Strange calibration (?) problem with PS

[Matus Kalisky]

Hi

I have following consistency probem. I adjust my photos in PS (CS2) and when producing ouput for the web I convert the image (last step in the process - just befor saving the output as JPEG) in sRGB color profile. Up to now - everything is OK.

Now I open the just produced JPEG ouput (won the SAME monitor) with some viewer (Windosw fax and media viewer, exporer ...) and the picture looks different. First of all it is darker and has higher contrast. I do not see a color shift though.

My question is smple - why? My monitor (a poor one old CRT) is calibrated and event though it runs on brightness of 47% - it should not matter in this case (== comparison is being done on the same one) - or it does?

I am confused - any help appreciated.

Matus

[Henry Ambrose]

Hi
Now I open the just produced JPEG ouput (won the SAME monitor) with some viewer (Windosw fax and media viewer, exporer ...) and the picture looks different. First of all it is darker and has higher contrast. I do not see a color shift though.

Matus

Those applications you name don't use color management is my guess. This is the missing link - you can manage color all you want but when the file goes to a non-color-managed application you can no longer predict what the color will look like.

[Ken Lee]

Henry is right, especially if you are on a Windows machine: there is no support for color management, outside of Photoshop.

Only Safari, OmniWeb, and other Mac browsers that are based on the WebKit rendering engine will respect the embedded profile, and present the image accordingly. You can see an example page here (http://www.kenleegallery.com/html/tech/nathan.htm). As Apple computers have been designed with color management in mind, they continue to be the tool of choice (http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/why-pros-use-mac.htm) for imaging professionals.

In Photoshop, you can try viewing the image in a "soft-proof" mode: View > Proof Setup. This lets you see what the image will look like when seen in any color space that is available to Photoshop.

For example, if your printer+ink combination has been profiled, you can get a good idea of the final printed image, by viewing the image within that color space, which will likely be a more limited color space than that of the monitor. (Unless you are printing on some kind of fancy commercial press).

Soft proofing is a whole subject in itself, but well-worth the time if you want to control your results, and if you want to produce consistent results that will appear the same when viewed by others.

[JW Dewdney]

If you simply 'save as' you'll see no difference - it's the imageready routine that's doing it. I'm not sure if it can be tweaked or not. I can't recall - sorry. But basically it's converting your file to the next nearest 'web-safe' colors - I believe it's based on an 8-bit standard. So that may be why.

ooops. I didn't absorb the bit where you were opening it in a microsplotch app. That could have a lot to do with it. How does it look in a normal browser (i.e. safari, etc)?

[Henry Ambrose]

Ken and anyone else with actual experience - how is Omniweb?

[Eric James]

Others may have solved your problem, but I'll offer my 0.015 Euro.

If you are using the "Save for Web" option in CS2 there is a tiny right-pointing arrow at the top of the page - it took me toooo long to discover it! Clicking on this arrow presents a fly out menu; the default setting will not (necessarily) preserve your CM profile. There is an option to "Preserve Document Profile", or something like that. I'm in CS3 now and I don't remember the specific details.

[Ken Lee]

Ken and anyone else with actual experience - how is Omniweb?

It's the fastest browser out there. Way faster than FireFox on the Mac. In most categories, it's faster than Safari itself, even though it's based on the same rendering engine. It has a few bugs, but they all do. It has fewer bugs than Safari, in my experience.

I use it most of the time. I especially love its rendition of tabs, which contain a thumbnail of the entire page.

You can see more at http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/gallery/

[Martin D.]

Convert into your monitor profile (as created by your calibration tool). That should make the photos look OK at least on your monitor.

[Matus Kalisky]

Thanks to all of you - here is what I have learned out of it and resulting questions

1) Exploder does not use color management - than what color profile is assigned to the image? - How it is displayed?

- My undestanding: I convert the image to sRGB - but it is not indeed the colorprofile my monitor has. As my monitor is poor - the color profile may be far from the sRGB. Now - if the viewing program does not apply the color management - the sRGB image will be dispplayed as it would have the monitor profile - what will result it color/contrast/brightness shifts. But this means that if I convert the image into color profile of my monitor it should look the same - as Martin said - but only on my monitor. This is probably not a good idea to do as my monitor is carappy.

2) I sould try to get on of the browsers mentioned (Safari, OmniWeb) to be able to test the appearence of the image on the web - this should at least partly suppres the fact that my monitor is bad

3) I will check that "Save for Web" option that Eric proposed - let's see what it does.

4) I do use "soft-proof" but when preparing images for printing (Fuji Froniter mostly)

5) I can get a better monitor to get closer to what most users will see with their Explorer browsers, but I can do of course nothing with the fact that most of the people are browsing the web without having their monitors calibrated.

Thanks again to all of you.

Matus

[Henry Ambrose]

Matus,

For web viewing, save your photos in sRGB with or without a color profile. When the application used to view the photos does not have color management the profile is not used. It does not matter whether there is a profile embedded in the file or not. It is not about monitor calibration. This is only a result of the viewing application not being aware of color profiles.

Only Safari and Omniweb (both for Mac only) use color management. Windows browsers do not use color management so it does not matter what color profile is embedded in the file. Explorer does not see the profile and does not use it.

What you can do is save your photos as sRGB and then view them in Explorer. If they look bad, take them back into Photoshop and adjust them by trial and error until they look good in Explorer. Then you can post the photos to the web and ask someone else to look at them. If they look good on your Explorer browser and on the other person's Explorer browser you have done all you can do to make them look like you intend them to look.

[Martin D.]

It never happened to me that converting to sRGB would be a better option than converting into the monitor profile. If you want to have your photos correctly diplayed on a monitor, you have to convert into that device's profile. The problem is that there are as many monitor profiles as there are monitors. Thus far, I obtained better results by converting into my monitor's profile than by converting into sRGS. Maybe is my monitor the universal one.... If you have the time, you can convert into sRGB, give it 10 iterations, as suggested above, until you are satisfied; how much do you trust your eyes???