Help! Photos Look Great in Photoshop, but Bad When Uploaded To Web ? Tried Everything

treeofapples · Jul 27, 2012

so im having a weird situation with the color of my photos. the picture looks perfectly fine in photoshop..ive tried saving it with and without "embedding color profile (rgb)" and the problem remains.

what problem exactly? well everytime i upload the pic to the web, the web version ends up looking duller, greyer, and where the skin looks very vibrant and almost tan in the preview and photoshop version, the same pic when uploaded to the web adapts a sallow sickly yellow hue. ive done a side by side comparison and the difference is huge.

-edit- strangely when i do a screen capture of the actual image in photoshop , the photo is able to retain its vibrant color. is there any way to do this legitimately without screen capping? it seems to be a very amateur way. and u lose resolution

-edit 2- read somewhere to try "save for web"

the problem is, saving for web adds more saturation to the photo. there's no way around this it seems. i tried unclicking "convert to sRGB" and it changes to that exact sallow dull yellow color that i dont want. when i try clicking "convert to sRGB" it more closely resembles the original photo, but it seems to be adding saturation and changing the color a bit.

HELP please thanks

cgipson1 · Jul 27, 2012

#1.... always resize to a small size before uploading to any of the major photo sharing sites. If THEY resize it.. they will stomp on it and kill it!

#2... Most of us (I believe) edit in Adobe RGB... and then save images that are going to the web in SRGB. There is a difference... but not that much.

Post the shot you are having problems with.. that would help a lot!

Kerbouchard · Jul 27, 2012

Why don't you just edit in sRGB so that you don't have to bother with the color space issues that you are experiencing? You aren't anything by editing in a gamut that can't be displayed on the web in the first place.

KmH · Jul 27, 2012

You are describing what happens when there is a color space conflict.

Photoshop has color management settings. Under the Edit tab scroll down to Color Settings.

Your profile doesn't say where you are. Here in the US we would want to use Settings: North American Prepress 2. That will make the default Working Space - RGB: Adobe RGB.

However, image editing experts tend to use and recommend ProPhotoRGB as their working color space. They do as much editing as possible in a 16-bit depth per color channel and use a wide gamut color space so they will have many more data points in each color channel to work with.

Once done editing you again go under Edit > Convert to Profile and chose the profile that is appropriate for the image use, be it sRGB for the web and consumer print labs, CMYK for press printing, or AdobeRGB for any print lab that can handle AdobeRGB.

For more information regarding color management you could start here if you haven't seen these already: Tutorials on Color Management & Printing

Garbz · Jul 28, 2012

From your description you sound like you may actually be having two compounding problems.

To help me answer I need two bits of info:

Do you calibrate your screen?
What model screen you you have?

Some of the issues you sound like you're having (adding saturation) seems to imply you have a non standard gamut monitor which is compounding your colourspace problem.

chris82 · Jul 28, 2012

I seem to have a similar problem with my images. The only difference is that it's not images for Web it's just all my images ths loose there "pop". They look great in Photoshop but when I view them on the same screen but not in Photoshop the look cold and dull. Do I have the same problem? P.S. Sorry for hijacking your thread lol

KmH · Jul 28, 2012

What image displaying application are you using when that happens?

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke

chris82 · Jul 28, 2012

I was using CS3 but I just upgraded to CS6. I haven't used CS6 yet.

Menthol · Jul 28, 2012

Check your color space settings.

Secondly, give us all the information that will help solve your problems. Eg I would like to know which model of computer you are using and the monitor in question because you could be using a Compaq from 1995.

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chris82 · Jul 28, 2012

Monitor is a Dell ultra sharp but i'm not sure of my PC specs. How do I check my collie space settings?

Kerbouchard · Jul 28, 2012

chris82 said:
Monitor is a Dell ultra sharp but i'm not sure of my PC specs. How do I check my collie space settings?

In Adobe Camera Shop RAW, change your export settings to sRGB. After you do that, you won't have to worry about it for many years to come. If you ever get to the point where editing in a certain color space actually matters, you will have enough money to let other people worry about the Color Space issues.

chris82 · Jul 28, 2012

I like the sound of that lol. I will give it a go thanks

Garbz · Jul 30, 2012

chris82 said:
I seem to have a similar problem with my images. The only difference is that it's not images for Web it's just all my images ths loose there "pop". They look great in Photoshop but when I view them on the same screen but not in Photoshop the look cold and dull. Do I have the same problem? P.S. Sorry for hijacking your thread lol

This is indicative of a file saved in a larger colour space than a program that is reading it. Dumb programs expect images to be in sRGB, so if you save an image in ProPhotoRGB or AdobeRGB then they look under-saturated when opened in a program which doesn't understand different colour spaces.

The opposite is true of wide gamut monitors (by the way if you still have the problem list the exact model of monitor. Some Dell ultrasharps are wide gamut, other's aren't). If you have a wide gamut monitor the software needs to artificially desaturate the image so it looks correct. Software which is dumb and incapable of doing so will produce and over-saturated image.

The two problems can cancel out if an image is saved in AdobeRGB and the monitor has 97% coverage of AdobeRGB like many wide gamut monitors do. That's a real risk since your images may look right to you but be completely wrong.