How do I get colours to match?

May 13, 2007 10:04 PM

Why am I getting different colours when saving images in Photoshop?

When I save an image via Save for Web and compare the original and the optimized versions, I never, ever get the same colours between the two.

Screenshot of what I mean:
http://www.mikey-san.net/mismatch.png

Now, I realize colours are always going to look different on different displays, so I'm not wondering about why the blue on the left doesn't match the blue on another computer. Why can't I get colours to match on my OWN machine? What am I doing wrong, here?

posted by secret about box to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Additional info: The documents are not colour-managed, as verified in "Assign Profile..."
posted by secret about box at 10:09 PM on May 13, 2007

What mode are you creating the graphics in? I've had issues with creating somethign in CMYK and then saving as RGB (which, if I'm correct, is what Save For Web converts to).
posted by rhapsodie at 10:48 PM on May 13, 2007

They're RGB, just double-checked. I rarely do print stuff.
posted by secret about box at 10:57 PM on May 13, 2007

A quick search brought up one possible solution, as well as some answers in the forums.
posted by rhapsodie at 11:03 PM on May 13, 2007

Here's the search I used; there are some other hits in there, as well.
posted by rhapsodie at 11:06 PM on May 13, 2007

rhapsodie:

First, I'm retarded for not Googling better first. Second, your first link solved it for me:

"In the Photoshop CS3 beta, you also need to toggle off 'Convert to sRGB' in the 'Save for Web & Devices' dialog."

Things are back to normal. (And third, I'm retarded^2 for not mentioning I was running CS3. I'm a developer/support guy, and I still managed to forget to mention this.)
posted by secret about box at 11:12 PM on May 13, 2007

However, if you are saving images for use on the web, you should be saving them as sRGB.

What you should be doing is converting them to sRGB before you do the "Save for Web".
posted by Thorzdad at 5:44 AM on May 14, 2007

Right. There's a great comment in the first link about that. Glad I read down. :-)
posted by secret about box at 8:30 AM on May 14, 2007

Convert to sRGB. Then when you go through "Save for Web", hit the arrow in the top right and select "Use Document Color Profile". Also check the box to include the ICC profile, just to be safe.
posted by bradbane at 5:41 PM on May 14, 2007