Does anybody else see a major difference in ther e colors on NPN as opposed to their own moniter. I use the Spyder to calibrate and my colors are so much more vibrant on my moniter?
A couple of questions to help figure this out for sure Cheryl :
-- What color space are your images in now? (In your response above, I'm not sure if you looked at your default setting in PS or one of your actual images - they aren't necessarily the same.)
-- Do you convert all of your images to sRGB before posting on the web if they use AdobeRGB or something else?
-- If not, do you save your images with the color space information embedded?
-- Which browser do you use to look at your images?
-- Do you have a wide gamut monitor?
When you look at your image in PS, you're using a color managed application, so it knows how to apply the color space information and use your monitor profile correctly. Most web browsers (or most users) aren't color managed - including Microsoft IE. So if you have an image in, say, Adobe RGB, and you view it in IE, it doesn't know how to handle it. So it assumes that all images are in your monitor space which historically has been close to sRGB (I think - or maybe the browser assumes sRGB). So a conversion to sRGB will line up with the browser assumptions, giving you fairly accurate color.
If you leave an image embedded with a color profile that's not sRGB, using a color managed browser should still show you correct colors (i.e. ones that match PS). But other people using IE will see it differently. Also, if you have a wide gamut monitor, the non-color managed browsers assumptions about the color space could do some odd things.
My suggestion would be to :
1) Always convert to sRGB in PS for web posting, to make sure the greatest number of people see your image as close as possible to the colors you intended.
2) Use a color managed browser.
Oh man I am so computer illiterate!!! When I pulled up my latest image posted on Macro the colors were so dull and boring so... I went back to PS and pulled up Color management and it is srgb. I used to use Adobe 1998 but changed cause I had this problem before.So I put it to srgb a while back. I'm so frustrated not knowing this because my images look really bad now on NPN and I don't know how to change it. I will re-read your responses and try to figure it out. thankkyou for helping me.. Also I use the Spyder to calibrate and it automatically sets the color space on PS. So I don't get it. Also Richard I'll be joining the Mac family soon and then great... I'll have to learn all over again
Hey Cheryl - I'll try to explain a little more, although others on here are a lot more versed than me. And this is in CS4 so it might be slightly different in other versions.
-- Each image typically has a color space associated with it that defines how the colors are defined, although they don't have to. When you develop RAW files and save them as TIFF or JPG as color space gets assigned in ACR. It sounds like this is Adobe 1998 for you.
-- Photoshop also has a "working space" that it will use for images by default if they don't have an embedded color space. (You can control particular behaviors for images without color spaces embedded in the PS preferences.)
-- If you pull up the Color Settings (Edit -> Color Settings) you'll see the working space defined amongst other, confusing, things. This working space doesn't really matter if there's an embedded color space in your image.
-- If you have an image open, and select "Convert to Profile" (Edit -> Convert to Profile) you can see the current color space of the image listed as "Source Space"
-- There's also as command to Assign Profile which will just swap profiles without doing any conversion (see the link above for the difference between Assign and Convert)
-- When you calibrate your monitor, that sets a monitor profile on your system, that tells it how to interpret colors. That's separate from both the color space in the image, and the working space defined in PS.
So in your case, if you open an image that you saved originally with Adobe RGB, you can check it now by looking at the Convert dialog. If it's not Adobe RGB, you've either "Converted" to sRGB or "Assigned" sRGB to it.
If you've "Asssigned" sRGB, things can get wonky - usually things look faded or washed out. But in that case you can just "Assign" Adobe RGB and it should correct things.
If you've "Converted" you shouldn't see too much difference in your image usually. There are times when the colors in the image exist in Adobe RGB, but DON"T exist in sRGB. In this case, you might see some decent shifts in color. But it's not all that common except in certain really saturated colors.
Now all of this is just in Photoshop. When you put an image on the web, as described above, there may or may not be color management. That's why I (and Richard) recommended what we did above.
And as for Macs, the PS setup and web setup are pretty much identical. There won't be as much learning curve there as there will be from the general operating system stuff. Hope that helps.
