Photoshop - Having Colour Matching Problems

Jase

Jase

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I'm having problems at the moment with colours not matching

I took a few photo's today (with a Canon 40D) and started editing in Photoshop CS4, I got one of the photo's to what I wanted and then saved to a jpg to email. That' when I noticed the photos look totally different outside of Photoshop ie on a webpage, picture viewers etc. It's really not even close and appears over saturated etc.

In Photoshop I am using a colour settings :

Settings : North America General Purpose 2

Working Spaces :

RGB: sRGB IEC061966-2.1
CMYK: U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2
Gray: Dot Gain 20%
Spot: Dot Gain 20%

Color Management Policies : all set : Preserve Embedded Profiles

I haven't had this problem before and not sure if I've accidently changed some settings or something. I've been through all I can think of but no luck.

I have and use an Eye-One Display 2 monitor calibrator, not sure what else I can tell you.

Here's a screen capture of the comparison I did from Paint.

Compare

Any help appreciated

Jase
 
Hi Jase,
The two samples look identical on my monitor (mac/calibrated).

I think you should ideally use european settings unless you have a need for US ones. Not the problem here though.

I think it's just due to various browsers honoring the profiles or not. Some use them and some don't.

Graham
 
Chaz Photos said:
in CS4 what have you got set up for Proff?
The screen one looks more sat to me Richer Blues and more Green
Click to expand...

I have "Proof Setup" set to : Working CMYK

Not sure if that' what you mean though ?


Just to clarify, in the compare shot, the one on left is from outside of photoshop and one on right is inside photoshop.

I've also just downloaded a Stock Portrait Photo, and the same thing...

I'd say the photo's have a less saturated apearance in Photoshop compared with viewing outside say on web, picture viewer etc.
 
Jase, this is a classic case of viewing an image in managed and unmanaged apps. Photoshop is reading the profile from your monitor and adjusting the display colours accordingly. The other apps aren't managing colours so the results look different.

Assuming the profile attached to your monitor is from the driver install or from a calibration device then trust the colours you see in Photoshop and accept that other apps will display them wrong because they're not managed.

edit to add: Note that you have h/w calibrated so photoshop will be showing the right colours :thumbs:
 
pxl8 said:
Jase, this is a classic case of viewing an image in managed and unmanaged apps. Photoshop is reading the profile from your monitor and adjusting the display colours accordingly. The other apps aren't managing colours so the results look different.

Assuming the profile attached to your monitor is from the driver install or from a calibration device then trust the colours you see in Photoshop and accept that other apps will display them wrong because they're not managed.

edit to add: Note that you have h/w calibrated so photoshop will be showing the right colours :thumbs:
Click to expand...
Sorry but if you calibrate your monitor then all should look correct Windows loads the profile for it on start up
 
Chaz Photos said:
got to View Custom and Set Proof to Working RGB
See if this makes it differant
Click to expand...

There's no option for Working RGB, but choosing Monitor RGB the colours match as shown on web to what's in photoshop.

Apparently the Windows "Picture & fax Viewer" adds contrast (not sure if it's a bug) so that could explain that part. Strange why I've only now noticed.

Anyway... next question then...

Should the proof setup be "Working CMYK" or set to "Monitor RGB" ?
 
Chaz Photos said:
Sorry but if you calibrate your monitor then all should look correct Windows loads the profile for it on start up
Click to expand...

The monitor might be calibrated, but photoshop goes one further and uses the embedded profile to adjust the colours to a known output value. The system does not.

Graham
 
Chaz Photos said:
Sorry but if you calibrate your monitor then all should look correct Windows loads the profile for it on start up
Click to expand...

:nono:

Calibration is setting the white point, etc. whereas profiling is reading the colours and creating the .icc profile which is then read by colour aware apps to adjust display colours.

Not all apps do this which is why Jase is seeing a difference between apps. The picture viewer in XP isn't colour managed for example, nor is IE6/7/8.
 
pxl8 said:
:nono:

Calibration is setting the white point, etc. whereas profiling is reading the colours and creating the .icc profile which is then read by colour aware apps to adjust display colours.

Not all apps do this which is why Jase is seeing a difference between apps. The picture viewer in XP isn't colour managed for example, nor is IE6/7/8.
Click to expand...

Look they said "Eye-One Display 2 monitor calibrator" this is Colour Profiling so not white point it makes a ICC profile for the display so will show Corect in Windows which is where teh profiling is done any how.
Its all about making Photoshop show it correct
 
Chaz Photos said:
Look they said "Eye-One Display 2 monitor calibrator" this is Colour Profiling so not white point it makes a ICC profile for the display so will show Corect in Windows which is where teh profiling is done any how.
Its all about making Photoshop show it correct
Click to expand...

Windows isn't colour managed, yes it will let you assign a profile to a device but it's down to the applications to read that profile and act upon it. Photoshop is reading the profile, picture viewer is not. It really is as simple as that.
 
pxl8 said:
Windows isn't colour managed, yes it will let you assign a profile to a device but it's down to the applications to read that profile and act upon it. Photoshop is reading the profile, picture viewer is not. It really is as simple as that.
Click to expand...

