Posted by Neil Burton on February 26, 2012 at 6:45 PM
I have just spoilt myself and got a Dell 27" display. Wow, brilliant, amazing....but.
Since I got it I don't know whats wrong. My old shots look terrible when viewed with windows photo gallery, horrible, insipid. Now when I use photoshop I am not sure what profile to use for display, do I use the Dell or my Spyder one? But when I save for web everything comes out looking like and LSD trip, when viewed in IE or Firefox....unless I use save as with an ICC profile embedded...then it just looks bad in Firefox (badly clipped blacks)...
I know this subject comes up and I have no clue about this, it was all fine, why did I change anything? does of course beg the question "What do other people see when I post shots :o ?" If it is the phsycodelic stuff then thanks for the kind comments :o
Please help?
Here are two shots, one sRGB saved as normal with SFW, the other AdobeRGB using Save As... ?
Never pick a monitor profile to use within PS or to assign to an image - it's for your monitor!
You should usually use one of AdobeRGB98, sRGB or ProPhoto to work on your images.
There are many things that can get set wrongly, and it ends up appearing to be a major headache (which it isn't really!), so you need to work through them a step at a time, a few things to browse thru' on the NPN website that might help you a little....
Tim Grey Color Management Basics - from 2003, but still as relevant now as back then! Once you've got those set, then you need to make sure you're not viewing & adjusting things in PS using the on-screen proofing (turn it off!). After that, you need to make sure that (if you're using save for web in PS CS5), you've got it set correctly too ->'Internet Standard RGB (none)'. (That setting should appear a touch less saturated than if it's set to 'monitor color')
(There's plenty more info in the back-issues of the past articles too -> find em all here)
HTH
Posted by Neil Burton on February 27, 2012 at 3:48 AM
OK, cheers Nick. I do have PS set to Adobe RGB now but I can't understand why my old JPGs are suddenly looking so bad when viewed outside of IE :(
Neil,
The images you've posted here over the last year or so all look OK, and with the odd exception, have the right colour profile in them for web viewing (sRGB), so you shouldn't be too far wide of the mark!
Read through the article above, then calibrate your monitor profile again with the Spyder - the calibration software should take care of setting your system to use the newly calibrated profile. Then set PS as Tim Grey has it and see if you still get stuff looking bad. Don't worry if it is still bad - at least if you've done those steps, then we know you're starting from a good baseline and we can then look at other options that may be set wrongly.
Hi well I like the aRGB one I don't change any of my images that I post to sRGB, I set save to the web in CS2 to use the embeded colour profile.
Phil.
Posted by Neil Burton on February 27, 2012 at 6:24 AM
Right. Lots to do. But when windows is using the Spyder profile why suddenly do all my legacy Saved for Web JPGs look absolutley awful in windows? That is really bugging me.
The Hare images on your blog look exactly as I would expect them, I am viewing on a fully profiled and calibrated Eizo system... perhaps you can talk us through your calibration procedure, I am not too familiar with the spyder....
'Here at work hare1 looks perfectly good and hare2 looks pale and green'
Thats exactly as it should be... sorry more questions...
Does the software take you through a hardware calibration prior to creating a profile? It is always possible that the software LUT is trying to do too much..
Is there any ambient light sneeking through the the device sensor that could be throwing the profile out?
Are images in Photoshop OK, but look different in non colour managed applications....
Which image looks the 'worst' when you view at home, sRGB or aRGB?
Certainly sounds like something is amiss....
Posted by Phil Shaw on February 27, 2012 at 8:02 AM
It difficult to offer help on these issues remotely but I think we need a little more information to be able to offer assistance. What operating system are you using and what version of Photoshop are you working with? That would be a start. Did you install any software with the monitor?
In your original post you ask - do I use the Dell or my Spyder one? If you have calibrated the new monitor with the Spyder this is the one you should be using, but you should be aware that the profiles produced with early versions of the Spyder were not very reliable.
If you have installed any Photoshop up-dates recently, you should check that your colour management settings haven't been reset, or changed inadvertently to something weird.
It looks to me like neither of the hare images posted to your blog site actually have a colour profile embedded.
Posted by Neil Burton on February 27, 2012 at 8:26 AM
OK, I am using CS5 on Windows Vista. The spyder profile is being used by Windows, I set PS to Adobe RGB and always save for web with defaults (standard windows colour I believe). I really am not sure about the other settings as I never had call to change any. The display came with nosoftware, just an ICC rpofile.
To the images. The above image was saved as web, SRGB. Looks great here at work, looks like traffic lights at home. The second was save as, with the Adobe RGB colour space but I did not save the ICC profile....looks great at home but rather sickly here at work.
I am sorry to sound daft but I am confused.
Phils JPG I will try at home.
Posted by Phil Shaw on February 27, 2012 at 1:05 PM
In the Save for Web dialogue box make sure that the Embed Colour Profile check box is selected. I have had this become deselected, apparently of its own volition, in the past.
Posted by Phil Shaw on February 27, 2012 at 1:26 PM
Also, to check which profile your monitor is using navigate to your Color Management folder
Start > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Color Management.
Click on the Devices tab and select your monitor.
Select the "Use my settings for this device" check box, and then click Add.
In the Associate Color Profile dialog box, scroll through the list and select the color profile that you produced with your Spyder when you calibrated the display, and then click OK.
If its not there, (it should be) you may have to find where it has been installed so click Browse, locate the profile and then click Add.
You should then set the Spyder-created profile as your default for the monitor by selecting "Set as Default Profile".
Hope this helps.
Posted by Neil Burton on February 27, 2012 at 4:21 PM
Hi Phil, yes I am using the Spyder profile and after many restarts am sure it must be using it. Just found out I needed to use the cable which came with the display (Dual something, as my old one was rubbish) now I at least got full resolution. My old JPGs still look green and sick though. Will try spyder again.
If this was just my new files I would figure it was normal but it is all my old web files which now look odd.
Posted by Neil Burton on February 27, 2012 at 4:44 PM
Right, have run the calibration again and things are looking much better. I even now know there is an embed colour profile option in Save for Web
Thank you all for the help, seems my Spyder was not attached correctly?
Glad you got sorted.. it gets very confusing and is a bit of a minefield....
All the best
Posted by Neil Burton on February 28, 2012 at 5:39 AM
Thanks for the help but there is still something odd, see my hare post.
Posted by Phil Shaw on February 28, 2012 at 9:51 AM
OK, I'm not sure how I can help further, but this is what I would do at this point.
First I would navigate to the Colour Management Folder and delete all the Spyder generated profiles present, then recalibrate, then check that the new Spyder profile is set as the default for the device (monitor).
If this doesn't fix the problem, then I think you are going to have to phone Dell - sorry about that.
One thing that you should be aware of is that quite a lot of people had problems with Vista retaining custom profiles and I don't think that was ever really sorted out. One way to proceed would be to up-grade to Win 7 which is much more robust in terms of colour management, however, from what you've said I'm assuming that you were able to successfully profile your old monitor while using the same operating system, graphics card set-up, spyder etc. Given that that is the case, the suspicion has to fall on the new monitor in my view and therefore the need to speak to Dell. I see that Dell are selling monitors that feature PremierColor Technology. If yours is one with this feature, then I would try selecting the default monitor profile and seeing if this fixes the problem. This will be some sort of colour LUT and it may not be honouring the custom profile so that you are running two profiles at the same time.
Posted by Neil Burton on February 28, 2012 at 11:21 AM
Thanks Phil. I will check what I can tonight. I did notice among all the menus that there are verious modes, one is adobeRGB mode, perhaps I could use this, set the profile to aRGB and see how that works. Pr maybe just use the damn Dell profile... this is supposed to be plug and play
I'm assuming you're using the Dell ultraSharp 2711? & Presumably via a DVI-D cable rather than the VGA cable? Also, are you using a single monitor, or two monitor setup? If using two monitors, then remove the other monitor and make sure the Dell is the primary (main) monitor for Windows - you can reconnect the other monitor once you've got the Dell profiled & sorted.
On your Dell monitor can you just check you haven't got some of the Dell colour options turned on - there are various things for gaming modes and other such junk that can fiddle with the colour output and screw up the profiler ( if they're turned on, then the monitor adjusts the color values itself after windows has adjusted them!). Go into the Monitor OSD Menu and find the color settings and see that you're using something like the following settings:
Choose the reset color settings option at the bottom of the menu, then check the following are set...
Input Format: RGB
Gamma: PC
Mode Selection: Graphics
Preset modes: Standard (or Adobe RGB or even sRGB)
Now on your PC do as Phil said and clean out any spyder monitor profiles that are 'lying around'. Get the Spyder, make sure your screen is clean & the spyder lying flat on it, then run a full profile ie one where you have to calibrate the spyder. That should now be the OS and monitor running in sync. See how things look. If things still don't look right, then re-calibrate and use the options that get you to calibrate the spyder, set the colour temperature and brightness of the monitor and then creates a profile.
In Photoshop, you should have the color settings as per Tim grey's article, and on-screen proofing turned off. Adjust your image to how it should appear to you. Now save it - don't use save for web, first convert the image to sRGB -> Edit-Convert to profile & set destination space to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 - ignore any other sRGB profiles if there are any! Now use Save As to save the image as a jpeg and embed the color profile. It should appear more or less the same in most browsers now. If you've Firefox or Safari with the color profile awareness, then it should appear as it does in PS. If you haven't, then go get Firefox or Safari and see how it looks then. Then compare it with IE.
PS - if all of those fail, then there's another setting on the monitor - 'Other Settings->DDC/CI' - try turning it off in case some software is mucking directly with the monitor (like the video card drivers!). Oh, and you could check to make sure you're running the latest version of your Video card drivers while you're on too .
Posted by Phil Shaw on February 28, 2012 at 12:41 PM
I think you might be getting a bit confused.
aRGB, sRGB, ProphotoRGB, LAB etc are device independent colour spaces that are used to specify the colours found in a particular image file. To translate this data you need a device profile which, in your case, is needed to tell your monitor how to produce the required colour. This is what your Spyder does. The Spyder software generates a specific colour on-screen which is measured by the Spyder. The software then compares the values it measures with what the values are supposed to be and if they are off, it applies a correction. The corrections are compiled to produce the profile for that device (monitor).
Therefore, you need to set your monitor either to the Spyder generated profile, or the default supplied by Dell - not any of the others. After you have done this re-boot and check that the profile you selected has been retained.
In terms of Photoshop, go to Edit > Colour Settings to bring up the Colour Preference Dialogue Box.
In the Work Space dialogue select Abobe RGB (default is sRGB); leave the other stuff as is.
Under Colour Management Policies make sure that Preserve embedded profile is selected in each box.
Also place a tick in the box for Profile mismatches and Missing Profiles.
Now select More options on the right and make sure that the Colour Conversion engine is Adobe ACE and that Intent is Perceptual. You can leave the rest as is.
Phil, within the monitor's firmware there is a setting to 'adjust' the display's gamut between generic and modes that display more of the sRGB and aRGB gamuts (and also adjusts for color boost for watching DVDs/videos) - that setting operates totally independently from anything set in windows or OS X such as via the video card or spyder profile. Ideally the monitor hardware setting should be set at Adobe RGB, 2nd best sRGB, next best Standard.
So,
Monitor Firmware gamut setting - > Adobe or sRGB or Standard
Computer... display profile - calibrated via Spyder.
Photoshop.. as per Tim Grey's article.
Posted by Neil Burton on February 28, 2012 at 5:16 PM
Right, Nick is right the Dell 2711 has "modes" of which one is Adobe RGB. I did not play with these so far and all the settings are as per Nicks advise (I never change what comes in the box usually)!. Everything seems fine, am using save as for now and FF shows the correct image, or the image as I processed it IE is still over saturated but I do think the saturation of this Dell is higher than before generally.
OK, if you're happy with what you're getting - now time to break it - go back and try saving an image using save as, and then save a 2nd version of it using save for web... then see if they appear the same to you in firefox, then in IE. If they don't you've got something set wrongly in the s-f-w settings somewhere!
Posted by Neil Burton on February 29, 2012 at 3:31 AM
Yeh, will try that tongith then Nick, thanks again for the help....
Posted by Neil Burton on March 5, 2012 at 11:05 AM
I will add a foot note to this, based on things learned.
There is another tab in the colour management dialogue. I overlooked it as my windows is German, so everthing I get toldhas to be translated :| In there I have windows display colour space.... should be sRGB but was Spyder :|
Things got better but still too colourful. I read a few articles, recommending I use the monitor in AdobeRGB mode with Adobe RGB ICC profile.....my Spyder is not wide gamut so no longer useful it seems.
Finally, as it is a wide gamut monitor any software displaying images that do not use the profile will look oversaturated, especially towards red/pink.... itis normal I am led to believe.
If in doubt I can set the monitor mode to sRGB....but why did I buy a wide gamut monitor to do that?
