Lightroom 3 Color difference in Lightroom and web

[susan_winn]

<p>I edited some photographs in Lightroom 3 and also in Photoshop CS5. I then uploaded them to kodak.com and also my website. I noticed that the colors were not at vivid as they are on my computer. I remember reading in school a long time ago about web color being different than print colors or whatever, which is probably the problem. I am wondering how I can make the colors I see on my screen the same colors I see on the website. I feel like this is a recent problem I am having. </p>

<p><a href="http://winnphoto.com/index2.php?v=v1#/gallery1/3/">http://winnphoto.com/index2.php?v=v1#/gallery1/3/</a></p>

<p>If you go to this link the first set of wedding photographs are dark and blah colors. This is not how it looks on my computer or the CD. Can someone help me figure out how to make these look like they do on my computer. </p>

<p>The colorspace in photoshop is prophoto rgb 16 bit.</p>

[susan_winn]

<p>I forgot to mention that the photos look great on Facebook. why is that?</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>Check to see if your browser is color managed:<br>

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

If you fail the test, now you know why.<br>

And you can’t upload ProPhoto to the web for this reason! Using sRGB will be closer, but still no perfect match without an ICC aware browser. </p>

[susan_winn]

<p>Thank you that test was helpful. However, my system supports the icc version 4 and 2 profiles. so that is not the problems. I will change the color space to sRGB and see if that fixes the problem and let you know.</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>FWIW, you don’t want to be messing with V4 profiles for the time being (assuming you are building your own). </p>

[JDMvW]

<p>At the risk of re-stating the obvious, are you "saving for web"?<br>

Most web displays are sRGB and I have found that things like saturation, etc. often need to be a little 'kicked up' when converting from Adobe RGB or other color spaces.</p>

[martin-s]

<blockquote>

<p>"I will change the color space to sRGB and see if that fixes the problem and let you know."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>If you have been uploading images in a larger colour space (e.g. Adobe RGB), then that is most likely the answer and you should definitely switch to sRGB for web exports.</p>

<p>A lot of sites that offer upload facilities, actually just strip any attached colour profiles <strong>without</strong> performing a proper conversion to sRGB in the process, which would explain the difference in appearance even when viewed in a colour managed browser.</p>

[herma]

<p>If you edit in Lightroom, you edit in ProPhoto. If you shuttle the image to to CS5, you have to maintain Prophoto as the workspace. It took me a while to figure out why colors shifted so much between Lightroom and CS5. Once you are ready to export out of Lightroom, that's when you have to decide the color workspace. Prophoto is not standard. Most people would export the Lightroom>CS5>back to Lightroom as a sRBG..</p>

<p>BTW, nothing is loading on your site.... so I can't see.</p>

 

[martin-s]

<blockquote>

<p>"It took me a while to figure out why colors shifted so much between Lightroom and CS5."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Since both applications are colour managed, you should <strong>not</strong> see any difference. If you do, that usually indicates a problem.<br>

By the way converting images and bringing them back into LR in sRGB for further edits is not a good idea: you'd want to maintain them in the largest colour space for as long as possible.</p>

[susan_winn]

<p>I just checked the website and everything is there. Anyways. I changed some images to Adobe sRGB 98 and ColorMatch RGB and that seemed to make a difference. I got a little closer. Also when I saved for web that help a little bit. when I experimented with sRGB IEC61966-2.1 I noticed no difference from the ProPhoto.</p>

[herma]

<p>Martin, I DID see a horrible color shift in the images that were send from LR to CS5 for editing. That was because CS5 did not use Prophoto. Once I matched the work space between LR and CS5, there was no colorshift. But after the editing is done, it still has to be exported out of LR into something more usable, such as sRBG.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />S</p>

[martin-s]

<p>Herma, that simply indicates that Photoshop for some reason was set <strong>not to preserve the embedded profile</strong>, which is not the default. Properly configured you shouldn't have to worry about this.<br>

<br />Ian Lyons has a good article on the subject: <a href="http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps12_colour/ps12_1.htm">Photoshop CS5 - Color Management</a><br>

Scroll down to Color Management Policies , Fig. 5 and on.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>"But after the editing is done, it still has to be exported out of LR into something more usable, such as sRBG."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What's "usable" depends entirely on where the image is going next. For web use sRGB is perfectly fine, as it is for most mass-printing services, since they often assume sRGB anyway.<br>

However if I was going to pass that image on to someone else for further edits or high quality printing, I would opt for ProPhoto in order to preserve as much of the image's original colour information as possible.</p>