Sorry but I have to disagree with you In Photoshop you can set it to use any profile you wish from monitor to your paper.
 
Chaz Photos said:
Sorry but I have to disagree with you In Photoshop you can set it to use any profile you wish from monitor to your paper.
Click to expand...

:bang:

That's "soft proofing" which is a quick way to get a rough idea of how the image will look on a device other than your monitor. When proofing is turned off photoshop is managing colours for your display by default. Telling it to proof for your monitor profile will make no difference to the display colours.

edit to add: Setting proof to Working RGB in effect disables colour management which will make the display match unmanaged apps such as IE6, picture viewer but there's no point calibrating/profiling your display and then turning it off!
 
It's as simple as I said it was - Photoshop is showing the correct colours, the other apps are not. Photoshop is colour managed, the other apps are not.
 
Cheers guys, could someone just clarify though, when editing should the proof setting be : Monitor RGB with Proof colours ticked ?

I'm guessing that is the case now but just to be sure.

I've been trying to learn all the keyboard short cuts over the past few days so I probably changed a few things with wrong keys without realising.

This is the picture I was working on earlier, I'll try to finish what I started now :)

cas.jpg
 
Proof to Monitor/Working RGB turns off colour management so no, you shouldn't have that set unless you want an idea of how the image will look on an unmanaged system.
 
pxl8 said:
Proof to Monitor/Working RGB turns off colour management so no, you shouldn't have that set unless you want an idea of how the image will look on an unmanaged system.
Click to expand...


Thanks, What should it be set to then ??



also thanks for the link, some bedtime reading :)
 
Proof is used when you want to check how the image will look when output to another device, a printer for example. When you need to do that you can select Custom... and having gotten the right profile for the device you can select it and then photoshop will adjust the display colours to simulate the device.

This post: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=1173559&postcount=12

gives an example of proofing a red gradient in the profile for DS Colour Lab's Fuji Frontier printer.
 
pxl8 said:
Proof is used when you want to check how the image will look when output to another device, a printer for example. When you need to do that you can select Custom... and having gotten the right profile for the device you can select it and then photoshop will adjust the display colours to simulate the device.

This post: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=1173559&postcount=12

gives an example of proofing a red gradient in the profile for DS Colour Lab's Fuji Frontier printer.
Click to expand...

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.

I do not have a 'calibrated' monitor, apart from me using a colour test chart from the printers (ds colour labs) and I have adjusted my PS settings to suit my preferred printers settings.

Now WISIWIG.

pxl8 knows his stuff.
 
Thanks again.

I'm still having problems getting my head around this, I can understand needing to match profiles for printers etc. What I can't understand is the general setting I should be using ie "Working CMYK" ?? or is it something else. If you we're editing a photo for example, the final use was not known, it might be printed, might be just used for showing off on the web, what would you be using ?

You said "Proof to Monitor/Working RGB turns off colour management so no", which ones use the color management ?

Also there are some really nice photos posted on the forums, I saved one for example and opened in photoshop, no other embeded profile just the straight sRGB. Now the picture looks different in photoshop than it does on my web browser, how would you know which was the intended colour from the poster... head's hurting now :)
 
CMYK is for print. You would only convert to cmyk if you intended to print it out using a commercial printer. You will lose a lot of the saturated colours if you use it because it is a much smaller gamut (you have to make the colours up out of cyan, magenta, yellow and key [black]).

For the screen, you SHOULD be using an RGB profile. The vast majority of people viewing your pictures will be using non-calibrated screens and ignoring any profile you embed. You want to see it without any profiles at all.

It is somewhat a lottery what other people see, but the best you can hope for it that it looks good on your calibrated monitor. You will soon get told if your pics look awful!

Try not to stress it as you can't control what people see no matter what you do.

Graham
 
Colour management is like language translation. The image might be written in english but your monitor and printer have their own language. The Eye One examines your monitor and finds out it speaks french. Colour aware applications such as photoshop can then take this knowledge to translate from one to the other. This holds true for any "device", as long as you know what language it speaks you can translate the image to it consistently.

This means two people with different monitors can both look at the same image and "see" the same colours which is the aim of colour management - consistent colour across devices. Your monitor might be german whilst mine is french. Photoshop can take the english image and translate it to either and it will look the same on both.

But this translation only happens with colour "aware" applications, ones that read the language (profile) from the image and translate it to the output device. Your web browser isn't doing this and that's why the colours look different - in effect it's showing english to a german and expecting it to make sense!

Colour management works by default in photoshop, you don't have to set anything. If the image has a profile associated with it then the colours will be managed - photoshop reads the monitor profile from the system settings and translates automatically. Assuming you have a good profile then the colours displayed by photoshop are right.

Proofing is when you want to see how the image will look on another device such as a printer. Not every device can handle all colours so photoshop gives you a way to check how it will look before you get it printed. This gives you a chance to fix any obvious problems but it's not a perfect system.

Working CMYK and RGB are for different types of output. CMYK is for high end printing used by magazines, etc and one of those things you can safely put in the "if you have to ask you don't need it" box.

Some web browser do support colour management. The latest versions of Firefox and Safari for example both read the image profiles and properly manage the colours. You can test your browser and see it working (or not) on this page:

http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html
 
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