Why are photoshop colors different?

LH
Posted By
Luke_hall
Apr 12, 2007
Views
519
Replies
10
Status
Closed
Whether "fixed" or "broke" this thread gave me the exact information I’ve been looking for by turning color management off. I’m a rookie with Photoshop CS and after re-installing PS months ago after upgrading to a new larger hard drive I have been looking for a solution to eliminate a yellowish cast to every photo that is seen only when viewed in PS. I didn’t want to spend the money nor felt the need to buy a calibration tool for my purposes.

The colors in PS now match the colors in all my other programs. Thanks Seb for posting your findings here. Turning the color management works and I’m a happy camper again.
Related Tags
color difference

MacBook Pro 16” Mockups 🔥

– in 4 materials (clay versions included)

– 12 scenes

– 48 MacBook Pro 16″ mockups

– 6000 x 4500 px

JZ
Joe_Zydeco
Apr 12, 2007
Luke, you could also turn off your windshield wipers while driving in a heavy rainstorm so you don’t see all those annoying vehicles coming toward you, but that won’t make you safe or correct.

It’s Ok with me if you and Seb don’t want to bother with color management. But to let your remarks pass unchallenged would come across as passive approval of turning off CM.

Newcomers to Photoshop who want to learn to do things the right way deserve better than the position you two guys so naively proffer.
C
chrisjbirchall
Apr 12, 2007
Luke. Seb’s "findings" are wrong. Read the advice he has been given.

When you calibrate your monitor, what you are doing is telling Photoshop how to communicate with your monitor. If you do not do this, as your monitor drifts ( as all monitors do) you will end up producing images which might look fine on your monitor, but dreadful when displayed on someone elses.

Colour management enables you to produce images to a given standard.

Take this over-simplified scenario:

Let’s say you produce an image in Photoshop with CM turned off, or with a bad monitor profile. And let’s say that image contains a grey square against a white background. And let’s say the grey square looks slightly green despite having values of R=147 G=147 and B=147.

So you make it look neutral grey by adjusting the values to R=147 G=135 and B=147. That makes you a happy bunny because it looks grey on your monitor.

Send it to a pro lab for printing and it will come back magenta. Publish it to your web site and it will appear slightly magenta to someone viewing it on a monitor which doesn’t have the same errors as yours.

In reality, the correctly balanced version (R=147 G=147 B=147) would display with a different bias on many different monitors (see the "bank of TV screens analogy above), but at least you would have a correct starting point.

Two wrongs most definitely do not make a right.
KV
Klaas Visser
Apr 12, 2007
The colors in PS now match the colors in all my other programs.

Well, I use colour management to ensure that the colours in my image on the screen matches what I print on my inkjet, and what gets printed by the commercial printer I use every now and then.

If you only ever view the images on your system, then not using colour management would probably be okay.
P
PeterK.
Apr 12, 2007
Seb, from your first post, you say you want the colours to match "what they really are". The only way to do this is to calibrate your monitor. Then when you really have a neutral grey with identical RGB values, you will see a neutral grey on your screen and anyone else who has a good, calibrated monitor will see a neutral grey. If your monitor has a natural, say, yellow cast to it, and you’re creating some art asset for a game, say a neutral grey gun, if you don’t follow the advice you’ve been given you’ll be colour-correcting those perfect neutral values that look yellow on your uncalibrated screen and put more blue into them to make it "look normal" on your screen. Of course, what that means is that anyone else with a good monitor who plays that game is going to see blue guns instead of neutral grey ones.
So to sum up, no calibration and colour management off means unpredictable colour based on your monitor deficiencies. Calibrated and colour managed means the colours are "right".
T
Talker
Apr 13, 2007
On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 21:46:12 -0700,
wrote:

Luke. Seb’s "findings" are wrong. Read the advice he has been given.
When you calibrate your monitor, what you are doing is telling Photoshop how to communicate with your monitor. If you do not do this, as your monitor drifts ( as all monitors do) you will end up producing images which might look fine on your monitor, but dreadful when displayed on someone elses.

Colour management enables you to produce images to a given standard.
Take this over-simplified scenario:

Let’s say you produce an image in Photoshop with CM turned off, or with a bad monitor profile. And let’s say that image contains a grey square against a white background. And let’s say the grey square looks slightly green despite having values of R=147 G=147 and B=147.

So you make it look neutral grey by adjusting the values to R=147 G=135 and B=147. That makes you a happy bunny because it looks grey on your monitor.

Send it to a pro lab for printing and it will come back magenta. Publish it to your web site and it will appear slightly magenta to someone viewing it on a monitor which doesn’t have the same errors as yours.

In reality, the correctly balanced version (R=147 G=147 B=147) would display with a different bias on many different monitors (see the "bank of TV screens analogy above), but at least you would have a correct starting point.

Two wrongs most definitely do not make a right.

