Strange appearance of jpgs in Bridge

[Duffy Pratt]

I started to get something wierd in Bridge.

I open a RAW file in ACR, then open it in Photoshop. If the ACR work is OK, then for web presentation I convert to sRGB, sharpen and save as .jpg.

Usually, when this happens, the colors in the jpg and the RAW file are basically identical in Bridge. Today, the jpgs end up looking much warmer in Bridge than in the raw file.

So I tried a few things. I opened the jpgs in PS again. They look fine, the warmness showing in Bridge is gone, and they look like the RAW files.

I tried doing the same thing but saving as a .tif. Again, no problem. Bridge shows the tiffs looking the same as the RAW.

Then I tried opening the .jpg in iPhoto. It looks the same in iPhoto as it does in Photoshop, but different than the way Bridge shows the jpg.

I checked some pictures in Bridge that I had worked on before today. The .jpgs and Raws look the same in Bridge. But if I try to work on one of those Raws now, I get the same wierd color shift in Bridge when I save it as a jpg.

Anyone have any ideas what might be causing this strangeness, or what steps I might take to fix it?

Duffy

[KdLaneJr]

Is it possible that the color profile conversion to sRGB was accidentally skipped? I have my working colorspace in CS2 set to Prophoto. If I open jpeg up with sRGB colorspace, CS2 asks me whether to change to my default colorspace or open in the embedded colorspace.

Because photoshop can read the embedded colorspace of a jpeg, opening a jpeg that is not sRGB in a program that can't read it causes a noticable color shift.

I'd open the offending jpeg in photoshop and select 'convert to profile' to check what colorspace the file is actually using.

Beyond that, I don't know what could be causing it. Do you save your RAW changes in .xmp sidecar files or embed them in the RAW file? I prefer to embed them so I don't have a bunch of .xmp's hanging around.

I think you could extrapolate the colorspace affect to your .tif files also.

[Duffy Pratt]

Not possible. First off, Bridge is supposed to be color managed, as a part of Photoshop. Second, I've tried the test where all I do is open the RAW in PS, convert to sRGB, and then save it. I get the same result, and there is no chance with those steps that there is a color space problem. Finally, I've performed the exact same steps but saved to tif instead of jpg, and not had the color problem I'm seeing.

Duffy

[Duffy Pratt]

FWIW, this problem is basically resolved.

I found a bug in Bridge. It turns out that if you save a PS document in .jpg using the Progressive method, it will render the jpg in Bridge with a red bias. A neutral gray will gain a few points of red. If you open the .jpg in PS or in any third party program its just fine.

If, for some reason, you open the .jpg using Bridge's camera raw, it will preserve the color shift, and pass it along to PS if you happenned to go there again. (I don't know anyone who re-edits .jpgs, but this aspect of the bug is at least potentially dangerous.)

If you save the .jpg using the baseline algorithm, there is no problem at all. Somehow, the default in PS changed from Baseline to Progressive, and that is how the problem started for me.

I have had two other people try this, and they have replicated the behavior exactly, so I think it is clearly a bug.

Duffy