Photoshop and color issues converting to sRGB

I recently got a new NEC 27" wide gamut display. I scanned up some new images and am having color issues.

When converting a flattened scan to sRGB from AdobeRGB (my working space), I am noticing some of the more vibrant/saturated colors are going flatter. This is all within Photoshop (CS3). I can toggle back and forth, reversing the conversion to sRGB and back to AdobeRGB and I can see the colors flatten out, almost as if I am backing off 10-15 points in Saturation, when converted to sRGB.

I am following the same steps I have been doing for years. I first flatten my master file, convert to sRGB and then go on to save for web. I noticing the problem at the conversion step.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Harley, is there any chance in the Convert Profile the sRGB has changed at all? I have my settings at:
Engine: Adobe Ace
Intent: Relative Colorimetric
Black Point Compensation is checked.
I've had things change before too, and it does make a difference.

Paul, those all match my settings. I have tried Saturated, etc. and I see the same effect on all settings. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Harley, not sure about this one. I've had a LCD monitor for as long as they were available, albeit only a 17" at the time. On my new PC I have a 23" and it works very well too. Although, I'm still using CS2, but I do not think there was too much of a change going to CS3 per se.
I fully understand what your seeing, or at least it sounds like the same drop in overall Saturation and Contrast if I miss making the Convert to sRGB and go straight to Save For Web. I immediately see the drastic drop from working space of Adobe 98 then. When I do convert from Adobe 98 to sRGB, I cannot really see any change at all, which is a good thing I guess. Still confused on this one.....

Harley - If you have colors in your Adobe RGB image that do not exist sRGB, there will be mapping done to bring them into the sRGB color space. This is likely to happen with the most saturated colors, particularly with blue/green colors. In that case, the mapping may be what is causing the drop in saturation.

It's also possible that on your old monitor, you never saw these colors because your old monitor couldn't display much beyond sRGB. The wide gamut monitor is probably closer to, or even goes past, Adobe RGB. Was your old monitor wide gamut?

David,

My old monitor was a LaCie CRT. I doubt it was a wide gamut monitor, but I am not sure. The biggest difference I see is in saturated yellows and reds.

As far as I know, CRTs were never much wider than sRGB, so that could be it. Yellows and reds, if they are bright, can also lie outside of sRGB. Is it possible to try the same thing on someone else's system just to check and see if it's something odd about yours? (I'd be happy to check here, but it would be better if you could actually look at the monitor. And I'd hate to chalk it up to wide gamut if that isn't the real issue.)

Harley, I also use a NEC wide gamut screen and noticed the same. I save for web without checking the box 'save to sRGB' and do check the box 'embed color profile'. Next I open the web jpeg in PS and convert to sRGB. Works for me .

Hi the main problem is that Adobe rgb has about 15% wider garmut in all RGB colours to srgb so any saturation colours that lie out side this will look flatter desaturated CMYK has about 20% to 23% wider, as all printers for home use are srgb this is why we use srgb in the first place, once you convert to srgb just boost the saturation back to your liking within the srgb setting. If your try and print in Adobe RGB you would get unwanted colours appear in your print, this is because the printer cannot see the colours outside the srgb range so it tries to print the colour it thinks it should be. The trouble is that modern monitors are getting closer to Adobe rgb and printers are not and the rgb settings ie srgb.icc are still the older srgb colour range for printer reasons.

Hope this helps.

Dave

Dave,

Thanks.

I created an action that combines a little curve adjustment and saturation increase that makes the converted file extremely close to the adobe RGB file pre-conversion. I know that the sRGB can display the colors that desaturated during the conversion to sRGB. I have not quite figured out how that fits into the puzzle.

I bought the monitor through Chromix and they are color experts. I will call them tomorrow and get their take on it.

I appreciated all the responses!!

Harley, please pass along anything you may learn from the LCD provider. Our learning curve seems to never end as technology keeps changing on us all.

Harley, you on a Mac ?

Matt,

Yes. Mac Pro tower about 1-1/2 years old.

Per the tech guru at Chromix, it is what was suspected. I sent him an image and he found the colors outside the range of sRGB. When converting to sRGB, those colors are essentially compressed into the sRGB color space, resulting in a loss of some color/saturation.

The colors need to be tweaked after conversion to get them to look like the colors in the pre-converted file.

I was going to say, a handful of Macs are affected by the Open GL code. In the PSD preferences, (if experiencing weird color issues in photoshop) try turning off the "Enable Open GL" setting under performance, and restart photoshop. Sometimes photoshop and Open GL don't play well together, depending on your settings.

Also, some have experienced too many crashes...

http://blog.widen.com/blog/industrial-retouch-and-color/0/0/mac-apple-os-x-1064-adobe-photoshop-cs4-cs5-and-crashes-by-matt-anderson

Thanks Matt! I will give that a try tonight. Much appreciated.