What color setting did I break in Photoshop?

October 12, 2007 11:16 AM

In Photoshop, all my colors appear in the wrong hue--sky blue shows up as bright pink, green shows up as yellow, red shows up as green.

This problem is true for .jpegs, .gifs, and .psd files. I'm running Photoshop 6.0 in Windows XP SP2.

The problem surfaced a while back, but I'm now completing a project, and it's fraying my last nerve!

Any thoughts on which setting I accidentally tweaked? Thanks!

posted by bullitt 5 to computers & internet (13 comments total)

It's probably the gamma calibration.
posted by cerebus19 at 11:19 AM on October 12, 2007

Sorry--meant to link to this. (The other link is for Macs.)
posted by cerebus19 at 11:21 AM on October 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

When was the last time you calibrated your monitor? For that matter, how old is your monitor? CRT or flat screen?
posted by lekvar at 11:38 AM on October 12, 2007

I had a problem like this once, only in photoshop. Nothing else was effected.
posted by Espoo2 at 11:47 AM on October 12, 2007

Oh, and I don't remember what I did to fix it... I think I ended up reinstalling.
posted by Espoo2 at 11:47 AM on October 12, 2007

I have a dual monitor setup, one LCD, one CRT, and the hues are off in both monitors.

The LCD is about 3 yrs old, the CRT probably 5 yrs old, working from separate video cards on the motherboard.

That said, it seemed an Adobe problem rather than a monitor issue, because the problem occurred at the same time on both displays.

Thanks for the feedback and the link to the gamma wizard. I'll do that after the client meeting.
posted by bullitt 5 at 11:50 AM on October 12, 2007

Set everything to default might help; also look at this thread. I'm guessing its a color management issue, but it could certainly be something else.
posted by TedW at 12:05 PM on October 12, 2007

not all from images taken w/one camera, are they?

obviously could be the camera in that case

but i doubt that's the issue!
posted by Salvatorparadise at 12:31 PM on October 12, 2007

Doesn't PhotoShop support monitor profiles? If you've loused that up, anything could happen.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:34 PM on October 12, 2007

Did you accidentally turn off a channel? Window > Channels on a Mac, probably similar on Windows.
posted by ScottUltra at 2:03 PM on October 12, 2007

sky blue shows up as bright pink, green shows up as yellow, red shows up as green.

So colors are inverted? Can you just throw an invert layer on top of everything to help wrap up your project?
posted by niles at 2:17 PM on October 12, 2007

Problem solved! I ran the gamma calibration, and that resolved the problem on both monitors. Lustrous blues and reds, wonderful.

It must have been a monitor profile/color management issue, thanks for those suggestions, but cerebus19's link is what resolved it.

My aching eyes thank you!
posted by bullitt 5 at 2:24 PM on October 12, 2007

Also, positive reaction from our client, so good news all around. :)
posted by bullitt 5 at 2:38 PM on October 12, 2007