PS Elements Questions - Colorspace Conversion

Andy

OK this is from the help desk files.

What are the color-space assigning / converting options in PSE? Customer has aRGB file, he's converted it in PSE to sRGB, I converted it in PS CS2. No other mods made to the images.

here's the gallery, look at the first three imgs in the gallery.
http://paulbaker.smugmug.com/gallery/894276/

So, PSE-ers - can anyone explain? :ear

Thanks in advance.

jfriend

Converting to sRGB in PSE

Andy wrote:

OK this is from the help desk files.

What are the color-space assigning / converting options in PSE? Customer has aRGB file, he's converted it in PSE to sRGB, I converted it in PS CS2. No other mods made to the images.

here's the gallery, look at the first three imgs in the gallery.
http://paulbaker.smugmug.com/gallery/894276/

So, PSE-ers - can anyone explain?

Thanks in advance.

I'm not entirely sure I understand what you are asking. According to the captions in the gallery, the first image was posted as aRGB. The second image had the profile removed and then had sRGB assigned to it in PSE. That is NOT converting it from aRGB to sRGB. That's like assigning it to sRGB in CS2. You will get exactly the same result in a browser on the web as if you just uploaded the aRGB file to smugmug and let the color-space-blind browser assume it was sRGB. That's why it's a lot more washed out than the one you actually converted in CS2 and why the first two look the same. The third one has actually been converted and looks a lot more vibrant.

I used PSE2 and PSE3 for years (I now use CS2). PSE does not officially support color space conversion. If PSE is the photo editor of choice for a user, IMO, they should ONLY shoot in sRGB.

There are several hacks that will let you do an actual conversion (not assignment) in PSE. The one I can remember is to take an aRGB and copy it to the clipboard. Then, make a new empty image and paste in the clipboard contents. Elements will make a new empty image in sRGB. Then when you paste in the aRGB contents from the clipboard, PSE is smart enough to realize that the clipboard has to be converted to sRGB before it can be pasted in so it will do the conversion for you automatically.

There are likely some other hacks too - I'll look around in a Google search to see if I find any others.

jfriend

Perhaps PSE4 can officially convert to sRGB

jfriend wrote:

There are likely some other hacks too - I'll look around in a Google search to see if I find any others.

Here's a blog entry on the hack I already described.

Here's another description of that work-around at earthboundlight and a reference that says that PSE4 actually now officially has the ability to convert between aRGB and sRGB, though I wasn't able to find confirmation of that anywhere and I don't have PSE4.

Andy

Can anyone with PSE4 answer this please? Thanks