Photoshop Colors

June 3, 2004 6:14 AM

I broke Photoshop! [color-related madness inside]

Something wonky has happened to my camera RAW conversion via Photoshop. Ever since I calibrated my monitor (CRT) the other day, it seems like the working space for the files I pull into the RAW dialogue is extremely limiting. Specifically, all of the very smooth, gradual tones are now extremely harsh and without detail. In essence, I would compare it somewhat to the way saving a detailed portrait as a 32-color .GIF file looks. While it doesn't have any dithering, it just seems like I've lost a lot of detail.

I've uploaded two screenshots to illustrate my problem (Figure 1 and Figure 2). Figure 1 is a screenshot of the Photoshop RAW dialogue, where you will notice the area around yesterday's setting sun to be rather harsh. Instead of a smooth gradient from white sun to the orange sky, there's a harsh area of yellow that encircles the sun. In contrast, Figure 2 is a screenshot of the same photograph taken from the Imageready RAW dialogue. As you'll see, it looks much more natural - the gradient is smooth, and a lot of detail is preserved.

It seems to me that Figure 1 is simply not utilizing enough color information. But my confusion lies in the fact that it displays perfectly fine in Imageready utilizing the very same color space (selected in the lower left of the dialogue). Moreover, it shouldn't be a problem with my monitor, as it displays without problem in Imageready. In addition, I've adjusted every available setting in the RAW dialogue to find a potential offender, and none seem to be culpable. Can anyone tell from the screenshots what might be happening? I've tried resetting my color space, proofing in different environments, etc, and nothing seems to work.

(Note: The 2 differing bit depths in the lower left have no affect on this problem.)

posted by Hankins to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I'm pretty sure Adobe would like to know about this, either as a bug report or a request for support.
posted by majick at 6:26 AM on June 3, 2004

check your color profiles to see if they match in both programs. edit>color settings.

if you aren't doing professional work where you need accurate color matching across platforms, you can probably just turn it off.
posted by Hackworth at 9:43 AM on June 3, 2004

For posterity's sake (in case people hit this page via google), I solved the problem after several reinstalls and came to the conclusion that it was the Camera Raw file in Plugins >> File Formats, not having anything to do with color surprisingly. I don't know what happened, exactly, but replacing the file with either the original from disk, or with the updated download available on adobe's website seemed to fix it up. w00t.
posted by Hankins at 7:45 AM on June 4, 2004