Colour me blue
July 31, 2005 10:31 AM Subscribe
Color spaces, color profiles, Macs, PhotoShop, iPhoto... IT'S DRIVING ME CRAZY!!
Since upgrading to PhotoShop 7 a year or so back I seem to be having never-ending problems. Generally, photos that looked OK in iPhoto would have much more saturated color in PhotoShop. If I opened them in Preview they were about halfway between the two.
I did plenty of reading on the web and learned a little about color spaces and profiles, monitor calibration etc.
I calibrated my monitor as best I could using the inbuilt Mac utility.
I set my PhotoShop RGB color space to Adobe 98, as most pundits recommend.
This made no difference.
I did some more reading and used ColorSync Utility to set the color space "for documents which do not have an embedded color profile". I set the RGB space to my Calibrated Monitor. This made a BIG difference! Now all my digital camera photos look pretty similar no matter what application I open them in: saturated like PhotoShop. Yay! Everything's the same!
These digital photos do have an embedded color profile ("Camera RGB"), so I wasn't sure why they should be affected by the ColorSync setting (as it implies it's only for photos without a profile), but I thought I'd solved the problem.
Then I looked at some old photos I'd scanned from negatives. These photos do not have an embedded profile. The problem returned: kinda washed out in iPhoto, saturated in PhotoShop. ColorSync settings make no difference to these photos.
Now, there is another setting in PhotoShop under the "View" menu where you can see the photo's "Proof Colors". If I view the proof colors for my Calibrated Monitor then the photo loses the saturated look and it's similar to the washed-out iPhoto look.
But I don't want the iPhoto look. The saturated look is closer to the real world, and closer to how they print out. However, at this stage I'm really not thinking of printing at all, and I'm not a graphic designer who needs a super-accurate monitor calibration - I just want to get all my freaking photos looking the freaking same in whatever freaking application I open them in, no matter where they freaking came from.
Since upgrading to PhotoShop 7 a year or so back I seem to be having never-ending problems. Generally, photos that looked OK in iPhoto would have much more saturated color in PhotoShop. If I opened them in Preview they were about halfway between the two.
I did plenty of reading on the web and learned a little about color spaces and profiles, monitor calibration etc.
I calibrated my monitor as best I could using the inbuilt Mac utility.
I set my PhotoShop RGB color space to Adobe 98, as most pundits recommend.
This made no difference.
I did some more reading and used ColorSync Utility to set the color space "for documents which do not have an embedded color profile". I set the RGB space to my Calibrated Monitor. This made a BIG difference! Now all my digital camera photos look pretty similar no matter what application I open them in: saturated like PhotoShop. Yay! Everything's the same!
These digital photos do have an embedded color profile ("Camera RGB"), so I wasn't sure why they should be affected by the ColorSync setting (as it implies it's only for photos without a profile), but I thought I'd solved the problem.
Then I looked at some old photos I'd scanned from negatives. These photos do not have an embedded profile. The problem returned: kinda washed out in iPhoto, saturated in PhotoShop. ColorSync settings make no difference to these photos.
Now, there is another setting in PhotoShop under the "View" menu where you can see the photo's "Proof Colors". If I view the proof colors for my Calibrated Monitor then the photo loses the saturated look and it's similar to the washed-out iPhoto look.
But I don't want the iPhoto look. The saturated look is closer to the real world, and closer to how they print out. However, at this stage I'm really not thinking of printing at all, and I'm not a graphic designer who needs a super-accurate monitor calibration - I just want to get all my freaking photos looking the freaking same in whatever freaking application I open them in, no matter where they freaking came from.
Alternately, figure out a way to force all of your applications to use the same profile.
posted by devilsbrigade at 1:25 PM on July 31, 2005
posted by devilsbrigade at 1:25 PM on July 31, 2005
odinsdream: You need to profile them to the output. Unfortunately, I have no idea how your local CVS has their printers calibrated, but it's more than likely that they're printing on Fuji Frontier's. Here's a list of profiled printers in your area.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 3:18 PM on July 31, 2005
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 3:18 PM on July 31, 2005
If you haven't already found the following, try reading Ian Lyons on setting up Photoshop colour management and Bob Johnson on printing.
posted by arc at 3:49 PM on July 31, 2005
posted by arc at 3:49 PM on July 31, 2005
Response by poster: An update:
After much experimenting I've found the best thing to do is to set both ColorSync Utlity and PhotoShop's Color Settings to use my Calibrated Monitor profile, even though most pros don't recommend it. This way the colors are fairly constant between applications, and prints (from my own printer) are a little more saturated but have the same general "hue" as the monitor.
The Adobe98 profile is just too over-saturated, and looks that way on all 3 Macs we have around here. Reds and blues are very overblown. Purists may say that means the monitors are incorrectly calibrated, but I would imagine that calibrating my monitor so that Adobe98 looks good in PS will make everything else on the computer – web pages, colored text documents etc – look very washed out.
posted by TiredStarling at 10:50 AM on August 1, 2005
After much experimenting I've found the best thing to do is to set both ColorSync Utlity and PhotoShop's Color Settings to use my Calibrated Monitor profile, even though most pros don't recommend it. This way the colors are fairly constant between applications, and prints (from my own printer) are a little more saturated but have the same general "hue" as the monitor.
The Adobe98 profile is just too over-saturated, and looks that way on all 3 Macs we have around here. Reds and blues are very overblown. Purists may say that means the monitors are incorrectly calibrated, but I would imagine that calibrating my monitor so that Adobe98 looks good in PS will make everything else on the computer – web pages, colored text documents etc – look very washed out.
posted by TiredStarling at 10:50 AM on August 1, 2005
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Use Photoshop to embed a photo with an ICC profile, an then open that photo with different applications. It should look the same everywhere...
posted by rajbot at 1:10 PM on July 31, 2005