Bob,

The color profile for your monitor should be set to one truly representing your monitor's color response rather than some color standard such as Adobe RGB 1998 which will mostly likely be a much broader color gamut. If 'it' is Photoshop, I'm not sure how 'it' has changed the profile to sRGB, unless you have your color settings in your preferences set up to allow Photoshop to automatically convert the colors of an image you open to the color space you've set up for your workspace. On the other hand, it could be your image is already tagged with the sRGB profile and has been opened with that profile maintained. I don't recall if the default color workspace for Photoshop is sRGB or Adobe RGB 1998, but it may well be the former. And, if your colors look fine on screen, then perhaps you've got a monitor with a factory-set response that comes close to mimicking the sRGB color gamut.

The colors may look good on screen but I'd hazard a guess as to say that with the narrower gamut of a screen, there are likely several color profiles that would provide what appears to be a "fine image" on screen, but when you go to print them, you may find quite a different result. Of course, you can always try it and see what happens...you might just get lucky.

Generally speaking, the sRGB color profile is what is most often cited as having a color space that monitors are more likely to mimic, and in fact you may find some monitors even offer an sRGB color selection. How accurate they are in providing good match to the profile I'm not sure, but I'd guess selecting that color setting for the monitor is better than doing nothing. I believe I've also read that if you simply do a monitor reset, the factory calibration is often targeted at sRGB.

But, overall, I'd strongly encourage you to consider buying a colorimeter and performing your own monitor profiling if you want to improve the accuracy and repeatability of editing your images to produce prints that are well-matched to what you view onscreen. If price is a concern, the Huey which is priced under $100 US has seen some good reviews.

Regards,

Daryl

Carmine_Filloramo

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