CS4 to paste the screen capture. When I do though, the colors are significantly cooler (lower color temp) and lower in contrast than what I see in LR2. As far as I understand, both LR2 and PS CS4 should be reading my monitor's color profile and should be consistent. The screen capture is a bitmap as far as I know, so it should also preserve a high level of detail and quality, though I'm not sure if it ignores color somehow... I can't even screen cap to really show you guys.

So I guess the question is... why is pasting the screen cap in PS CS4 not showing me the same colors as LR2 on the same monitor? :dunno

I did a quick search on color management discussions so hopefully this isn't a redundant thread. Thanks in advance!

BinaryFx

In Photoshop, manually assign your monitor profile to the screen cap, rather than using the default working RGB (which should not be your monitor profile).


Best,

Stephen Marsh

http://binaryfx.customer.netspace.net.au/ (coming soon!)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

JKLionheart

BinaryFx wrote: »

In Photoshop, manually assign your monitor profile to the screen cap, rather than using the default working RGB (which should not be your monitor profile).


Best,

Stephen Marsh

http://binaryfx.customer.netspace.net.au/ (coming soon!)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

That was almost too obvious, but color management still boggles my mind. Thanks Stephen, I'll try it tonight!

JKLionheart

So I tried two things:

1) Changed View->Proof Setup to "Monitor RGB" which made the colors match what I saw in LR2 when I viewed the screen cap in PS. But saving the file puts it back to sRGB which shifts the colors back to dull and contrast-less.

2) I went to Edit->Assign Profile and forced my monitor profile to the photo, and saved it. This time I could view the photo in Windows Photo Viewer with the appropriate color (Windows Photo Viewer DOES read color profiles in Win7). But I cannot upload this file to Smugmug because it's expecting sRGB, and shows the color profile under Info as "unknown".

So in the end I still want to save a screen cap in the sRGB color space that properly reflects the colors I'm looking at on my calibrated monitor.

I know this is a topic that's probably been addressed a billion times, so I do appreciate the patience of anyone willing to enlighten me.

BinaryFx

After you assign your monitor profile to the screen cap, next convert to profile - sRGB and save the JPEG including the sRGB profile.


Stephen Marsh

http://binaryfx.customer.netspace.net.au/ (coming soon!)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/