Sigh...I cannot tell you how reluctant I am to post this because I KNOW everyone hates color management questions and they have all seemingly been asked and handled before. But for the life of me I cannot find a concrete explanation about this issue, in fact I don't even know if it IS an issue, I may be confused. I get confused all the time.
I managed to get my hands on a ColorMunki Photo for the purposes of profiling and calibrating my display (yes I know the difference, and my LCD has DDC so the software is indeed calibrating it as well as generating a profile...). It all went down just swell, no issues, and looking at grayscale steps everything is indeed linear, it's amazing. This is great. I can discern 0 from 2 value wise, greyscale, based on this: http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/C...itor_black.htm.
As a result, most of my previously "refined" images are now much lighter and have lost contrast because apparently my shadows were blocking up on my display, and now I'm a bit nervous about whether my new profile is actually correct. But more importantly:
I am using Windows XP. My new monitor profile is active in Windows color management. Because I do lots of web work, my Photoshop CS3 default workspace is sRGB, but I do most of my photographic editing in ProPhoto coming from Lightroom. An sRGB JPEG from my camera looks understaurated in Photoshop now, so I fix it up so that in sRGB it looks great in Photoshop, but now as soon as I save a JPEG, say, it looks COMPLETELY oversaturated and horrible both in Windows shell and in IE - like I cannot upload to Flickr! because it is so bad. WHY??? I thought sRGB was correct for OS and Internet display - why does sRGB look so much different inside Photoshop than it does outside of it??? Why is Photoshop offset and pulling down sRGB saturation now?
I understand that Photoshop is color managed and IE is not, but I thought that sRGB was the common point. How in the hell am I supposed to design websites like this? What do I do to make Photoshop display sRGB like the rest of the world does???
I have done a ton of reading and preparing for this but nothing really addresses this in a solid fashion. Am I incorrect in thinking that sRGB on Photoshop should be appropriate for general unmanaged display applications?
The difference between Photoshop and my OS is HUGE. It's really bad. Yet, everything else on the internet, including my past work, looks fine, and is only slightly lighter thanks to my newly calibrated monitor.
Please, thanks for your patience... As you can imagine, my safe little world has been turned upside down and I need to fix this or refigure my methods if I have not been correct...
I am smart (heh...) and I think that I am just missing something important and obvious. If anyone could help fill me in...
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