Recently calibrated... now have color mis-match. Help?

Julia · December 20, 2007

OK, so I Googled this, and found others with the exact same thing from 2005, but nowhere did I find what the person did to remedy the situation.

I've searched here for about 10 minutes and am not finding what I need. If I missed a thread about this completely, feel free to bonk me on the head (but point me in the right direction first!)

I recently (finally) calibrated my laptop with the Eye-One Display 2. I was pretty pleased with some holiday cards I had printed thru WHCC when I compared them to my screen. Looked like all was well.

I just opened a brand new fresh out of the camera image, and it is signficantly more magenta and saturated in PS CS than it shows in my FastStone image viewer. :scratch

My monitor is set to the newly calibrated profile and I'm using [SIZE=-1]Working RGB - sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as my working space. There must be a conflict somewhere.

How do I "fix" it? I assume it's something in PS... I tried switching color management from "convert to working RGB" to "preseve embedded" but that didn't seem to do anything.

Help?

Many thanks,

Julia
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arodney · December 20, 2007

Julia wrote:

I just opened a brand new fresh out of the camera image, and it is signficantly more magenta and saturated in PS CS than it shows in my FastStone image viewer.

Sounds like whatever FastSone is, its not color managed. What you're seeing now in Photoshop IS the correct representation of the color numbers so it sounds like yes, they may be too magenta.

Julia · December 20, 2007

Right - I didn't think the image viewer was color managed. But man, my photos look downright awful in Photoshop. :cry So, there's nothing I'm doing wrong then, in PS. That was my concern.

I guess I'll recalibrate again and see where that gets me... thanks!

arodney · December 20, 2007

Julia wrote:

Right - I didn't think the image viewer was color managed. But man, my photos look downright awful in Photoshop. :cry So, there's nothing I'm doing wrong then, in PS. That was my concern.

I guess I'll recalibrate again and see where that gets me... thanks!

IF you setup Photoshop correctly (and profiled the display correctly), then the numbers shown there are correct. They may look ugly, but they are correctly being displayed.

Check that the documents you're viewing in Photoshop have an embedded profile for one. Check your color settings.

Julia · December 20, 2007

:bash I re-calibrated, and it's still awful looking.

In order to not waste your time, I googled around some more, and actually stumbled onto some posts from you to someone on photo.net back in 06. Ha!

I know this is the right thing to do, but I gotta say, I'm frustrated. How on earth do you edit a photo that looks SO horrendous in PS? But is "correct"? The camera is shooting in sRGB, I'm in [SIZE=-1]sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as my PS working space...[/SIZE]

I gotta work on this... I guess it's not calibrating as well as it should be.

arodney · December 20, 2007

You have to determine if the calibration is sound and the images are not.

Go to my site, download the Printer Test File which has an embedded profile (ColorMatch RGB). Open in Photoshop. Does it look OK? If so, (neutrals look neutral, skin tones look good etc) then your display and profile and Photoshop settings are OK and you're viewing the ugly documents as they really appear.

Icebear · December 20, 2007

Why aren't you shooting RAW
Shoot RAW and the color space setting on your camera has no effect on the image. At least you'll know what's coming out of the camera isn't in "conflict" with something else. You are talking about your 40D right?.

Icebear · December 20, 2007

Uh-oh
I may have mis-read your post. You didn't say you had your CAMERA set on sRGB, but your PS working space. Anyway, maybe you are shooting RAW. In which case, sorry for my dumass comment.:confused

Julia · December 20, 2007

Camera is set on sRGB according to the menu, and the images I'm looking at were on RAW + jpeg. The image I currently have up on my screen is a jpeg.

Yes, talking about the 40D. (Which is why I can't believe how atocious the photos look, because I'm still in the "new owner bliss" phase of how much nicer the shots are straight out of the camera relative to my old XT.

)

I recalibrated another time (I've previously been using the "laptop" option as it is a laptop, instead of CRT or LCD) and tried LCD just for funsies. Still came out with essentially the same results. I'm in a living room with relatively low ambient light - no bright crazy lighting.

So confusing.

I'm off to your site next, Andrew!!

Julia · December 20, 2007

Well, the skin tones look ok to me... the colors are REALLY really bright. Very pumped up looking. And the girl's shirt is REALLY bright magenta.

What does that tell me?

arodney · December 20, 2007

Julia wrote:

Well, the skin tones look ok to me... the colors are REALLY really bright. Very pumped up looking. And the girl's shirt is REALLY bright magenta. What does that tell me?

well you don't have a print to compare so its hard to say if the lumiance is too high. What Cd/m2 did you calibrate to?

