What am I doing wrong? PhotoShop Colour Question.

salazar

I've tried to sort this out before, back in thread http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=55201 but couldn't figure out what I'm doing wrong so I'm asking you all again. Attached below is a photo that has been opened with Photoshop, downsized using "Image Size" from the drop down menu, and re saved as a JPEG and posted to dgrin. No other post processing has been done. Below that is a screen capture showing it open in Photoshop and in dgrin at the same time. The way it looks on dgrin is the way it looks in Google's Picasa2, or Microsoft Photo Editor, or Microsoft Explorer or anything else I can think of to try. Why is there such a difference between how an image looks in Photoshop and how it looks in anything else? Any ideas? I'm perplexed. Help!

salazar

The Camera is Canon 40D, set to sRGB, the file is a JPEG straight from the camera with no post processing except for resizing in Photoshop CS3. Don't let the "RAW" in the file name throw you off, it is a JPEG as you can see more clearly in the next post. As you may imagine, this makes colour correction in Photoshop useless on this computer as I always have to shift the colour temperature to the warm side and bump the saturation too much so it will look right on the web. All guess work though. Photoshop doesn't actually change the file, it just looks different in Photoshop than it does in any other software on this computer. This is making me crazy!

salazar

Here is a better view of what it looks like in Photoshop CS3. This is a screen capture saved in MS Photo Editor as a JPEG. It looks the same in Bridge (either version) and in CS2 on this computer. I haven't tried this on another computer as this is the only one I have Photoshop on. Actually, I have CS2 on one at work and I don't think this happens there, I'll have to check that tomorrow.

salazar

Here are the colour settings from CS3. These are the default settings I think. I din't remember changing anything here:

salazar

Here is a crappy photo of the settings on the 40D:

arodney

salazar wrote:

Why is there such a difference between how an image looks in Photoshop and how it looks in anything else? Any ideas? I'm perplexed. Help!

Because Photoshop is color managed and all the other applications you're talking about are not. Photoshop is correct. The others are not.

Do a search, this 'issue' is discussed here at least once a week.

salazar

arodney wrote:

Because Photoshop is color managed and all the other applications you're talking about are not. Photoshop is correct. The others are not.

Do a search, this 'issue' is discussed here at least once a week.

arodney, if the information in this reply is correct, then how does one use Photoshop to edit a photo to post to dgrin? I'm obviously missing something, perhaps some silly little thing. As you can see from the posts above, a image posted in dgrin looks very different than the image looks in Photoshop. So what do you do? Over saturate and push it to the warm side and hope for the best? It doesn't make sense to me - or I'm not understanding you. Please try explain it to me a little more clearly as I'm not comprehending what is happening here.

Also, I'd be happy to do a search in dgrin but could you suggest a search term that will point me to threads that discuss this problem please?

arodney

salazar wrote:

If the information in this reply is correct, then how does one use Photoshop to edit a photo to post to dgrin? As you can see from the posts above, a post in dgrin looks very different than the image looks in Photoshop. So what do you do?

For web viewing, you need a browser that treats images correctly as Photoshop does. You can count that number on one finger on the Windows platform.

As for searching and the issues discussed, there is this:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=74962

salazar

Interesting, I've just installed Safari Beta 3 on this machine.

I tried Safari on this page: http://www.gballard.net/psd/srgbforwww.html# and it seems to be managing colour in a way that IE7 did not, but still not in the way Photoshop is. Clicking on the top image on the linked page, mousing over the image and simply viewing the image result in virtually no difference in Safari, the same can't be said for IE7. In IE7 there are very noticable differences between the three possible views.

Even with Safari, the images I've posted in dgrin still don't look like they do in Photoshop. Perhaps my problem isn't with IE7 and it's inability to use colour information as everything looks the pretty much the same in Safari as it does in IE7. The difference between the browser and Photoshop is much greater than the difference between the browsers. The problem didn't go away.

I've got to do some more reading and think about this a bit more.

01af

Well ... first guess was, 'just another case of mindlessly mis-using AdobeRGB.' But obviously you didn't shoot using AdobeRGB. So the next guess is: monitor profile. Do you have a monitor profile installed? If so, go into the Display settings in the Control Panel and toss it out.

Under Windows, using a monitor profile will only make sense as long as you are using colour-managed software exclusively. If you're mixing colour-managed (e. g. Photoshop) and non-colour-managed software (e. g. ordinary web browsers), or if you're preparing images for others to look at through non-colour-managed viewers/browsers, then you mustn't use monitor profiles ... or you'd have to switch to Mac (there's a reason why most graphic pros are using Mac, not Windows).

-- Olaf

salazar

Problem Fixed!
Well, well, well... First of all I'd like to thank everyone who helped, who made suggestions and pointed me toward what to check and what to read, both in this thread and in my last attempt at sorting this out. Especially Andrew Rodney (arodney), who helped me realise that this was actually a calibration issue and pointed me off onto a direction that ultimately helped me solve this dilemma. And Harvey Levine who reinforced Andrew's concepts. And 01af who suggested I try deleting the monitor profiles in my Display Properties. And to the others who tried to help the last time I tried to sort this out, Shay, Pathfinder, gefillmore, nikos, jdryan3, john_pobre.

Man, that was a lot of reading. And I have a lot more to do yet. And B&H is a little happier as they were able to sell me an Eye-One Display 2 which is now in transit. :ivar

My problem is now fixed. I can now view an image in Photoshop, edit it as necessary, save it, and then post it to the web have it look the way it did in Photoshop. That is not something I was able to do up to now. And that was aggravating. More than aggravating. Can you imagine having a full CS2 or 3 suite and not have any confidence in what you create with it? I ended up using Picasa2 all summer as Photoshop was useless to me.

I'm not entirely sure how I fixed the problem as I tried so many things along the way... Perhaps It was ultimately using Adobe Gama to eyeball a monitor profile that will have to do till the Eye-One arrives. Or perhaps it was deleting the monitor profiles (which magically reappeared??). Perhaps they were corrupted? I'm not sure but it works now so I can use Photoshop and get results I'm happy with that look goo on the web.

Whew. Thanks again everyone! This dgrin community is a fabulous resource. I, for one, am very happy you're all out there. Peace.