Yet Another Color Question, I'm Sorry

[aphexafx]

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...

[aphexafx]

...I've just made the unsettling discovery that assigning the monitor profile that was generated by my profiling system to images in Photoshop makes them look like they do outside of Photoshop. But this doesn't seem like a healthy part of a balanced workflow.

I'm so confused.

[mrladewig]

In photoshop, use your working colorspace (normally Adobe RGB) and then output for the web as sRGB using either the ACE or the save for web function to do the conversion. Photoshop doesn't need to save your monitor profile into your images. You are trying to get your images into a common language (sRGB) so most people will see them the same. Your monitor's profile on someone else's computer will just result in a strange image. In an ideal world, everyone would profile their own monitor and an image in sRGB would look the same on all of them.

[aphexafx]

Thanks for posting mrladewig - I understand that the monitor profile should not be applied to an image, I was experimenting, trying to figure out what was going on, and I just discovered that.

"You are trying to get your images into a common language (sRGB) so most people will see them the same."

Exactly. sRGB is this common language as far as I understood things. But my problem is that sRGB within Photoshop does not equal sRGB outside of Photoshop, anymore, on my system. I have made a screen capture to demonstrate:



Notice that the working profile in Photoshop is sRGB. When saved as a jpeg with sRGB the image looks as it does in the Windows viewer above, everywhere: OS thumbnails, Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.

Why is Photoshop showing the sRGB colorspace so much differently than everyone else, is what my question boils down to.

And how do I fix it?

[mrladewig]

I'm not sure Matt. I've never had this problem with PS versus everything else myself. If the image were in aRGB, then I might have guessed that was the reason for the issue with Windows viewer, but everything should be square here. Perhaps you could try assigning sRGB to the image to see if that helps?

Mel-

[Stephen Best]

I understand that Photoshop is color managed and IE is not, but I thought that sRGB was the common point.

No. If not colour managed it will just send the data to the display. If your monitor has a larger gamut than sRGB it will display as highly saturated. You need to re-calibrate your monitor to sRGB (or use a second monitor with an sRGB-ish gamut) to see what others will see. Even though a tagged profile will likely be ignored, it's best to tag the file anyway so browsers that are colour managed can display them as best they can. A working space profile takes up negligible space.

[aphexafx]

Thank you Stephen!

I came trotting back here to tell what I've learned and you beat me to it.

I understand now:

My LCD does have a larger than sRGB gamut (just slightly less than Adobe RGB).

Photoshop is aware of both my display profile (and thus display gamut) and the sRGB color space attached the files I'm working with.

Photoshop is mapping the sRGB colors within my display's wider color space so that they render where they should and stay in sRGB gamut, and is in fact showing me what they will look like on a sRGB display with or without management.

Outside of Photoshop my display's profile is still applied via the OS, however the non-color-managed apps are simply rendering color data as is, so sRGB "red" (255, 0, 0) is in fact rendering at my display's "red" (also 255, 0, 0) which is much more saturated than sRGB's "red".


So the correct workflow would be to design in Photoshop fully managed and save with sRGB, and just let colors go where they may, knowing that on standard displays they will appear correct?

Can someone with a sRGB calibrated display tell me which of the above images looks the most correct? On my display the orange case in the left (Photoshop) image is rendered correctly, in the right (unmanaged) image the orange case is neon looking and too saturated.

My display has an sRGB profile, so I suppose I can just switch to it when I want to verify sRGB color in unmanaged apps. It would be handy if there were a task bar app which would do this quickly...

[Stephen Best]

You got it Matt.

Does your monitor have an "sRGB" button? If so, you can just press this to view your files.

[aphexafx]

...I just looked in the Windows Color applet in my Control Panel and visually compared my ColorMunki generated display profile with sRGB and, sure enough, it is much larger especially in the Red and Green directions, which makes perfect sense as far as what I'm seeing.

I get it now, huge revelation, and all that.

[aphexafx]

Stephen, yes it's in a menu, but there all the same.

Thank you for your post, it aligned everything for me. Go get yourself a beer and pretend it's on me!