Having color issues when pics go online!

Weisel · July 20, 2010

I'm adding a photo here for evaluation. It's my first pin-up style photo, but that's beside the point. I have a question I hope someone (or more) can help with.

The colors....are all bright and happy, UNTIL I place it online. What the heck is going on here? This photo is popping with vibrant colors. The shoes SHOULD appear a meduim red. They are now subdued peachy once I place the photo online.

Is this some sort of RGB/windows issue? Also, when I open up the folder that holds both the TIFF that I use, and also the JPG I save as, it shows the two DIFFERENT versions in the thumbnail view of the folder contents.

I open them up in PS, and choose "use embedded colors" or whatever, but then when I save, it goes to dead colors.

I hope someone can comprehend my jibberish here, and help me. I have clients to send photos to, and a new website to open up next week, and my photos are all subdued in color suddenly. MAybe I clicked something wrong somewhere recently? I have only had this issue a day or two.

Thanks in advance.:confused

adbsgicom · July 20, 2010

What color space are you using in PS? The web uses sRGB so if you are editing and saving in proPhoto or AbobeRGB your colors (lots in the reds) will be off.

Weisel · July 20, 2010

adbsgicom wrote: »

What color space are you using in PS? The web uses sRGB so if you are editing and saving in proPhoto or AbobeRGB your colors (lots in the reds) will be off.

I'm set to sRGB in CS4. I haven't done any tweaking of preferences lately, so I don't know what is going on. Hmmmmmm

adbsgicom · July 20, 2010

Is your monitor a wide-gamut monitor? If so, I've found colors to be funky/flat in IE but not Safari. Safari matches much better to CS/LR than an image in IE. However, flash versions look better in IE... Go figure.
Can you download the image from the website? See if the bits have changed in any way.
Also see if the bits from a screen capture are right. Does the image look messed up from a screen capture via CS?

adbsgicom · July 20, 2010

FWIW, they are peachy on my monitor as well (in Safari on a wide-gamut, calibrated monitor). CS says 171, 112, 72 (RGB).
Oddly, I'm running proPhotoRGB and when I saved your image and opened it, CS didn't ask me if I wanted to covert. Are you sure you are running sRGB as your native color space?
-a

pathfinder · July 20, 2010

Check your color space profiles.

When I download your picture posted in this thread and open in PS, and check the color space it says ProPhoto not sRGB...... I believe it must read sRGB to be viewed correctly on the web. I am viewing it in Safari, so it looks ok, but Safari is profile/color space aware.

BradfordBenn · July 20, 2010

Also there are some good articles about color and color spaces in the SmugMug Blog

Weisel · July 20, 2010

I just doouble checked again, and my PS working space is set to sRGB.

OK, I just did something different. I tried opening the TIFF again, and when prompted this time, I selected "covert document's colors to the working space". I never use that option. Maybe I've done something different in my file transfer from Lightroom to PS. In fact, I think I may have. I may be answering my own question as I type this out. lol I will report back later. For now, I think this post should show the actual color of the photo.

adbsgicom · July 21, 2010

At my end, the two images are almost pixel for pixel identical.
I realized that the color sample I gave you was the coral background.

The shoes haven't changed much between the two. Just 1-2 out of 255. Perhaps that's all the more you needed.
The second one definitely had the sRGB profile attached, though.

Weisel · July 21, 2010

Then I don't know WHAt is up here! The two images I have posted on the thread are night and day apart on my monitor. Something on my computer has somehow been changed unintentionally. I have to figure it out then.

Is everyone else seeing none or almost no difference in these two photos above? The bottom one it totally popping with vibrant color on my screen, whle the top one is all dead and flat. Worlds apart.

hgernhardtjr · July 21, 2010

No ... I use what most people use, IE, and there IS a world of difference between the two. The second one you posted is vibrant and I am using a junky work monitor. The first one is "peachy" and not vibrant as you indicated.

If a photo is sRGB in final form, then everyone can view it properly, and that is what you want when posting to the web. Not many average people use colorspace aware software, all arguments on theoretical "correctness" of which browser/software to use aside.

pathfinder · July 21, 2010

Files that are housed in Lightroom are in ProPhoto, and pass to PS for external editing in ProPhoto unless you have made changes in your preferences. There is no reason to go to sRGB when transferring a file from LR to PS for external editing since you would be going to a much smaller gamut. The only reason to go to sRGB is for files destined for the web and web based printing services.

The second image is more colorful than the first as I see them on my iPad.

adbsgicom · July 21, 2010

Yikes!!!!
First image is what I see of the first post under IE.
Second image is your update under IE
Third is what I see under Safari.

