Problem with colour management

Maggie52

Maggie52

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Margaret
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Im hoping someone can help me with this:(
Im using a fairly new iMac Adobe CC and LR
I calibrated the monitor using Spyder Pro 3 and thought all was well. Colours looked fine on the monitor. By chance I emailed an image to a friend yesterday, again it looked good and well saturated. When he replied to me with my image included it looked completely different, dull and lacking in saturation. I then uploaded it to Flickr to see if it was something to do with email, again on my screen it looks good but on Flickr unsaturated when viewed on my iPad.
Where do I start to try and sort this out? I'm not that computer literate by the way so will need to take baby steps to solve it.
Thanks in advance.
Below is the Flickr photo, Im guessing you are viewing it when it is all dull and desaturated.


Geoff 9 by Bykerlass, on Flickr
 
Looks fine in my rMBP. What colour space did you post it in
 
Hi I used ProphotoRGB and Im wondering if this could be the problem? I have this as a working space profile, getting very confused with it all:( Should I be using Srgb? I don't print myself but use a lab if I want anything. Ive not had anything printed since I got this new iMac and have only just discovered the problem.
 
It looks fine to me on my calibrated monitor. Just be sure that you are comparing like with like.
 
If you use photoshop rgb, colours will be compressed when viewed on most peoples devices, which are almost always srgb.
this will lose both some colours and saturation.
Always put up srgb.
 
Yeah as I've learnt recently on here, for web you should always convert to sRGB as your colours can look desaturated as you've found out.
 
Thank you all I will use srgb. I calibrated my monitor with the Spyder Pro 3, it is quite old now but it's profile makes the screen quite warm, Im wondering if this is having an effect on how I see it on screen. On the monitor display colour settings, in view of this, would you recommend I set colour profile to Srgb Adobe RGB or calibrated monitor profile? I hope this makes sense!
 
Maggie52 said:
Hi I used ProphotoRGB
Click to expand...

Never, ever do this!

It looks fine here for me, but that's because everything here is colour managed well, and the embedded ProPhoto profile is being honoured by Firefox (the only browser that colour manages properly) and then being translated to my computer's colourspace (custom monitor profile) and viewed on a calibrated wide gamut screen.

However... on a tablet, or an average PC with poor colour management and a browser that just forces things into sRGB, that wider gamut of ProPhoto will simply be compressed into the narrower colour gamut of sRGB (the default colourspace for most computers) without actually translating the numbers to maintain the same visual appearance, and the result is desaturation.

Always convert images for web use to sRGB before posting.
 
Maggie52 said:
Thank you all I will use srgb. I calibrated my monitor with the Spyder Pro 3, it is quite old now but it's profile makes the screen quite warm, Im wondering if this is having an effect on how I see it on screen. On the monitor display colour settings, in view of this, would you recommend I set colour profile to Srgb Adobe RGB or calibrated monitor profile? I hope this makes sense!
Click to expand...


It may just LOOK warm compared to what you're used to. Often people don't LIKE their screens after calibrating as they're used to how it normally looks. Having said this... the Spyder 3 doesn't cope too well with wide gamut screens, so depending on what screen you have, it may not even be doing a very good job.

One easy way to settle this, is if you have a Photographic grey card. If you do... here's a shot of a grey card.(all correctly white balanced and calibrated at this end).

Untitled-1.jpg


If that doesn't look the same shade and colour of grey on your screen as your actual grey card, then something's amiss. Not scientific, I know... but it IS a quick rough and ready test.
 
I always convert my images to ProPhoto before PP in Photoshop. Images for the web, produced via Photoshop, are automatically converted to Adobe sRGB
 
Pookeyhead said:
It may just LOOK warm compared to what you're used to. Often people don't LIKE their screens after calibrating as they're used to how it normally looks. Having said this... the Spyder 3 doesn't cope too well with wide gamut screens, so depending on what screen you have, it may not even be doing a very good job.

One easy way to settle this, is if you have a Photographic grey card. If you do... here's a shot of a grey card.(all correctly white balanced and calibrated at this end).

View attachment 49386


If that doesn't look the same shade and colour of grey on your screen as your actual grey card, then something's amiss. Not scientific, I know... but it IS a quick rough and ready test.
Click to expand...

Oh thanks David. I don't have the card you mention and I'm not at home at the moment I'm on my iPad so will definitely look at that over the weekend.
I'm using an new iMac 27" bought recently. The Spyder Pro is about 5 -6 yrs old, you say it's not too good with wide gamut screens, so yes this could be an issue. I am used to it being warmer as my old screen was calibrated with the Spyder so maybe it's time to buy a new measuring device. I think I've tied myself in knots with this colour management thing, spent hours yesterday trying to figure it out:(
 
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