Picture look different in Lightroom vs Windows picture viewer

[Lemaildetom]

Hi all,
When looking at a picture in Lightroom vs the same picture exported as .jpg (in sRBG mode) viewed in windows 7 64bit.... they look clearly different. The lightroom picture is much more vivid. I've tried reading online about the problem and get totally confused by the contradictory answers I can find.
My camera is a fujifilm x-t1, i'm using lightroom 5.6 on a dell calibrated screen (spyder 4).

Can I ask you:
1) Why can i see a difference
2) What other computer will see?
3) What is the real colour? Or at least the one that would print?

 

[Canon Bob]

Q1)
I don't believe that Windows Picture Viewer is colour managed.

Here's something to try but note the current settings before you change them so that you can go back if needed.

In Windows Control Panel open up the "Colour Management" Section
The first tab "Devices" shows the profile that your monitor is currently using....make a note of the profile name.
The third tab is "Advanced".....select it.
In the top line "Device Profile"....find the same name as above.
In the second line "Viewing conditions profile" select "WCS profile for ICC viewing conditions"

Apologies if I've interpreted your problem incorrectly.

Q2)
Depends whether the other computers are correctly setup and have calibrated monitors...it's outside of your control.
Q3)
Like answer #2.....depends on calibration and profile settings for the printer.

Bob

 

[Pookeyhead]

Hi all,
When looking at a picture in Lightroom vs the same picture exported as .jpg (in sRBG mode) viewed in windows 7 64bit.... they look clearly different. The lightroom picture is much more vivid. I've tried reading online about the problem and get totally confused by the contradictory answers I can find.
My camera is a fujifilm x-t1, i'm using lightroom 5.6 on a dell calibrated screen (spyder 4).

Can I ask you:
1) Why can i see a difference
2) What other computer will see?
3) What is the real colour? Or at least the one that would print?

Let's walk through it one step at a time.

First of all Windows Photo Viewer IS colour managed, but it doesn't play well with v4.0 ICC and ICM profiles, so check your spyder software to see if you have created a v4 ICM profile for your monitor or not. If you have, re profile with it set to v2 profiles, and see if that solves the issue. If not, come back and we'll move on to the next thing to try.

It won't hurt to check what Bob suggests either.

Control Panel/Color Management.

Make sure you have "use my settings for this device" ticked, and thta you can see your monitor profile in the list, and it has (default) listed after it. If not, tick the box, and if your profile is there but not default, click "set as default".

Bob suggested also clicking the advanced tab and selecting the perceptual sRGB rendering intent, but if you tick the "use my settings for this device" box, it will totally override whatever you have set in the advanced box anyway, so don't worry about that. The "third tab" Bob is referring to is only important on un-profiled systems.


However... check what ICC version you are using. v4 will freak Windows Photo Viewer out.

 

[Canon Bob]

Thanks for chipping in David. I don't have the photo viewer myself but do remember that it wasn't colour managed many moons ago (possibly back in XP days).
I'm sure you're more up to date with this stuff than I am so I'll watch from the side-lines and see what I can learn.

Bob

 

[Lemaildetom]

Thanks guys, i had a quick look problem not solved yet. But I need to go to work so i'll check this at the weekend (although it is a potential busy weekend of northern light!). So apologies if I'm slow to answer but I listen you advice!

The spyder 4 seem to be using ICC v2.0 by default.
I looked at the control panel and "use my setting for this device" was ticked.

I was thinking on recalibrating to. I'm not sure if it is on 6500k 2.2, I think when I tried this it was looking of so end up set to something slightly different (I might be talking total rubbish I need to check).

 

[Pookeyhead]

Thanks guys, i had a quick look problem not solved yet. But I need to go to work so i'll check this at the weekend (although it is a potential busy weekend of northern light!). So apologies if I'm slow to answer but I listen you advice!

The spyder 4 seem to be using ICC v2.0 by default.
I looked at the control panel and "use my setting for this device" was ticked.

I was thinking on recalibrating to. I'm not sure if it is on 6500k 2.2, I think when I tried this it was looking of so end up set to something slightly different (I might be talking total rubbish I need to check).

Calibration is not the issue... no matter how far out your screen is, both Lightroom and Windows Photo Viewer should still be showing the same... wrong possibly, but still the same. This is definitely a color profiling issue though. I'm leaning towards the profile embedded in the image. Can you put the actual image file causing the problem on Dropbox, or some other site where I can can download it? Don't embed it in here or anything... but upload the actual file for me to download.

 

[gazwas]

I though incorrectly colour managed images looked over saturated so could it your are not viewing the right colours in Lightroom. Do you have soft proofing turned on/off?

 

[Pookeyhead]

I though incorrectly colour managed images looked over saturated

Not necessarily. An image with a wider gamut profile, like prophoto will appear very desaturated on an unmanaged system, or in a browser that doesn't honour ICC profiles. An image with no embedded profile viewed on a wide gamut monitor will be very over saturated.

Having soft proofing accidentally turned on, could have an effect though, yes. Although it is the image in Windows Photo Viewer which appears incorrect, not Lightroom.

 

[Lemaildetom]

Thanks for the help, tomorrow lunch i'll upload something and see what I can do.
What is soft proofing?

I was also thinking that i'm actually comparing the processed raw in lightroom and what is exported from it to lightroom. I'll try to reimport it to lightroom to see if it look the same or not. This should cancelled all exporting issue.

 

[Pookeyhead]

Thanks for the help, tomorrow lunch i'll upload something and see what I can do.
What is soft proofing?

It renders the screen output you see using your intended output profile.. it's used to "see" what your final prints will look like. You shouldn't really be using it if you're not printing becayse if you have calibrated your screen properly, you're already using the correct monitor profile to see everything.

 

[Lemaildetom]

I've been trying to take some screen shot today to show you what was happening. And now it looks fine! Both the same... So it looks like it solved itself (for now at least)....
If the profile didn't load would this generate a difference between LR and the viewer? I don't really understand why it would. I suspect they would look different with the profile loaded but similar to each other?

 

[Pookeyhead]

I've been trying to take some screen shot today to show you what was happening. And now it looks fine! Both the same... So it looks like it solved itself (for now at least)....
If the profile didn't load would this generate a difference between LR and the viewer? I don't really understand why it would. I suspect they would look different with the profile loaded but similar to each other?

It might do, yes, depending on what rendering intent you have set in the "advanced" tab of the colour management window. However... let's hope it was a random profile loading issue, and it's a permanent resolution.