That it doesn't look magenta tells me, your originals ARE too magenta.

Julia · December 20, 2007

I did a luminance of 90, white point 6500, gamma 2.2.

arodney · December 20, 2007

Julia wrote:

I did a luminance of 90, white point 6500, gamma 2.2.

If that's an LCD, that's pretty darn low. For CRT, fine.

Native Gamma and White point would be worthwhile. But it doesn't appear that the calibration is an issue.

Julia · December 20, 2007

OK... that sounds promising. It's a laptop, so LCD. I'll keep playing...

It just boggles my mind that a brand new camera would give me crappy color.

Anything I can do to fix it? Restore factory settings? (It's only a handful of weeks old.)

arodney · December 20, 2007

Julia wrote:

OK... that sounds promising. It's a laptop, so LCD. I'll keep playing...

For a Laptop, 95-100 cd/m2 is probably more appropriate (or whatever Match suggests for a default).

Julia · December 20, 2007

90 was the recommended default.

:uhoh I'm not having any luck. I'll just keep trying... I've had prints printed from this camera that looked great to me, pre-calibration, and they looked pretty much the same onscreen. So, this is mindboggling... I just want to do the right thing.

jfriend · December 21, 2007

Julia wrote:

90 was the recommended default.

:uhoh I'm not having any luck. I'll just keep trying... I've had prints printed from this camera that looked great to me, pre-calibration, and they looked pretty much the same onscreen. So, this is mindboggling... I just want to do the right thing.

What OS are you running?

This is a shot in the dark, but if this is Windows, one thing to check for is to make sure that you don't have multiple applications trying to manage your screen profile and load the monitor calibration. On my system, there are four apps that could be doing that:

Adobe Gamma
My video driver
Windows Vista
My monitor calibration software

You need to make absolutely sure that there is only one app that is managing your profile so it's not getting doubly loaded. One thing to look for is to watch the boot up process. You should see the colors on your screen change just once when the monitor profile is loaded. You should not see it change twice or more (when a second app is also loading it).

Other things to check:

Is Adobe Gamma getting loaded in your startup folder? You don't want it running.
Is your video driver trying to load the profile in addition to your monitor calibration software?
When you run msconfig.exe and look at the startup apps that are running, do you see anything you think maybe shouldn't be there?
Do you have a local printer connected to your PC that you trust for good output (e.g. you've gotten good output from it before that was close to your screen)? If so, how do those prints compare to your current screen?

Icebear · December 21, 2007

Camera settings
Because you're shooting RAW & jpeg, and looking at the jpeg image, you might also go back to your camera settings. I'm more familiar with Nikon, but maybe you have your Canon set to some jpeg treatment that's doing this to you. These settings would only affect the jpeg.

Why don't you view the RAW file and see if you have the same craziness. Andrew and John know what they're talking about, but maybe they're trying to solve the wrong problem. You could get lucky.

John

Julia · December 21, 2007

Thanks jfriend!!!

All right, I made a LITTLE bit of progress last night. I researched enough to learn about double profiling last night, so yes, I had removed the Adobe Gamma from my start up folder.

That seems like it might have helped.

I also used the native white point and native gamma - which also seems to have contributed to making it better.

I'm running XP. My laptop has been WONDERFUL to me, but it's probably about 5 years old now... I'm debating updating the video driver to see if that helps, but what I read about the update is that I also have to update something on the mother board as well. So I'm putting that off for the moment.

I don't believe anything else is conflicting... I do not have a printer plugged in, though I did read enough about double profiling when printing too, so I know to turn off color mangement when I do print (which is rare.) My Canon Pixma did give a decent respresentation... I haven't printed since this whole nonsense - I'm more concerned at the moment with the magenta cast on my screen.

I also installed the windows color applet... it currently says my default Windows color space is [SIZE=-1]sRGB IEC61966-2.1. Is that supposed to say the most recent ICC profile I created? That profile IS listed in the next tab over under profiles...

When I look under Adobe Gamma, all it says is "Adobe Monitor Profile." Should it say something different? It won't let me load the most recent calibrated ICC profile saying it's not a legal RGB display profile.

And thanks IceBear! I'm only able to view RAW pics through the Canon software... and they look fine. (But so do the jpegs in the Canon program.

)

I can't tell you all how much I appreciate the advice and suggestions... got any more?

Julia

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Recently calibrated... now have color mis-match. Help?

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