having a screen calibration/profiling and photoshop nightmare meltdown

<p>Hi all,<br /> <br /> I am in massive need of some help. I have recently calibrated and profiled my monitor for the first time using a spyder and im very happy with the end result. I have been going back through some of my photography prints and rescanning them so as to upload to my website. Now, I am having major issues with the images I save as jpeg from photoshop having a colour shift from what they looked like in photoshop (cs5 by the way). I have tried setting different profiles in the colour setting menu, changing profiles on the individual images and everything I can think of. Can anyone shed any light on this issue at all? i am running windows xp pro on a pc system and i am viewing the jpegs in the native image viewer that opens when you preview an jpeg.<br /><br />Thanks in advance.</p>

<p>Don't go by the image viewer. The reality is the viewer may not be using the profile in the jpg or your screen. If in doubt, load the jpg up in PS and judge that.</p>

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the reply. Surely if

my monitor profile has been

selected on the system then

whatever opens on-screen should

reflect that? Including the

native image viewer?

<blockquote>

<p>Surely if my monitor profile has been selected on the system then whatever opens on-screen should reflect that? Including the native image viewer?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Nope, not if it isn't an ICC aware app. It just sends the raw RGB values to the display. It doesn't understand anything about the profile you created nor the scale of the RGB values. <br>

Try your browser after testing it:<br>

http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter<br>

<br>

http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.htmlII</p>

That is absolutely bizarre. Youd

think that with windows having

the custom profile installed then

the windows image viewer would

pick that up.

<blockquote>

<p>Youd think that with windows having the custom profile installed then the windows image viewer would pick that up.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I wouldn't think that. ;-)<br>

Andrew is The Man on this stuff... follow closely what he's saying.</p>

<p>I'm a Mac guy and while I do have a PC laptop, depending on the OS version, I can't say if the viewer in question is color managed or not. But it is easy to test a browser as I've provided and it's easy to open the images in Photoshop or another ICC aware app. The viewer in question would match them if it were color managed. And that's a key here. The OS isn't, the app may or may not be. Having a profile or a calibrated display isn't a guarantee of proper color previews unless the application is color managed. </p>

Dang. Haha, whats the point in

calibrating my monitor then if im

just going to have to save

everything as sRGB which ends up

being a different colour!

<blockquote>

<p>Dang. Haha, whats the point in calibrating my monitor then if im just going to have to save everything as sRGB which ends up being a different colour!</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The point is that the RGB values <strong>in</strong> color managed applications appear correctly and consistently. <br>

http://tinyurl.com/kdgutmz<br>

</p>

<p>David, the main purpose for calibrating you monitor is to ensure that your prints match what you're seeing on your monitor screen. Once you upload your image to a website or send it to another display device, control is out of your hands...</p>

I wont be printing though. I know

my images will look different on

other viewing devices, I just

thought calibrating my monitor

would mean on my screen it looks

correct. But as im getting

different colours on the one

system im concerned and ready to

implode!

I know that other people will see

it differently because they will

be using external devices. I

calibrated my monitor so that I

can say for sure that how ie

dited my scan is as close as

possible to the print I made on

my system. But I cant even get my

jpegs to match up with my

photoshop edits now and its most

infuriating.

<blockquote>

<p> But I cant even get my jpegs to match up with my photoshop edits now and its most infuriating.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Photoshop is right, if the other app doesn't match, it's wrong. It isn't color managed. </p>

Smashing. Ill just stick to

photoshop and let the colours

land where they may haha

<p>Thanks Andrew, for all the help on this challenging topic. David, don't give up.</p>

<p>My conclusion: Browsers and displays out there in the world are a mess. If you are aiming for web display, then check your photos on hardware and software more or less like what your viewers will use, and don't count on consistency out there. Try opening your jpegs in your browser instead of the image viewer application. </p>

<p>Here is a <a href="http://petapixel.com/2012/06/25/is-your-browser-color-managed/">nice short article</a> which includes a test image to show if your browser is color-managed. </p>

<p>Also, David, you are saving your images in sRGB for the web, right?</p>

 

<p>yeah im working and saving my images in sRGB, its just the display settings on my monitor which are customised my my calibration/profile. Im assuming that's the correct workflow - although i tried previewing some images on the latest version of firefox and they still didn't match. bizarre!</p>

