PS sRGB saturation issues

I am hoping some of you guys can help me understand a problem I am facing when I save images in sRGB color space within Photoshop. My working space in PS is Adobe 1998, so I use that when editing my images. I have color calibrated my monitor, so I use the calibrated ICC profile when editing my work to ensure accuracy. However when I want to export my images to the web or print them (I use Mpix currently), I need to take the images to sRGB color space. I can do this either by Convert To sRGB profile or just do a Save For Web Devices and check the convert to sRGB selection there. After the conversion or the save, the image still looks identical to what I was editing. However, if I close the image and open up the saved image again, it asks me to assign my profile and I say specifically say no. When the image opens back up in Photoshop it is HEAVILY saturated. I mean I would have to desaturate the thing 12-14 levels to get it back to the original. However, usually if I upload to a website again, it looks normal, even though in PS it shows heavily saturated.

What am I missing here? Is the issue within PS? I have learned to just ignore how the sRGB image looks within PS, but when I am getting ready to upload images for printing, I am really uncertain of how the final product will look. Will it come out saturated like PS shows, or will it not like my web browser shows? Any insight into my plight would be greatly appreciated.

If the image color space was changed to sRGB you need to update the change to sRGB at the file save. Otherwise, it will either remain tagged as aRGB or be switched to sRGB, but not assigned a color space which causes Photoshop to use the default working color space. An image in sRGB assigned (forced) to aRGB without conversion will look VERY oversaturated.

For the images you've already changed, you can open them, choose assign profile -> sRGB and then save with the color profile checkbox marked to fix the issue.

Mel-

Like Mel said. I also find that Bridge doesn't show colors properly and I don't know why, I often have to check Sat. etc in Photoshop itself.

I agree that the problem seems to be one of improper tagging (or lack of tagging). Files in a specific color space need to also have that profile embedded when they are saved.

When done properly, color space conversions in Photoshop (and/or between Lightroom and Photoshop) should never produce unexpected [odd] results. At most, you may see very slight shifts in specific colors, usually super-saturated oranges, greens and blues, but this is a result of the color space conversion itself.

Interesting.. so if you do a Save For Web Devices and click on the "Convert to sRGB" button, it still does not actually save the profile with the image. You actually have to force PS to assign the sRGB profile and ensure it saves it with the embedded profile? Hmm, let me try that and see how it works. Thanks very much for the info.

When you do save for web and imbed the profile, then it will tag the image sRGB. There is a checkbox for that. If you uncheck that box, it will keep the image size smaller by leaving out the color space tag and profile. Images without a tagged color space will open fine in Photoshop, but it will assume that the image is in the default working colorspace (which you've set to aRGB). Thus an untagged sRGB image will appear too saturated.

It sounds like you've got the picture, so you just need to practice.

It seems I am still having the issue no matter what I do. I tried everything mentioned above. I opened the image and did save for web devices and embedded the sRGB profile. I tried converting to profile, I tried embedding profile through the edit menu. Every one of them works in assigning the sRGB profile to the image, but when I close out of the image and open the jpeg back up, it even tells me that it is in sRGB and my working space is Adobe 1998, so I tell it to use the embedded profile to open the image, and it opens up saturated. Should I just not be working in Adobe 1998? Either that or just always have my images in Adobe 1998 and when I want to go to the web or print them, just export to sRGB and not look at how they look in Photoshop?

Save For Web doesn't embed the sRGB profile in the file so the next time you open it, PS doesn't know which colorspace to use and uses its default workspace (Adobe RGB). If you then Assign (not convert!) sRGB as the colorspace, the colors will be back to what you expect.

Guy

Are the Color Settings you have set up in PS correct?
Wouldn't hurt to double check.

I would never use 'Assign Profile' on an already tagged image, which yours appear to be per your last post.
From the late color management guru Bruce Fraser:

"If everyone played nice and embedded profiles so that we knew what colors the numbers were supposed to represent, Assign Profile would be either unnecessary or an expert feature for total geeks."

"I've seen more files wrecked by people opening perfectly good tagged files and either stripping the profile deliberately, having the software set up to discard the embedded profile, or using some antediluvian version of Photoshop that doesn't understand profiles, than from any other cause."

"If I ruled the world, Assign Profile would only be enabled for already-tagged files if the user correctly answered 100 or so fairly tough color management questions, and signed a waiver. It's fine for people who know what they're doing to experiment with Assign Profile, but it's really an expert feature...".

John, interesting info. So since my working space is already Adobe 1998, then I assume that is the profile that is assigned by default. So take my .psd file and do a "Convert Profile" is what is recommended? Once that is done, then do a Save For Web Devices and check the "Embed Profile" option and save as jpeg? In that case, it should not even be necessary to click the Convert option within the Save For Web Devices screen, because the image is already been converted to sRGB outside of the save screen. That sound correct?

So since my working space is already Adobe 1998, then I assume that is the profile that is assigned by default.

Yes, although you can tag the image with ARGB in Camera RAW.
This is what I used to do anyway until it made more sense to me to tag master files with the wider gamut ProPhotoRGB color space.

I never use the 'Save for Web' option because funky things (like saturation issues)
seem to happen to many who use it (..sound familiar? ).
After converting to sRGB, I simply use the 'Save As..' function when saving JPEGs. Never had any issues doing it that way.

Ok, I think maybe that is part of my problem. I will try just converting to 8 bit and doing Save As straight through Photoshop and see what that does. Thanks for all the info! Especially you John.

Update, the new process seems to have solved my issue. Thanks everyone for the help and info!