Photoshop colors

mrodgers · Sep 23, 2009

This color management thing still confused the crap out of me. I don't understand any of it.

Note, I don't have RAW capability, thus everything is either JPEG or TIFF.

Previously, I would work in Photoshop pretty much not changing anything with color saturation. The photos were fine originally and when I pulled them into PS and worked on them. After levels, cropping, resizing and sharpening (pretty much all I do to the images,) everything looked great from within Photoshop.

I then save to JPEG and open it in either a picture viewer such as Irfanview or Thumbsplus or I upload to the web and view in IE or Firefox and the images have way too much contrast. I could open the exact same edited file side by side in Photoshop and any other program and the Photoshop view was perfect with the other program way too much contrast.

I tried to change something. Now when I open a file in Photoshop, it is much duller than when viewed in another program (Irfanview or web browser.)

I have no idea what to even look at in Photoshop options, so I am hoping someone can help out starting with "what is xxxx set at" and I can look and post that info.

I don't even know how I got the images now to look undersaturated and dull when opening up in Photoshop. I'm lost. When I get home, I can post up a screenshot of an image openned in Photoshop and a web browser. Before it is mentioned, I upload to Photobucket and only at 800x600 and Photobucket is not changing my images. This problem is seen on any image on my hard drive edited or original from the camera.

Thanks,
Mike

KmH · Sep 23, 2009

In photoshop, open any image, click on IMAGE> MODE> RGB color.

Click on EDIT go to the bottom and click on PREFRENCES.
go through each screen and start learning what they all do.

Hope that helps. You didn't mention which version of Photoshop you have.

mrodgers · Sep 23, 2009

Thanks KmH.

Yeah, I'm already in the RGB Color mode. I have used Lab mode for some sharpening before. Actually, that is how I sharpen, in LAB Color mode, but this is not the problem.

Here is a screenshot of the same image opened in Irfanview (left) and Photoshot (right). This image is the original straight from the camera. I only opened it in each program and did nothing else except zoomed to fit the example. When viewed in a web browser it also looks the same as the Irfanview example. With Photoshop, the image looks washed out. Thus, if I edit to look good in Photoshop, it is way over contrasty when looking in any other program. (Sorry, I saved this screenshot in Paint. Didn't want Photoshop to mess any colors up with it so the JPEG compression is quite horrible.)

Also some more examples. Here below is the file above with nothing but a resize to 800x600 and saved as a JPEG from Photoshop. As you can see, the colors are not washed out as it is in the PS view above. That's all I did was resize then save, no other editing.

The second file is my normal editing, which is simply a levels adjustment, resize to my upload size, and sharpening after the resize. Again, within Photoshop, it looked washed out like the Photoshop example posted up above (screenshot image.)

And finally, this is what I edited a few weeks ago to look good in Photoshop. The contrast is now too much viewed in a browser/other editor, but looked good in Photoshop. I had edited the contrast to look good when in Photoshop.

Thanks again, KmH. Seems lately if I just want replies, I have to put some grammar errors in my post (I'm sure they are there, I see I started a sentence with "And"

.) But I'll take the few quality helpful replies over quantity any day

. Your help if you can provide is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike

lvcrtrs · Sep 24, 2009

All l can say is I think the same happened with some of my furry friend shots. I think there's a whole monitor calibration thing out there that may help some. I'm a bit technophobic because I'm afraid I'll mess something up that I can't undo. No IT people in this house

mrodgers · Sep 24, 2009

Well, after posting that last night, I was going to head to bed as I felt like I was coming down with something (I am, I really feel like crap this morning) but I went through the menus in PS once more. Now that I'm at work without PS on this computer, I can't remember what it was. I think EDIT -> down on the bottom there are 3 items pertaining to color. I clicked on the first one and played a bit in that. It was set to custom and some of the stuff was set to use sRGB with a bunch of numbers. I set the "custom" to "monitor color" and now everything looks the same.

So again, thank you if you were about to come back to help out some more. Much appreciated and I think it's all sorted out now.

PS, lvcrtrs, your info says Pennsylvania. Eastern or Western? Those images in my post are from Erie at Presque Isle. They were buzzing through the no-wake zone entering the bay. It was cool to see them blasting by all the other boats idling through and getting tossed around.