Raw to .Jpg conversion issues

tyusha

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Hello all. I am new here so if i sound lost or just plain wrong forgive me :) Also before referrals to the search button begin i have to say that i did use search, and did not find anything related directly to my issue. My issue is this. I have been shooting with my beloved Nikon D50 for the past 2 years and only recently came to a realization that all the images i converted from raw to .jpg look flat, washed out and just plain unsaturated when opened with any windows application like picture and fax viewer for example. However when i open that same .jpg image in photoshop (CS2) the image looks fine if not the same as raw. The little knowledge i have tells me that this is a color space issue. However despite my stubborn attempts at trying to figure this issue out on my own I have to give up, and ask for help. Any insight on the issue will be greatly appreciated. thanks
 
And your little knowledge is correct. It is most likely a colour space issue. The easiest way to check is to open one of those jpegs and click edit assign profile and check which one it is currently set to. If it is IEC sRGB then this is not the problem. If it's set to anything else then it is and should be set to sRGB (but not via the assign profile tool but the convert profile tool)

Do you open RAWs in photoshop? In the cameraRAW menu at the bottom I think there's an option for what colour space to use (at least there was back when I used it). I think it defaults to AdobeRGB.
 
From the programs you mention, I believe Photoshop is the only colour managed application on that list.

Not sure if calibrating your monitor would help?

What do you save your jpgs as? When outputting, use sRGB which is a standard colour space for the web and may help the microsoft programs show the image better. If you output in aRGB then only photoshop (or other colour managed programs) will be able to show the image correctly.
 
Let me summarize the two previous responses in a different way.

When I open a raw image it is being edited in Photoshop in the Prophoto color space. This has a very wide and deep color space.

If I plan to display it in any web or other non-color managed application, I must convert the image to sRGB (Edit> convert to profile) so that the colors will be displayed correctly. This conversion assigns non-web colors in my image to the closest approximation.

sRgb is the default color space for all web apps. Any graphic image is assumed to be sRGB and, if it is not, the colors will be displayed incorrectly and the image will look like crap, dull and wash-out usually..

BTW Convert not Assign color profile.
 
Let me summarize the two previous responses in a different way.

When I open a raw image it is being edited in Photoshop in the Prophoto color space. This has a very wide and deep color space.

If I plan to display it in any web or other non-color managed application, I must convert the image to sRGB (Edit> convert to profile) so that the colors will be displayed correctly. This conversion assigns non-web colors in my image to the closest approximation.

sRgb is the default color space for all web apps. Any graphic image is assumed to be sRGB and, if it is not, the colors will be displayed incorrectly and the image will look like crap, dull and wash-out usually..

BTW Convert not Assign color profile.

Thanks for that break down. I was unsure about color spaces as well. I've got my camera shooting adobe 98, photoshop is the same, amd my jpegs for web are srgb.
 
Thank you for your responces guys. i will try some more things tonight. I spent 5 more hours last night trying to figure things out, however it was mostly futile. I am not sure if i did the right thing, but i installed Nikon NEF plugin. Now i am even more confused as now fotoshop tells me that the imbedded color profile is Nikon NEF, even though it is set to sRGB in camera raw. Also now when i open the file in photoshop it looks worse (read less saturated) I think i will remove the nikon plugin tonight. What do you guys think?
Also do you guys think that the profile that my camera is set to matters in this case? I believe it was set to sRGB during my last photoshoot that i am struggling with

Just to clarify a couple of things

1. My monitor is color corrected with Huey pro
2. I save my Jpegs with max quality.
3. It still seems that no matter what color space i use the final jpegs look way worse than the original raw file.
4. As i found out last night some pics that i edited on my old computer look way better and closer to the raw files they were derived from, so this problem is more or less recent....

Thanks a bunch.

still open to suggestions :)
 
I think my problem got solved thanks to you guys. Although raw files look better than the jpegs, the jpegs got the missing saturation and look alot better once i converted them to sRGB.
 

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