JPEGS looking duller than PSD's?

[Weaving Wax]

Anyone know why in Photoshop the JPEG's look "duller" then the psd's....the JPEG's look almost washed out...

 

[Peanuts]

Hmm.. someone will help you out here much better then myself. But is there anyway the bit is being changed from 16 to 8?

 

[Weaving Wax]

Yeah, I changed it to 16 again and still no luck..

 

[struss]

Did you compress it too much when you saved it to jpg?

 

[Weaving Wax]

I'm not quite sure what you mean...

 

[seanberry]

Are you using the "Save for Web" function when saving to JPEG?

 

[Weaving Wax]

Yeah.

 

[markc]

Was the image originally in Adobe RGB color space? If so, you need to do a color space conversion to sRGB, then save for web to JPG.

 

[Weaving Wax]

Well, the source says it's a sRGB... It does this with really processed photos, but with photos will little to no processing, it's fine...

 

[astrostu]

So it sounds like a couple things are going on here: First, you changed from 16 bit to 8 bit color. This reduces the color pallet from 65,536 colors to 256 colors. Once you go to 8 bit, you can go back to 16 bit, but all the original depth is lost and it just stretches 256 colors to 65,536. It's like taking a 10" image, shrinking it to 1", and then blowing it back up to 10" so it's really pixelated.

Second, it sounds like there are some color space conversion issues. I don't know enough about color spaces to help you out, but I would suggest playing with them.

Third, JPEG is generally (standardly) a lossy file format, and I do not believe it supports anything greater than 12 bit, but almost no software (including web browsers) will render JPEGs at anything greater than 8 bit. You can save lossless JPEGs, but again, if you're going from 16 -> 8 bits, you've already lost a lot of information. I do not know the specifics of "Save for Web" options and what it does to the compression, but somehow it manages to usually decrease a file size by about 70% (in my experience), even when set on quality of 100, when compared with normal Photoshop saving of JPEGs at quality of 12. So there is some sort of compression going on there, and I would guess that it's lossy (otherwise, why would it take up less room at "full" quality?).

 

[markc]

I really doubt you would notice when a 16-bit file is simply converted to 8-bit. The main issues pop up when you edit in 8-bit vs. 16-bit, and the average person probably isn't going to notice the difference except maybe a side-by-side comparison. I still edit in 16-bit to get the most out of my images, but it's not a big deal.

Compression should also have no noticeable impact on color. Too much compression will cause blurriness and artifacts, and some bleeding at the edges.

If you are seeing the change simple by saving as JPG, I'd still suspect color space, but you say that it's sRGB to start with, so I'm a bit at a loss. It is a common issue though. Check the file after you do the processing. The source file doesn't really matter. It's the color space it's in just before the JPG conversion. Also make sure that all the layers are accounted for. Maybe try a manual "flatten layers" first and see if it makes a difference.

 

[Weaving Wax]

Yeah, I did. I went to the photoshop preferences and tried to play with some of the settings to no avail.. Has anyone else had this problem and have they gotten around it?

 

[Weaving Wax]

Ok, here are some screen shots along with the finished product:

Here is the image along with the color settings:

And the final picture:

 

[markc]

Since you have "preserve embedded profiles" set for RGB policy, it will ignore the default working space and use the one embedded in the file. This is usually the way to go, but this page only tells you your defaults, not what that particular file is. It should be under something like File->Color Profile or something like that.