PSE 9 Makes Colors Appear Dull

JacobGriz

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Ok, this confuses me to no end. I take a pic, it looks good. I open it using picasa photo viewer and it still looks the same as the camera LCD. I open it in PSE 9 and all of a sudden it looks dull. So, I increase saturation and vibrance to make it look how I want again. I save it, but when I open it with Picasa photo viewer it is way over saturated. I thought it was color scheme, but I shot in aRGB and sRGB (i shot the same picture) and they were both exactly the same thing. But when loaded into photoshop, dull. So I now know this has nothing to do with color scheme. This doesn't happen in lightroom, so why is it happening in PSE 9?
-thanks in advance
 
You have to save the profile to sRGB profile for it to show properly. I had the same problem with mine before I knew this too. I think its under Image and mode?
 
Okay, I'll try that. I think I was trying the wrong setting to change the color space. I was telling it what to use if the pic didn't have a profile. And KmH my camera doesn't have a ProPhoto setting. Should I just set it to sRGB and also set lightroom to sRGB? Also, can photo labs use ProPhoto as well as sRGB?
 
I leave Lightroom alone and when I finish the picture in PSE's I just change the profile there to sRGB since I am shooting in Raw. They can but the colors might be off. Photolabs have their own profiles you can download and import into PSE and Lightroom to see what it will look like printed. At least mine did. Probably depends on the lab.
 
Woah! lot of trouble here.

Jacob, your problem is Picasa and likely similar garbage software -- web browser maybe? Your camera is producing RGB image files. An RGB photo must have an ICC profile embedded in the file that identifies its reference color space. Otherwise the RGB color values are undefined. PSE 9 supports ICC profiles in your photos. Picasa does not. Picasa in fact ignores ICC profiles and if you save a photo that has been loaded into Picasa it strips the ICC profile out of the file. Picasa therefore trashes every photo it touches.

Labs that print photos for you have profiles available for you to soft-proof your photos. These are printer/paper profiles and should not be confused with the file profile that identifies your photo's color space -- you need them both.

Unless you clearly understand the differences between sRGB, Adobe RGB, Pro Photo RGB, Color Match RGB (there's more of them)... Set everything you have to sRGB. Set your camera to sRGB and your editing software to sRGB. Then stay away from software like Picasa that turns all your photos into garbage. Do some research on maintaining a color-managed workflow.

Take Care,
Joe
 
Yeah I did some research on the workflow. It gets confusing. What labs do you guys order prints from that have profiles for you? Also, can I see what the file with the printer profile looks like while editing, or only after I save it with that file?
 
Yeah I did some research on the workflow. It gets confusing. What labs do you guys order prints from that have profiles for you? Also, can I see what the file with the printer profile looks like while editing, or only after I save it with that file?

The term you are looking for is called soft-proofing. A method which shows colours in one profile as it would be displayed in another. So you may have a file that is in sRGB or AdobeRGB and you're soft proofing to Fuji Frontier 530 with matt paper. This is something you should really consider worrying about after you have a perfectly calibrated IPS monitor, and you intend on using the kind of labs which don't charge you less than a few dollars per print.

My suggestion, use sRGB for everything. If you have a uniquely spectacular image and have the intent on emptying your wallet for the print, then make sure you process the raw file in ProPhoto, make sure you save the file as a 16bit file, but above all, make sure your lab is going to play along. The widest colour gamut in the world doesn't help if the lab doesn't have the equipment, the knowhow, nor the policy with regards to how you give them the picture to actually produce the nice results. In other words start worrying about this when you think you're ready to start selling prints for $1000 upwards, otherwise it's just going to get in the way of far more important refinements you can make to your images. :)
 

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