Color Profile Crisis!!! Once saved out of Photoshop, colors are horribly off!

SaraB56 said:

digidog said:

Should the OP set ACR to always provide a low rez file appropriate for web posting? Or pull in the full resolution data, then sample down

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u don't even understand the difference between converting to srgb and "sampling down" -- u are confusing color profile with resolution

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Clearly you are too vapid to understand what an analogy is.

Further, your advise to the OP is as poor as your ability to understand color management, analogies or proper forum edict.

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Andrew Rodney
Author: Color Management for Photographers
The Digital Dog
http://www.digitaldog.net

digidog said:

Clearly you are too vapid to understand what an analogy is.

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i understand what a failed analogy is

Member said:

Further, your advise to the OP is as poor as your ability to understand color management, analogies or proper forum edict.

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an 'edict' is 'a formal proclamation by an authority' -- that's from the dictionary

the word you were groping for is 'etiquette' - and once again you got it wrong

back to the topic and chris montgomery - try the settings i suggested and see what happens - you can always go back to whatever settings you are using now that are screwing up your color

until you understand how to handle larger color spaces -- and you obviously don't understand that right now -- just stick with srgb -------- believe it or not lots of professional photographers do that

and to digidog -- i'm done witchoo -- no more replies from me to your ignorance

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sara

SaraB56 said:

until you understand how to handle larger color spaces -- and you obviously don't understand that right now -- just stick with srgb -------- believe it or not lots of professional photographers do that

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What SaraB56 is saying is the OP is too dumb to understand how to properly configure both LR and Photoshop. If SaraB56 would actually read the original post of the OP, it's clear he does understand the basics of differing color spaces, embedding profiles etc. Rather, it is SaraB56's advise is what's rather dumb. SaraB56 is also speaking for lots of professional photographers which should be an indication such writings apply to SaraB56 who would like to speak for others. Pointless and foolish!

SaraB56 said:

and to digidog -- i'm done witchoo -- no more replies from me to your ignorance

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Thank goodness, you've provided enough misinformation about color management so far and have provided evidence that the ignorance on the subject of color management is all yours.

--

Andrew Rodney
Author: Color Management for Photographers
The Digital Dog
http://www.digitaldog.net

The fact that you are saving your image with an aRGB color is your original problem - the web wants sRGB.

In ACR or Lightroom you are working in a modified 16-bit ProPhoto color space. Adobe recommends that you convert your RAW images to 16-bit ProPhoto images when you send them to Photoshop. To do that set your ACR preferences like this.



The reason for doing this is to preserve the full range of color and brightness information and thus reduce the chance of problems (typically posterization) from changes you make in Photoshop. You may not be able to see the full range of colors on your monitor but behind the scenes Photoshop is still using all that extra color and brightness information, preventing problems that can be caused by working with a more limited amount of information.

Photoshop's Color Setting should be set this way.



By checking the appropriate Color Management boxes images with an embedded sRGB or aRGB color space will cause Photoshop to automatically open those images in the appropriate color space.

You will also be asked to assign a color space to images that don't have an embedded color space. A missing color space usually, but not always, occurs with images downloaded from the web and you should tell Photoshop to use the sRGB color space for these files.

Working in the 16-bit ProPhoto color space can cause a problem when saving JPGs. If you simply use the File>Save As command the JPG file will be saved with the ProPhoto color space embedded in the file and won't display correctly. This is the same problem that you encountered when working in the aRGB color space.

There are two ways to avoid this problem.

One way is to use the File>Save for Web command. This command will automatically convert the image to the 8-bit sRGB color space and save the file with that color space embedded in the file. Unfortunately it will automatically apply what Adobe thinks is the appropriate changes to colors, contrast, and sharpness for the image of your chose size when it is viewed on the web.

The better way is to use the Edit>Convert To Profile>sRGB command first. After this make any changes to image size, colors, contrast, and sharpness that you want so that they will fit your artistic tastes. Finally you can use the File>Save As command to save the exact image you have created.

--
Living and loving it in Pattaya, Thailand. Canon 7D - See the gear list for the rest.

There are two camps here in attempting to assist you and they are diametrically opposed. One camp wants to dumb down this topic because posters like SaraB56 assume you are dumb! I and Sailor Blue take the opposite approach. We make no such assumptions and are trying to explain the problem and solution such you don't lose valuable data in achieving multiple goals.

IF you want to setup the color management to provide the most useable color data from your raw images, view the video's I've provided, study that recent post where Sailor Blue has provided screen captures. Those settings make far more sense than the settings recommended by SaraB56. If you want a dumbed down process that will ultimately affect the quality of your data going from raw forward, follow the dumbed down sRGB recommendations of SaraB56.

It's your call. Personally I don't gain anything if you stick with a dumb sRGB workflow or one that takes advantage of all the data you can get out of the Adobe raw processing path.

Based on the advise of SaraB56, it's pretty clear to me she doesn't think much of the intelligence of others, doesn't understand the topic of color management and when one attempts to explain the facts of this topic, her response is:

Chris Montgomery said:

u are full of sh*t'

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That attitude alone is reason I'd think most people reading these posts would ignore her.

If you have any further questions regrading the non dumb color management workflow, please ask.

...If you have your printer calibrated and set up in Photoshop properly, true. But most people that print let their printer decide the color-management, and then it expects sRGB input.

CM is something you have to do completely or completely not.

digidog said:

There are two camps here...

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I guess I'm in camp three then... Use the color space that suits your needs best. Your knowledge level doesn't matter a bit.

If you are only doing small edits, and are publishing to the web only, stick with sRGB. There is no need whatsoever to make use of a larger color space. Set up ACR to export with that colorspace, and use it as your working space in Photoshop.

Joachim B said:

digidog said:

There are two camps here...

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I guess I'm in camp three then... Use the color space that suits your needs best. Your knowledge level doesn't matter a bit.

If you are only doing small edits, and are publishing to the web only, stick with sRGB. There is no need whatsoever to make use of a larger color space. Set up ACR to export with that colorspace, and use it as your working space in Photoshop.

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But is the OP in your camp?
--
Andrew Rodney
Author: Color Management for Photographers
The Digital Dog

The OP has the luxury of choice. He knows best what he wants and needs, and I guess he can make that choice based on the info provided.

Thanks all for the comments and suggestions. To be honest, everyone's input has been helpful as I continue to experiment with options for color management settings.

As for me, my personal experience has evolved around the purposes of preparing for CMYK print which I've got down by using my own custom CMYK color profiles. RGB by been an afterthought as most of what I bring in (photos) gets converted to CMYK for print (packaging, marketing, etc.), where even a great deal of Pantone assignments comes in to play.

The suggestions regarding RGB here give me a broad knowledge of options for setup and I'm finding the result better with each experiment... as well as up till now, has been an overlooked issue for improvement. I really like the ProPhoto RGB as well and may try to move towards that direction. My immediate needs to maintain color for web has been resolved for now. That was a huge help. Also, I can, when color processing in RGB, keep things within range for proper CMYK conversion just through experience of knowing which gamuts to not exaggerate. I have a large format, high color range Epson 9900 that can definitely benefit for printing complex RGB profiles. I'll eventually try to make a move to that (ProPhoto RGB) while retaining my custom CMYK profiles.

In the mean time, I'm keeping it simple with the sRGBs and custom CMYK, and most importantly, making sure all of my preferences match between RAW converter, Photoshop and OS profiles. That was also a major, if not the main issue causing problems in the mean time. I can't make such a drastic RGB profile change right away as I'm in the middle of designing and exchanging files for web using the current profiles. I'm afraid it I change the color profiles now, it'll mess up between my previous and future files exchanging with my brother for web design files. Once the art is all exchanged for this current project, I'll make the drastic color profile change (particularly for RGB settings).

Everyone's input, even if conflicting in subtle ways, has been helpful because it helps me to consider and experiment with all suggestions to find what works best for me concerning both translation of images to web as well as large format color reproduction in print - so I appreciate everyone's input and the time taken to offer their suggestions.

Thanks again for the feedback and as I experiment and ween down to the ideal and most effective setup for my personal needs, I'll chime in and share results (for future reference regarding this issue that others might run in to).

Chris Montgomery said:

As for me, my personal experience has evolved around the purposes of preparing for CMYK print which I've got down by using my own custom CMYK color profiles.

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FWIW, sRGB gamut isn't large enough to fully contain many CMYK output color space gamuts. For example, here is sRGB plotted over SWOP V2 which is TR001:


SWOP V2 is red, portions fall outside sRGB

The red plot is SWOP V2 and you can see, it falls outside sRGB (has a larger color gamut) than sRGB in cyan's, teals etc. Those colors will clip if you convert to CMYK from sRGB!

I don't know the size of your custom CMYK profile I'd be happy to plot it in 3D in ColorThink if you don't have that product.

Point is, sRGB is not a very good working space for output to print, RGB or CMYK. Adobe RGB will fully contain the entire gamut of SWOP V2 and probably most CMYK output color spaces.

--
Andrew Rodney
Author: Color Management for Photographers
The Digital Dog
http://www.digitaldog.net