Adobe RGB causes over-saturated colors in Photoshop

FS
Posted By
Farzin_Salimi
Dec 27, 2006
Views
316
Replies
4
Status
Closed
I haven’t been able to find any real answer to this anywhere, I would appreciate any help I might get here.

When I set the RGB working space in Photoshop to Adobe RGB (as so often recommended) the images opened in the application appear more saturated than in other applications such as ACDSee 9 Foto-Manager, Ulead PhotoExplorer or the Windows Explorer. My System (Windows XP) uses a monitor profile created by Spyder2 and all programs are in complete agreement about the colors except Photoshop.

What’s the point of setting the RGB working space to Adobe RGB 1998 if it results in the image looking quite unrealistic? There’s a cheated solution, though: as soon as I choose Adobe RGB instead of the created monitor profile in Windows as the default monitor profile, all applications including Photoshop are happy and show the exactly same colors, but then the monitor is not calibrated, of course.

Previously I used the Adobe Gamma and I had the same problem until I chose Adobe RGB as the monitor profile, which I know can’t be the point. Now that I have the colorimeter I have turned off Adobe Gamma and my video card isn’t applying any profiles either. It’s just the Spyder software showing Windows what monitor Profile to use.

Thanks for your time… 🙂
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B
bmoag
Dec 27, 2006
As I understand it only Photoshop can accurately use the information from your monitor calibration providing you have done it correctly and set Photoshop’s color management settings correctly. I do not believe the other programs you mention allow for color management. There are good basic instructions on the proper settings in Photoshop help and there are many tutorials on basic color management on the web. Once you set up your monitor and Photoshop correctly then prints made from Photoshop using color management, and for this you need to understand how to use your printer driver properly, should be a reasonable match to your monitor. Color management is really about matching prints to the monitor, not so much about the monitor itself although calibration should bring monitor color temperature and contrast somewhat into line.
PF
Peter_Figen
Dec 27, 2006
The short answer is that Photoshop is color managed and the other apps are not. Photoshop is the only one of your applications that can compensate the display using both the monitor profile and the working space profile in tandem. The more different your working space is from your monitor space, the greater the discrepency you will see between the programs. Converting the file to sRGB will help minimize the differences. Converting to Monitor RGB will completely eliminate it, but with other negative consequences. What most people do is convert images bound for the web to sRGB and not worry about how the original Adobe RGB files display in the other apps. Just be aware of what happens when you convert color spaces.
R
RobertHJones
Dec 27, 2006
Farzin,

You are getting excess saturation because your Photoshop Color settings are not correct for what you are doing and the wrong profile is being assigned to your image. You most likely have either an sRGB or an untagged image which is being incorrectly interpreted using the Adobe RGB color space.

Ian Lyons has an excellant article which will explain Photoshop color management and how to set it up.
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps9_colour/ps9_1.htm . Since you are calibrating your monitor using the Spyder2, you can ignore the instructions for Adobe Gamma. But, the rest will be of good use to you.

He also has another article explaining how to set up Photoshop color management for printing.
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps9_print/ps9_print_1.htm

These articles are for Photoshop CS2 but he also has articles for Photoshop 7 and CS on the same web site.
FS
Farzin_Salimi
Dec 30, 2006
Thank you so much, Peter and Robert, your replies have been EXTREMELY helpful. I’ve got it right now, and I also bought the color-managed version of my FotoManager, so I can view the images in the correct colors, and it works. 😀

Thanks again!

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