In article , kirk winslow
wrote:

The problem is that I am losing a good 30% of the color saturation/density (i.e., the colors appear washed out, lighter) when I save some of my images as a jpeg. (It only happens some of the time, usually with images in which I have increased the color saturation.)

[snip]

I'm then trying to "save for web" to post them on my website. When the "Save for Web" dialog box comes up, both the preview AND THE ORIGINAL images are greatly reduced in their color density. (Note: Ihave the same problem if I just "Save As" and choose a jpeg, gif, or png file type.)

This is probably because you're saving without a color profile. Even if you save with one (increasing the file size) it will look OK in PE but probably not in your browser because that probably does not support color profiles and so ignores them (though there's an option in IE5-Mac to turn support on).

There's an answer to this, at least with OS X, probably OS 9 too. There are a set of Applescript scripts in /Library/ColorSync/Scripts. One of these is called 'Match to chosen profiles'. You can use this to convert your JPEG from one profile to another. I use it to match images from their Photoshop profile to my monitor profile.

Do it like this: save your file using 'Save for web' (with or without profile, it doesn't matter); drag the saved file and drop it on the Applescript in the finder; a box will open asking you to choose the 'source' script; navigate through the files until you find the profile which you've been using in Photoshop (e.g. Adobe RGB) and choose it; you'll now be asked to choose a destination profile; choose your monitor's profile. The script will now rewrite the file, converting between the two profiles and leave it with your monitor profile embedded. (If you don't want to leave the profile embedded there's another script to remove it).

The changed file should now look the same in your browser as it does in Photoshop. Furthermore, when viewed on someone else's browser it will look the same so long as that browser is color-profile aware and is correctly calibrated. On non-aware browsers (and other software) it will probably look decent.

There's a caveat to this: the Applescript does not always recognise JPEGs though I /think/ it's OK with those from 'Save for web'. You can use it with TIFs too (usually) provided they're uncompressed.

There are probably applications which can do this. I /think/ you can also do it directly from the full Photoshop; if so it would be a useful addition to Elements.

This needs to be more generally known!

kirk winslow

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Loss of color saturation/density when saving as JPEG