On Monday I received in the mail, much to my delight, my new monitor, the NEC P221W. I just went through the steps of calibrating it with the SpectraView II software. Everything seemed to go fine. Before I started the calibration I had been working on a photo in CS4. I saved the photo in both psd and tif formats and saw that the color was significantly different, so I started the calibration process. After I finished the install and ran the program. I went back to look at the psd and tif files and the color in both was spot on. I thought all was good at that point but when I saved it to a JPEG to post on NPN the saturation was really blown out. Is this supposed to happen with JPEGs? What do I need to do to correct this?
Have you converted the JPG file to sRGB color space? That's requisite if you want Web viewers to see your images (as closely as possible at this moment) correctly.
I have the same monitor and software. This monitor will display 98% of the Adobe RGB gamut, so if you attempt to display an image with that profile on a device (including some software and browsers) that is not 'profile-aware' your colors will likely be off. A device that does not recognize Adobe RGB, ProFoto, or other wide gamut spaces will show them in the device's native color space, and hence, the colors may go whacky on you.
As John says, you have to convert (not 'Assign') the image to sRGB. I use Save for Web... in PhotoShop and I ensure the 'ICC Profile' box is checked. I also select 'Optimze' to strip metadata.
When I select the Save for Web option, the attached screenshot is the window that comes up and the circled section off to the right is what I was referring to on the Preview. It gives you the option to select: Monitor Color, Macintosh (No Color Management), Windows (No Color Management) or Use Document Profile. I had selected Windows (No color management) and checked the convert to sRGB and that gave me the most accurate color representation. I was just curious to see if these were the settings that everyone else used.
That's correct, because the vast majority of viewers do not use color managed Web browsers.
Bear in mind that most images that are resampled downward need to be re-sharpened to one degree or another. I would also use 'Bicubic Smoother' instead of 'Bicubic' in the Quality window.
Ok thank you very much John. Also, Preston, I bought my monitor based on your post when you were in the market for a new one. So far I love it, so much better than what I had before. I never had a clue that a monitor had to be calibrated but that was before I joined NPN and became informed.
OK, in looking at your screen shot, I noticed something odd. Under the image preview it says "GIF, blah, blah" on the left, and on the right it shows 100% dither, selective palette, 256 colors." Your output is JPEG High, Optimized. I don't have CS5, but is this display the way its supposed to be? I really don't know. I also don't know if it would affect output, but I would be surprised if it did. John--your help here, please, kind sir!
Glad you like the monitor. I love mine. btw: I calibrated mine for screen brightness of 110 Cd/m^2 and the contrast ratio at 400:1. These settings works nicely for printing.
Good catch, Preston. This shows the image file format before any Save for Web reduction is done. GIF is meant for graphics because it only displays 256 colors, while an 8 bit JPEG supports 16.8 million colors and is far better suited for photographic images. Converting GIF to JPEG does not bring those colors back.
'Dithering' is a trick used to fool the eye into believing that you have a larger color palette than what 256 colors normally allows. The GIF format is a definite no-no when it comes to photographic images!
Thanks, John. I guess my next question would be...Why is Cristina's display as it is? Based upon what you said, does this mean her input image file format is GIF?
Since she is using PhotoShop, I can't imagine where the input file format would be GIF. TIFF, PSD, yes, but GIF? My only guess--and Cristina will have to tell us, is if she used Image Ready (or something else) and somehow converted a file to GIF by mistake.
Cristina, we need to know more about your workflow. Something odd is happening here.
"Based upon what you said, does this mean her input image file format is GIF?"
Good question. It sure looks that way, but when I try and open a GIF file in PS and then open Save for Web to replicate that display content, it appears as a JPEG.
I shoot all my files in raw (Nikon, if that makes any difference) and then open them into photoshop using the bridge. From there I'll adjust the WB if needed. Just to test I opened a file in CS4 the way I just described and then immediately went to Save for Web. When I looked at the section in question it did say GIF. At the upper left corner I changed the tab to original, from the optimized tab just to scope out the surroundings since I have yet to use Save for Web extensively. Nothing happened nor was anything there that would help the situation, however when I changed it back to the optimized tab it changed the GIF to JPEG at the lower left corner. I didn't change any settings so it was like the mere act of selecting the original tab changed the settings which I find very strange. So I tested another file, again opening it from the bridge then Save for Web and this time JPEG was already present at the lower left corner. Still not satisfied that it was for real, I closed CS4 all the way out and reopened it. Again I opened a file up from the bridge, Save for Web, and the same result, JPEG in the lower left corner. So in short, I guess it is fixed, though I'm not sure how the mere act of changing from one tab to the other would make such a change in settings.
Discussion
16 repliesAs John says, you have to convert (not 'Assign') the image to sRGB. I use Save for Web... in PhotoShop and I ensure the 'ICC Profile' box is checked. I also select 'Optimze' to strip metadata.
--P
Bear in mind that most images that are resampled downward need to be re-sharpened to one degree or another. I would also use 'Bicubic Smoother' instead of 'Bicubic' in the Quality window.
OK, in looking at your screen shot, I noticed something odd. Under the image preview it says "GIF, blah, blah" on the left, and on the right it shows 100% dither, selective palette, 256 colors." Your output is JPEG High, Optimized. I don't have CS5, but is this display the way its supposed to be? I really don't know. I also don't know if it would affect output, but I would be surprised if it did. John--your help here, please, kind sir!
Glad you like the monitor. I love mine. btw: I calibrated mine for screen brightness of 110 Cd/m^2 and the contrast ratio at 400:1. These settings works nicely for printing.
--P
'Dithering' is a trick used to fool the eye into believing that you have a larger color palette than what 256 colors normally allows. The GIF format is a definite no-no when it comes to photographic images!
Since she is using PhotoShop, I can't imagine where the input file format would be GIF. TIFF, PSD, yes, but GIF? My only guess--and Cristina will have to tell us, is if she used Image Ready (or something else) and somehow converted a file to GIF by mistake.
Cristina, we need to know more about your workflow. Something odd is happening here.
--P
--P
Sandy