All images captured, assigned my monitor profile then coverted sRGB for dumping.

Captures.jpg

This trio of images present identically between Safari and IE and have sRGB assigned as the profile....

Overfocused · July 21, 2010

Try your windows monitor color management. Even if PS and the document are sRGB your monitor could be displaying it all wrong at a system level. The 2 original posts look the same to me, although RGB numbers are very different. That's how it works for different profiles though.

Also, to retain accuracy going from Adobe RGB or another wide gamut profile to the internet, you have to convert to sRGB to retain as much accuracy as possible. Otherwise, like in your case, it gets puked on. Although everything here is calibrated so I haven't seen any puke except in that last comparison you posted.

rsquared · July 21, 2010

Weisel wrote: »

Then I don't know WHAt is up here! The two images I have posted on the thread are night and day apart on my monitor. Something on my computer has somehow been changed unintentionally. I have to figure it out then.

Is everyone else seeing none or almost no difference in these two photos above? The bottom one it totally popping with vibrant color on my screen, whle the top one is all dead and flat. Worlds apart.

People will or won't see any difference depending on which browser they use. You (and I) are not using a browser that knows anything about color spaces and such. Browsers that are color managed will see the first photo, see that it's in ProPhoto and displays it correctly. Browsers that aren't color managed don't read the color profile and display with the assumption that it's already sRGB. This is why it's so important to us sRGB, because otherwise, your photos will not look correct to anyone using a non-color managed browser.

(I believe both Firefox and Safari are color managed. IE and Chrome are not.)

Overfocused · July 21, 2010

rsquared wrote: »

People will or won't see any difference depending on which browser they use. You (and I) are not using a browser that knows anything about color spaces and such. Browsers that are color managed will see the first photo, see that it's in ProPhoto and displays it correctly. Browsers that aren't color managed don't read the color profile and display with the assumption that it's already sRGB. This is why it's so important to us sRGB, because otherwise, your photos will not look correct to anyone using a non-color managed browser.

(I believe both Firefox and Safari are color managed. IE and Chrome are not.)

Ah yeah then that's it. I'm using 3.6x and color management is on by default for sRGB

Weisel · July 22, 2010

Now I'm just confused. I will have to keep reading what you guys have written, and see if I can find the issue, if I still even have one. I am in sRGB in PS. I save final photo as JPG. That should be all I do right??

rsquared · July 22, 2010

You got things right the second time around. Your PS is set to sRGB, but you were bringing in a ProPhoto tiff, and not converting it to the PS working space. So when you saved the jpg, it kept the ProPhoto working space.

adbsgicom · July 22, 2010

FWIW, I keep LR and PS in ProPhoto. I do all export to jpeg from LR and tell it to set the colorspace to sRGB.
Do make sure your monitor is calibrated, it is worth the effort.

Overfocused · July 22, 2010

Weisel wrote: »

Now I'm just confused. I will have to keep reading what you guys have written, and see if I can find the issue, if I still even have one. I am in sRGB in PS. I save final photo as JPG. That should be all I do right??

When you export JPGs convert to sRGB

Mnemosyne · July 22, 2010

Overfocused wrote: »

When you export JPGs convert to sRGB

Also, make sure you choose the option to CONVERT to profile, not assign profile. I made that mistake when I was starting out, till my dad got on me about it

Spent a whole evening trying to figure out why they looked like crap online, till we figured out that I was assigning the profile, and not converting it.

Weisel · July 23, 2010

THANKS guys and girls. Yes, this solves the issue. I simply needed to be sure to convert color profile when I send them from LR to PS.

I'm still a tad new-ish as a LR user, and I had recently changed to way I bounce a file from LR to PS. That was the whole issue, and now I know. Thanks again for the help. Gotta love good advice. Peace.

adbsgicom · July 23, 2010

If you can afford the disk space, keep the data in proPhoto / tiff formats in both. That way if you go back to edit later you don't have recursion of the compression. Use LR to do your export to jpeg and conversion to sRGB. You can still convert/export from CS, but you don't convert on the way in, you convert on the way out to a jpeg.

Weisel · July 23, 2010

adbsgicom wrote: »

If you can afford the disk space, keep the data in proPhoto / tiff formats in both. That way if you go back to edit later you don't have recursion of the compression. Use LR to do your export to jpeg and conversion to sRGB. You can still convert/export from CS, but you don't convert on the way in, you convert on the way out to a jpeg.

Yeah I never go to JPG until it's a finished photo. I work in TIFF only, after RAW of course. I never save to JPG until the end.

Having color issues when pics go online!

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