PS colour space problems

El Kiwi

I've just started using Photoshop, previously I've done nearly all my work in Lightroom. I'm having a problem which is driving me crazy, it's described here and here.

Basically, when I have an image in PS and save it as a JPEG, the colours are totally off. You can see it here:



Image on the right is Photoshop, on the left is the same image in a web browser. I've followed all the advice from that first link, the image is in sRGB and my working space is sRGB. If I go Edit->Convert to profile, both source and target are sRGB. Absolutely everything is in sRGB.

I save the image, it looks good in Preview but like crap in a browser. If I load it in Lemke GraphicConverter, there's a little icon to show the image without the embedded profile, and if I click that, it looks like it does in the browser. So, it seems that PS is not really converting the actual pixels, it's just attaching a profile to the image.

What is going on? How can I fix this? Beer will be supplied to anyone who can explain this to me...

Duffy Pratt

I don't know what is causing your problem, but I have two suggestions that might work. If you are using Save for Web, then try using Save As... instead. Lots of people have had problems with Save for Web, but I doubt that's what is going on here. Even so, its quick and worth a try.

Second, you might try converting to grayscale before you go to .jpg. I don't see what the point is of having a finished B&W in RGB, unless your output device demands it. Grayscale should remove any ambiguities that have to do with colorspaces. If you then still have a problem, it might be easier to diagnose.

I hope this helps.

Duffy

LuckyBob

I've been perpetually frustrated by the same problem, so I can feel your pain

Duffy Pratt wrote:

Second, you might try converting to grayscale before you go to .jpg. I don't see what the point is of having a finished B&W in RGB, unless your output device demands it. Grayscale should remove any ambiguities that have to do with colorspaces. If you then still have a problem, it might be easier to diagnose.

Although I agree that converting to greyscale may remove color ambiguities, you can't actually save a greyscale image in JPEG format as it converts it back to RGB when it's saved. TIFF is the only format which seems to not force you to save a copy of the image (save for PSD/PDF), and saving a greyscale image as a JPEG copy attempts to force an ICC dot-gain profile on the saved image.

I've had fairly good luck with Save for Web via the following process: shoot raw, process into AdobeRGB, edit with LAB/RGB, Save for Web using the "Use Document Color Profile" option. It seems that the images are usually slightly desaturated, but I've kind of learned to adapt as I can't justify spending any more time comparing three images at once for color changes (Photoshop itself, Save for Web, and a web browser). If anybody has a definitive solution, I'd sure love to hear it!

DavidTO

Mac or PC?

El Kiwi

Sorry, some details:

Intel Mac, PS3 beta, external calibrated screen (although I'm 99.999% sure it's not a calibration problem since GraphicConverter allows me to switch between the two, and I took the screen shot below where they both appear on the same screen).

Thanks for the comments guys. It seems to happen identically whether I use Save for Web or just Save as. I've tried the "Use document colour profile" option, and I've tried the "merge colour profile into image" option from GraphicConverter. The curious thing is that when I open a particular one of the now many copies of this image in GC, it says the image has no colour profile, and shows it washed out. In the dialogue I select sRGB and suddenly it's good again. I save it using "Merge colour profile into image" and it *still* doesn't work. This is driving me nuts.

Edit: sorry, I just tried the "merge colour profile into image" option and it seems to work. I was delirious last night at 4am, it seems. But that's an annoying workflow... there must be a way to make PS do this.

DavidTO

Have you tried the recommendation in the last paragraph of this FAQ?

EDIT: I take that back, as I just tried it, and it made the whole display unbearably fugly. But the FAQ is a good read.

El Kiwi

DavidTO wrote:

EDIT: I take that back, as I just tried it, and it made the whole display unbearably fugly. But the FAQ is a good read.

Thanks - that is a good read. I noticed that when I looked at the image that PS produced using Safari it looked fine, and figured it was using the embedded profile. I use Camino (the same rendering engine as Firefox) as my browser, so I guess I'm getting a pretty good preview of what people really see. The thing that I really need to know is how to get PS to actually apply the profile to the pixel data rather than just attach the profile - you'd think that Use Document Colour Profile would do that, but I'd swear it didn't. Although my eyes were bleeding by that point and I'd been staring at various versions of the same image for hours, I can't guarantee it :-)

I need to fiddle around with this some more, but I'm away on holiday and don't have my laptop. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now this will drive me crazy till I fix it...