David, That was so nice of you to take the tiome and put all that down for me. I am working on all this right now and will take your step by step to get it right. Hope I figure it out soon. Thanks so very much again
OMG, It worked!! I converted the image rather than assign to srgb and the difference is amazing. ( see my last post on Macro gallery with repost.) Wow thankyou all soooo much
Discussion
9 repliesWhat color space are you working in and how do you convert your images to sRGB color space for the web?
Neil
Before you save your jpeg for the web, be sure to Convert your profile sRGB.
Here is a thread about the difference between "Assign Profile" and Convert to Profile"
Assign vs. Convert to Profile
This may explain what you are seeing, and how to prevent it.
Hope this helps,
--P
-- What color space are your images in now? (In your response above, I'm not sure if you looked at your default setting in PS or one of your actual images - they aren't necessarily the same.)
-- Do you convert all of your images to sRGB before posting on the web if they use AdobeRGB or something else?
-- If not, do you save your images with the color space information embedded?
-- Which browser do you use to look at your images?
-- Do you have a wide gamut monitor?
When you look at your image in PS, you're using a color managed application, so it knows how to apply the color space information and use your monitor profile correctly. Most web browsers (or most users) aren't color managed - including Microsoft IE. So if you have an image in, say, Adobe RGB, and you view it in IE, it doesn't know how to handle it. So it assumes that all images are in your monitor space which historically has been close to sRGB (I think - or maybe the browser assumes sRGB). So a conversion to sRGB will line up with the browser assumptions, giving you fairly accurate color.
If you leave an image embedded with a color profile that's not sRGB, using a color managed browser should still show you correct colors (i.e. ones that match PS). But other people using IE will see it differently. Also, if you have a wide gamut monitor, the non-color managed browsers assumptions about the color space could do some odd things.
My suggestion would be to :
1) Always convert to sRGB in PS for web posting, to make sure the greatest number of people see your image as close as possible to the colors you intended.
2) Use a color managed browser.
3) always embed the color profile in the jpeg so those of us on Macs with color aware browsers (Safari, Firefox) will see the colors as intended.
-- Each image typically has a color space associated with it that defines how the colors are defined, although they don't have to. When you develop RAW files and save them as TIFF or JPG as color space gets assigned in ACR. It sounds like this is Adobe 1998 for you.
-- Photoshop also has a "working space" that it will use for images by default if they don't have an embedded color space. (You can control particular behaviors for images without color spaces embedded in the PS preferences.)
-- If you pull up the Color Settings (Edit -> Color Settings) you'll see the working space defined amongst other, confusing, things. This working space doesn't really matter if there's an embedded color space in your image.
-- If you have an image open, and select "Convert to Profile" (Edit -> Convert to Profile) you can see the current color space of the image listed as "Source Space"
-- There's also as command to Assign Profile which will just swap profiles without doing any conversion (see the link above for the difference between Assign and Convert)
-- When you calibrate your monitor, that sets a monitor profile on your system, that tells it how to interpret colors. That's separate from both the color space in the image, and the working space defined in PS.
So in your case, if you open an image that you saved originally with Adobe RGB, you can check it now by looking at the Convert dialog. If it's not Adobe RGB, you've either "Converted" to sRGB or "Assigned" sRGB to it.
If you've "Asssigned" sRGB, things can get wonky - usually things look faded or washed out. But in that case you can just "Assign" Adobe RGB and it should correct things.
If you've "Converted" you shouldn't see too much difference in your image usually. There are times when the colors in the image exist in Adobe RGB, but DON"T exist in sRGB. In this case, you might see some decent shifts in color. But it's not all that common except in certain really saturated colors.
Now all of this is just in Photoshop. When you put an image on the web, as described above, there may or may not be color management. That's why I (and Richard) recommended what we did above.
And as for Macs, the PS setup and web setup are pretty much identical. There won't be as much learning curve there as there will be from the general operating system stuff. Hope that helps.