In a picture group that I frequent, one of the posters was posting many pictures that he scanned. He would edit them on his uncalibrated monitor, and then posting them. It wasn’t until he was over a friend’s house using his computer to view the pictures that he realized his colors were off. The people in his pictures were purple, and grass and other green colors were blue, even though they looked fine on his monitor.
Don’t be concerned about how the pictures look with other other programs, since most of them aren’t calibrated. PhotoShop is one of the few prorgrams that allows you to calibrate the monitor for accurate colors, either by using it’s own calibration tools, or by using third party calibration tools.

Talker
JH
John_Hermann
Apr 15, 2007
This discussion is a classic illustration of the mentality that says "Don’t confuse me with facts, I already have my mind made up."

I use PS primarily for Printing and web Publishing. My printing is for Fine Art Reproductions. I use a camera/Scanner to digitize an Artist’s work and produce a Giclee Print for them to sell. These prints must match the original or the arts will not accept the finished result. I also provide them with Web Ready images to post on their web sites. These have to match both the original and prints. I could not do this without color management.

One thing that was not directly suggested to Seb, though it was inferred, was he should move from MS Paint to a Professional Application like Illustrator. If he is using MS Paint as a professional tool, which he appears to be, he needs to re-think is processes (this has been suggested several times.) this would be like me trying to use a photo program that comes with a consumer grade camera to edit my images and print them using the canned printer program and its generic paper profiles. You might get close, but the customer will not be satisfied.

Seb’s process is simple in comparison, but he needs to think about his process, the quality he wants to produce and his customer base.

Final Question to Seb!

Are you a Professional, or an amature trying to break into the big time?

If you are a professional, this whole discussion would have ended many posts ago and you would be using Pro Graphics Apps from start to finish.

If you are an amature, re-read above. Consumer grade apps will prevent you from making the BIG TIME!
R
RichardK
Apr 15, 2007
The idea that you can actually "turn off" colour management is total nonsence in any version of Photoshop or other professional Adobe applications produced in recent rears. To quote from Real World Color Management page 325. They (meaning the applications)always convert from a source profile (either embedded/assigned or assumed) to the monitor profile for display, and they always use profiles to convert from RGB to CMYK.

For new documents, the OFF policy makes the applications assume the working space profiles for all native RGB and CMYK elements, and treat the documents as untagged-if your change working spaces, the documents take on the new profiles, and the appearance changes.

I hope that helps someone. BTW many of the earlier Spyder monitor calibrators produced bum results. It is also important that some other things are in order.

Neutral grey screen desktop…so out with your funky colour schemes.

Your walls in your field of vision and in the proximity of the monitor should be neutral.

You should have ideally the room illuminated at a very low level by a 5000k graphics tube and not rely on variable intensity and colour of daylight.

Avoid reflections in your screen and avoid wearing coloured clothing.

Get all these things right and you stand a chance of good predictable colour provided that you have all your application settings cotrrect and your monitor is of decent quality and in good order. Finally it helps if you are not colour blind in any way.

Cheers

Richard Kenward
D
deebs
Apr 15, 2007
Colour from a consumer point of view can be perceived along the lines of "Do I like it or not?" and that is fine.

However, colour from a manufacturing or media producer point of view can be a critical specification. Most printshops have hi-tech colour management processes and procedures in place otherwise they would be lo-tech printshops.

I think wht people are trying to say is that there are two obserbed norms.

One norm is to adhere to colour management principles that have been in place for years (probably before computers became mainstream) even to specifying what colour florescent tubes are used in colour matching, quality control or quality assurance environments (it used to be North light the last I can recall).

Any serious contender for commercial business really needs to buy into and conform to those specs and PS does just that).

On the other hand colour is also very subjective. for example the red observed on one computer may be different to the red observed on another or even in print but consumers/individuals may perceive it to be exactly the same colur (even though it ain’t).

Possible conclusion?
When designing for color managed demands it is important to adhere to those specs.

When designing for strictly non-colour managed environments it is equally important not to conform to a spec that may be too rigid.

In other words a professional application needs to respect both norms.
DM
david_mcphee
Apr 30, 2007
I hope someone can help me. The colors on the monitor look great. They used to print that way, too. Now the prints are way over-saturated. The same files in Image-Ready, Picasa, and elsewhere also look over-saturated. Photoshop Print Preview also shows an oversaturated image. Only Photoshop itself looks right. No doubt I’ve stupidly changed some setting somewhere. Certainly I don’t know what I am doing. I’ve tried everything.

Any ideas? I’m guessing it’s something simple. I’m a photographer and I love PS, but I’m technically challenged.
JZ
Joe_Zydeco
Apr 30, 2007
I assume you have directed Photoshop to manage colors. Could be that you have accidentally told your printer to do so as well (it should be set not to manage color.) Or you may have selected the wrong printer profile. That is very critical to getting good prints. You should be able to check the profile on the Color Management tab of your printer’s properties dialog.

MacBook Pro 16” Mockups 🔥

– in 4 materials (clay versions included)

– 12 scenes

– 48 MacBook Pro 16″ mockups

– 6000 x 4500 px

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections