Colour wierdness in Photoshop - help!

[futurshox]

I'm having some wierd issues with colours on images when I've saved them in Photoshop CS3. Everything seems like it's had the colours leached out of it.

I'm very new to CS3 and I'm sure I'm missing something obvious. Perhaps something with the colour space? Or how bit depth?

So, here's a photo that I saved from CS3:


And here's what it should look like, saved from Lightroom (slightly different crop and no post-processing, but the colours are what I'm interested in here):


I'm seeing this on virtually everything now and I'm sure it didn't used to do that. Please can someone tell me what is going on?

Thanks!

[The Loft Studios]

I see a HUGE difference in Sharpness, but not really color.....

[boxofrocks]

Are you opening these as jpegs or from raw images?

[futurshox]

The original image is a raw file. I can't honestly remember if I opened it fresh in CS3 before making that file or did it from an exported jpg from lightroom. But it's not the only image to show this.
Further oddness - in Windows file explorer, if you view them in filmstrip mode, the thumbnail previews are washed out but the larger images display properly.

[fstops]

jo-i see a color shift there. but its the other way around, the bottom image is less saturate than the top?????

here is my take
make sure your cs3 is set to preserve embeded color profile. you can find this by go to "edit" select "color setting". what this does is to preserved your original color space instead of convert it to what ever default in your cs3. see the high lighted area.

[futurshox]

Thanks Wayne, but on checking my CS3 it is already set that way.

Never hurts to learn about these things though!

To my eyes, the top image looks like half the red channel has been dropped out, it looks semi-desaturated and with maybe a greener tint to it.

[bbailey]

Yep, the first image is very flat in my browser (FF, Windows). In CS3 it has better color than the second.

Looks like the first one you posted is saved in the Prophoto color space, web browsers (and other non-coor managed apps) won't see that, which is why it looks flat. The second image appears to be set to AdobeRGB.

You can see what profile it is and convert it to a common one (if desired) under Edit -> Convert to profile.

For items you post to the web, sRGB should be the space used since that is what browsers, etc see. I always edit in AdobeRGB and then save the separate file for the web in sRGB.

[futurshox]

Ben, thank you!

I have no idea how it got to being Prophoto... I looked on mine and there it is, but if I open a raw file it's set to Adobe (which I'd expect since my cameras are set the same way).

Thank you, I will know to check for this in future.

Jo

[Duffy Pratt]

Cool. I use Safari, which recognizes embedded profiles, and they look the same to me. I'm going to look at this tonight on another machine (with Firefox) and see if there is a difference.

Duffy

[futurshox]

Well, you certainly learn something every day! I didn't know Safari used colour profiles. I'm typing this in Safari now and I see what you mean, the pictures look _much_ better.

My previous posts have been via Firefox in both Mac and Winslow and the pictures look dodgy in both.

[JohnT]

For web use, make sure you convert your images to sRGB before saving as JPEG. As for Working Space, ProPhoto RGB is a larger color gamut than Adobe RGB (1998). It doesn't really matter which space (Adobe or sRGB) your camera is set at if you shoot RAW.

[Duffy Pratt]

One more thing: if you are using ProPhoto as your working space, make sure you are editing in 16-bit. The gamut is too large to do any subtle shifts in 8 bit.

Duffy

[Dobick]

I have seen examples, and I can see the differences. I have read the explanations, and I think I have a pretty decent grasp of the english language, as well as technical jargon, but for the life of me, I cannot understand (when I see the graphs of the color space diagrams) how discarding information that is out on the edges (like ProPhoto space "downsized" to sRGB) can have such a dramatic difference. I see it with my own eyes, I just can't get my feeble little mind around the way that it works. I guess until I do, I will just try to follow the rules.

It's just frustrating that with something so dramatic, I can't really get my mind around the concept.

[Duffy Pratt]

OK. See if this explains it. There are 255 levels in each channel. In sRGB those levels are mapped onto a smaller space than in ProPhoto. Thus, for any given point (x,y,z), the color represented by that number will be a more vivid color when represented in ProPhoto than when represented in sRGB.

So, if you have a photo that was saved in ProPhoto, but you show it in sRGB, then the whole photo will tend to look dull and non colorfull. Conversely, if you have a photo saved in sRGB and you show it in ProPhoto, it will look alot more saturated and colorful.

If you want to play around with differences, open up any photo in Photoshop. Find the "Assign Profile" command and play with the options. What this command does is assign a different profile to the image without changing the numbers. Thus it shows you what the current numbers will look like when shown under any of the profiles that are available to it. The key ones to look at for differences are sRGB, AdobeRGB, AppleRGB, and ProPhotoRGB.

The "Convert Profile" command, will try to keep the image looking as close as possible to what it currently looks like, while changing the numbers and the changing the profile.

Heres an analogy that might help. Lets say you had a map of Colorado, and a map of the United States. Both maps have a grid on the x and y axis from 0 to 100. On the Colorado map, the gird point 0,0 is at the town Four Corners. The 0,0 point on the U.S. map is somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Four Corners on the U.S. map is something like 25, 30.

By analogy, sRGB is the Colorado Map and ProPhoto is the U.S. map. The grid are the numbers from 0 to 255 in the R, G, B channels. Your file contains detailed instructions for where each pixel falls along the grid. It also contains a profile saying which map it is using. Most browsers don't recognize the different maps, and they use whatever profile the host computer uses. Usually that profile is pretty close to sRGB. So sRGB images look close to what an sRGB image looks like. A ProPhoto image in a normale browser has all of the colors compressed so it looks dull and washed out. A browser (like Safari) that recognizes embedded profiles can interpret not only the numbers that it is being fed, but also the map on which those number belongs.

I hope this helps.

Duffy

[Dobick]

Originally Posted by Duffy Pratt

OK. See if this explains it. There are 255 levels in each channel. In sRGB those levels are mapped onto a smaller space than in ProPhoto. Thus, for any given point (x,y,z), the color represented by that number will be a more vivid color when represented in ProPhoto than when represented in sRGB.

So, if you have a photo that was saved in ProPhoto, but you show it in sRGB, then the whole photo will tend to look dull and non colorfull. Conversely, if you have a photo saved in sRGB and you show it in ProPhoto, it will look alot more saturated and colorful.

If you want to play around with differences, open up any photo in Photoshop. Find the "Assign Profile" command and play with the options. What this command does is assign a different profile to the image without changing the numbers. Thus it shows you what the current numbers will look like when shown under any of the profiles that are available to it. The key ones to look at for differences are sRGB, AdobeRGB, AppleRGB, and ProPhotoRGB.

The "Convert Profile" command, will try to keep the image looking as close as possible to what it currently looks like, while changing the numbers and the changing the profile.

Heres an analogy that might help. Lets say you had a map of Colorado, and a map of the United States. Both maps have a grid on the x and y axis from 0 to 100. On the Colorado map, the gird point 0,0 is at the town Four Corners. The 0,0 point on the U.S. map is somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Four Corners on the U.S. map is something like 25, 30.

By analogy, sRGB is the Colorado Map and ProPhoto is the U.S. map. The grid are the numbers from 0 to 255 in the R, G, B channels. Your file contains detailed instructions for where each pixel falls along the grid. It also contains a profile saying which map it is using. Most browsers don't recognize the different maps, and they use whatever profile the host computer uses. Usually that profile is pretty close to sRGB. So sRGB images look close to what an sRGB image looks like. A ProPhoto image in a normale browser has all of the colors compressed so it looks dull and washed out. A browser (like Safari) that recognizes embedded profiles can interpret not only the numbers that it is being fed, but also the map on which those number belongs.

I hope this helps.

Duffy

Excellent analogy. That helps a lot.

Let me see if I have this correct in my head.

Let's stick to the red channel for the moment:

in sRGB the channel will be 10 feet tall, and in ProPhoto it will be 50 feet tall. if I have a number of 128 in the sRGB space it will only be 5 feet up, but if I assign that value in the ProPhoto space it will be 25 feet up. So if I get my photo right with a ProPhoto space, and then let the browser assign sRGB interpretted values to it, then they will always be less saturated than what I intended.

If I got that right, then you sir are an absolute teaching genious!