Discussion
28 repliesSince I got it I don't know whats wrong. My old shots look terrible when viewed with windows photo gallery, horrible, insipid. Now when I use photoshop I am not sure what profile to use for display, do I use the Dell or my Spyder one? But when I save for web everything comes out looking like and LSD trip, when viewed in IE or Firefox....unless I use save as with an ICC profile embedded...then it just looks bad in Firefox (badly clipped blacks)...
I know this subject comes up and I have no clue about this, it was all fine, why did I change anything? does of course beg the question "What do other people see when I post shots :o ?" If it is the phsycodelic stuff then thanks for the kind comments :o
Please help?
Here are two shots, one sRGB saved as normal with SFW, the other AdobeRGB using Save As... ?
http://natureimmortal.blogspot.com/
You should usually use one of AdobeRGB98, sRGB or ProPhoto to work on your images.
There are many things that can get set wrongly, and it ends up appearing to be a major headache (which it isn't really!), so you need to work through them a step at a time, a few things to browse thru' on the NPN website that might help you a little....
Tim Grey Color Management Basics - from 2003, but still as relevant now as back then! Once you've got those set, then you need to make sure you're not viewing & adjusting things in PS using the on-screen proofing (turn it off!). After that, you need to make sure that (if you're using save for web in PS CS5), you've got it set correctly too ->'Internet Standard RGB (none)'. (That setting should appear a touch less saturated than if it's set to 'monitor color')
(There's plenty more info in the back-issues of the past articles too -> find em all here)
HTH
Will have a read... cheers.
Do the images look OK in Photoshop? The other programs you mention are not colour priofile aware.....
The images you've posted here over the last year or so all look OK, and with the odd exception, have the right colour profile in them for web viewing (sRGB), so you shouldn't be too far wide of the mark!
Read through the article above, then calibrate your monitor profile again with the Spyder - the calibration software should take care of setting your system to use the newly calibrated profile. Then set PS as Tim Grey has it and see if you still get stuff looking bad. Don't worry if it is still bad - at least if you've done those steps, then we know you're starting from a good baseline and we can then look at other options that may be set wrongly.
Phil.
The Hare images on your blog look exactly as I would expect them, I am viewing on a fully profiled and calibrated Eizo system... perhaps you can talk us through your calibration procedure, I am not too familiar with the spyder....
Phil
Phil.
Here at work hare1 looks perfectly good and hare2 looks pale and green. At home it is totally different.
Thats exactly as it should be... sorry more questions...
Does the software take you through a hardware calibration prior to creating a profile? It is always possible that the software LUT is trying to do too much..
Is there any ambient light sneeking through the the device sensor that could be throwing the profile out?
Are images in Photoshop OK, but look different in non colour managed applications....
Which image looks the 'worst' when you view at home, sRGB or aRGB?
Certainly sounds like something is amiss....
In your original post you ask - do I use the Dell or my Spyder one? If you have calibrated the new monitor with the Spyder this is the one you should be using, but you should be aware that the profiles produced with early versions of the Spyder were not very reliable.
If you have installed any Photoshop up-dates recently, you should check that your colour management settings haven't been reset, or changed inadvertently to something weird.
It looks to me like neither of the hare images posted to your blog site actually have a colour profile embedded.
To the images. The above image was saved as web, SRGB. Looks great here at work, looks like traffic lights at home. The second was save as, with the Adobe RGB colour space but I did not save the ICC profile....looks great at home but rather sickly here at work.
I am sorry to sound daft but I am confused.
Phils JPG I will try at home.
Start > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Color Management.
Click on the Devices tab and select your monitor.
Select the "Use my settings for this device" check box, and then click Add.
In the Associate Color Profile dialog box, scroll through the list and select the color profile that you produced with your Spyder when you calibrated the display, and then click OK.
If its not there, (it should be) you may have to find where it has been installed so click Browse, locate the profile and then click Add.
You should then set the Spyder-created profile as your default for the monitor by selecting "Set as Default Profile".
Hope this helps.
If this was just my new files I would figure it was normal but it is all my old web files which now look odd.
Thank you all for the help, seems my Spyder was not attached correctly?
All the best
First I would navigate to the Colour Management Folder and delete all the Spyder generated profiles present, then recalibrate, then check that the new Spyder profile is set as the default for the device (monitor).
If this doesn't fix the problem, then I think you are going to have to phone Dell - sorry about that.
One thing that you should be aware of is that quite a lot of people had problems with Vista retaining custom profiles and I don't think that was ever really sorted out. One way to proceed would be to up-grade to Win 7 which is much more robust in terms of colour management, however, from what you've said I'm assuming that you were able to successfully profile your old monitor while using the same operating system, graphics card set-up, spyder etc. Given that that is the case, the suspicion has to fall on the new monitor in my view and therefore the need to speak to Dell. I see that Dell are selling monitors that feature PremierColor Technology. If yours is one with this feature, then I would try selecting the default monitor profile and seeing if this fixes the problem. This will be some sort of colour LUT and it may not be honouring the custom profile so that you are running two profiles at the same time.
I'm assuming you're using the Dell ultraSharp 2711? & Presumably via a DVI-D cable rather than the VGA cable? Also, are you using a single monitor, or two monitor setup? If using two monitors, then remove the other monitor and make sure the Dell is the primary (main) monitor for Windows - you can reconnect the other monitor once you've got the Dell profiled & sorted.
On your Dell monitor can you just check you haven't got some of the Dell colour options turned on - there are various things for gaming modes and other such junk that can fiddle with the colour output and screw up the profiler ( if they're turned on, then the monitor adjusts the color values itself after windows has adjusted them!). Go into the Monitor OSD Menu and find the color settings and see that you're using something like the following settings:
Choose the reset color settings option at the bottom of the menu, then check the following are set...
Input Format: RGB
Gamma: PC
Mode Selection: Graphics
Preset modes: Standard (or Adobe RGB or even sRGB)
Now on your PC do as Phil said and clean out any spyder monitor profiles that are 'lying around'. Get the Spyder, make sure your screen is clean & the spyder lying flat on it, then run a full profile ie one where you have to calibrate the spyder. That should now be the OS and monitor running in sync. See how things look. If things still don't look right, then re-calibrate and use the options that get you to calibrate the spyder, set the colour temperature and brightness of the monitor and then creates a profile.
In Photoshop, you should have the color settings as per Tim grey's article, and on-screen proofing turned off. Adjust your image to how it should appear to you. Now save it - don't use save for web, first convert the image to sRGB -> Edit-Convert to profile & set destination space to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 - ignore any other sRGB profiles if there are any! Now use Save As to save the image as a jpeg and embed the color profile. It should appear more or less the same in most browsers now. If you've Firefox or Safari with the color profile awareness, then it should appear as it does in PS. If you haven't, then go get Firefox or Safari and see how it looks then. Then compare it with IE.
Hope that helps.
aRGB, sRGB, ProphotoRGB, LAB etc are device independent colour spaces that are used to specify the colours found in a particular image file. To translate this data you need a device profile which, in your case, is needed to tell your monitor how to produce the required colour. This is what your Spyder does. The Spyder software generates a specific colour on-screen which is measured by the Spyder. The software then compares the values it measures with what the values are supposed to be and if they are off, it applies a correction. The corrections are compiled to produce the profile for that device (monitor).
Therefore, you need to set your monitor either to the Spyder generated profile, or the default supplied by Dell - not any of the others. After you have done this re-boot and check that the profile you selected has been retained.
In terms of Photoshop, go to Edit > Colour Settings to bring up the Colour Preference Dialogue Box.
In the Work Space dialogue select Abobe RGB (default is sRGB); leave the other stuff as is.
Under Colour Management Policies make sure that Preserve embedded profile is selected in each box.
Also place a tick in the box for Profile mismatches and Missing Profiles.
Now select More options on the right and make sure that the Colour Conversion engine is Adobe ACE and that Intent is Perceptual. You can leave the rest as is.
So,
Monitor Firmware gamut setting - > Adobe or sRGB or Standard
Computer... display profile - calibrated via Spyder.
Photoshop.. as per Tim Grey's article.
Once again thanks to everyone.
There is another tab in the colour management dialogue. I overlooked it as my windows is German, so everthing I get toldhas to be translated :| In there I have windows display colour space.... should be sRGB but was Spyder :|
Things got better but still too colourful. I read a few articles, recommending I use the monitor in AdobeRGB mode with Adobe RGB ICC profile.....my Spyder is not wide gamut so no longer useful it seems.
Finally, as it is a wide gamut monitor any software displaying images that do not use the profile will look oversaturated, especially towards red/pink.... itis normal I am led to believe.
If in doubt I can set the monitor mode to sRGB....but why did I buy a wide gamut monitor to do that?
Thanks again for all the info. The dell rocks!