<blockquote>

<p>i tried previewing some images on the latest version of firefox and they still didn't match</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You have set it from it's defaults which don't implement color management. <br>

http://www.gballard.net/firefox/</p>

<blockquote>

<p>i tried previewing some images on the latest version of firefox and they still didn't match.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It does on my PC, but I had similar problem as yours. I believe Firefox doesn't tackle ICC v4 device profiles. If you have a wide gamut screen (my guess is if you have anything other than a sRGB screen), and your calibrator makes ICC v4 profiles, Firefox will fail. At least it does on my Windows 7 PC, and I have also read about others having problems too. The colors will be over saturated. You will have to use a ICC v2 screen profile. Photoshop tackles ICC v4 device profiles and will show you correct colors.</p>

<p>You can try the Safari browser. It should work OK with ICC v4 device profiles (it does on my PC). There is also a method for converting an ICC v4 to v2. You will have to search the net (I don't remember since I have never needed to do this, but it included using the windows screen calibration tool or something similar for saving a new v2 profile made from the old v4 one produced by the calibrator).</p>

<p>The various test pages for testing whether your browser is ICC compliant or not (v2 and v4) are only testing the image side of the CMS, not the device side. There are software that only handles the image side correctly, but not the device side. They interpret the colors in the image file correctly, but output wrong colors to the screen. My guess is that they convert the image to sRGB and then rely on the screen being a sRGB screen. Nowadays screens tend more and more to have a wider gamut than sRGB, and therefore such an assumption will result in wrong colors (too saturated colors).</p>

<p>The principles of color management is really not that complex and incomprehensible (the details can be though). In a way it resembles currency conversion. Your image has one currency, your screen another, your printer yet another and so on. The ICC profiles for the image and the screen together constitute the data that is needed for a currency converter. You (Photoshop or other software) can convert the image's currency to a "standard" currency, and then from the "standard" currency to the screen's currency, or the printer's currency (including the ink and printer paper). Problems are usually related to the software not implementing this process correctly, implementing only a part of it, or not implementing CMS at all (most programs don't). The profiles can of course also be wrong.</p>

<p>From the above one (hopefully) understands that it is the process of "currency conversion" that is calibrated, not the screen. The calibrator is making (measuring) the screen's ICC profile. It will however also usually calibrate the screen's gamma curves by manipulating the graphics card's lookup tables (aka LUTs), but this is really not the most important part which is making the ICC profile.</p>

<p>All Windows OS will do is keeping track of what ICC profile you (or usually your calibrator) have selected as the standard ICC profile for the screen. It is up to the various programs to actually implement the "currency conversion" using the ICC profile. In Windows 7 (and later) I believe it is the OS that also will load the LUTs with values stored inside the ICC profile (if there are any values). In earlier versions of Windows, this had to be done by a "LUT loader" program that usually was installed together with the calibration software and that was started every time you logged on. Often you can see this LUT loading as a sudden change in the screen's colors, usually slightly warmer colors since most screens have a bluish cast.</p>

<p>Hope this could shed some light over your problem.</p>

Firefox works with ICC version 4 profiles. You have to set "gfx.color_management.enablev4" to "true" though.

<p>No, it didn't help. That flag was set to true. Still didn't work. Of course sites like this claimed that it worked, but they don't test the device profile, only the image profile: http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter</p>

<p>It is actually pretty easy to make a test that checks if Firefox is able to show the colors correct (and that was what I did, and the result was negative). In addition I had Safari and Photoshop that showed same colors, but different colors from Firefox. When I changed to ICC v2 profile for the screen, Firefox, Safari and Photoshop showed same colors, and it was Firefox that had changed. In addition my mentioned test also showed that Firefox now showed the correct colors.</p>

<p>The more variables you put in your workflow: the harder it is.<br /> Going back a few years I was having big headaches with the same subject; trying for absolute perfection; but not being happy with the results using Pro Photo color space.<br /> I reverted to using Adobe RGB and letting my Printer Colour manage. It worked for me without the stress.<br /> Keep it simple; I shoot RAWs in Abobe RGB Colour space with standard picture taking modes and edit in Abobe RGB Colour space. <br />I use a Mac display which I set up using the mac calibration tools. I never mess with Colour profiles any more and use a lab which give me first rate results using TIFF or JPEG files. <br /><br /></p>