Kinda urgent - incorrect colour calibration?

Thirdfox

I am in the midst of processing some friends' photos and so I want to make sure the colours are completely correct.

Just as a test I sent a copy to another laptop and it seems really off...


...okay - I just discovered what appears to be the problem. In photoshop my workspace was put as CYMK and not Windows RGB. Hence my photo seems bright and lively in one and pale and washed out in the other.

Hmm, new question then - for printing, should I rely on the CYMK proof or the Windows RGB proof? Even if a photo looks washed out on screen, it should still print out in the correct colour space (CYMK) right?

Here is the photo in question:
(Before I switched the proof to Windows RGB the skin tone was rosy pink...it appears that the skin is now approaching white). Same with the dress, it was light blue, now pale blue.

It seems actually that I wasn't using "proof colours" and Photoshop displayed a bright and punchy image.... now it looks like a damp squib if I use either "working CYMK" or "windows RGB" - which one should I use, if any?

I'd appreciate any help guys (I can restart with this photo - it's only the first one I'm processing). Especially as these photos are not for me but for my friends

Photo:

kumate_champ07

imo stick to srgb

are you sure the other laptop was calibrated properly?

nilhg

I'm seeing pale skin, pale dress here. Just to clear something up, were you viewing the image on the second laptop in PS? Or at least in an application that is colour managed?

I don't profess to be any sort of PS expert so am wondering why you were using CYMK mode? A quick search suggests that it has quite specialised uses?
Though if you are printing through a CYMK printer you should get what you see in CYMK mode in PS and not the way it looks in other applications especially through a browser.

MagicMarker

For viewing on the web sRGB is the way to go. As far as printing goes it's all going to be hit and miss unless your monitor is calibrated.

Ghost Train

Can you check the colour management setting of your printer, see what colour profile its using. Then match that with the photoshop proof setting. To be honest printing out a hard proof will show you how close what you are seeing on screen will match the print out.

eolair

cymk is only any use if you are printing commercially, using cymk inks. Even then, unless you really know your pigments, you're probably best sticking to RGB, and letting the printer's CMYK expert dealing with it, assuming they have one.

Stick to sRGB.

ps a quick check on dpreview gives the same question many times, and far more expert and detailed answers.

Thirdfox

Is Adobe set to sRGB by default? And is that different to "windows RGB"? And I suppose printing it off would be the best solution but I not going to be doing home printing so I don't know if their printers have the same colour profiles etc.

nilhg

Thirdfox wrote: »

Is Adobe set to sRGB by default? And is that different to "windows RGB"? And I suppose printing it off would be the best solution but I not going to be doing home printing so I don't know if their printers have the same colour profiles etc.

If it was shot in jpeg then the colour space would have been set in the camera, if in RAW then you should have picked the it in ACR.

Most of the online labs will want it in sRGB, I'm not sure about the speciality printers.

Thirdfox

nilhg wrote: »

I'm seeing pale skin, pale dress here. Just to clear something up, were you viewing the image on the second laptop in PS? Or at least in an application that is colour managed?

I don't profess to be any sort of PS expert so am wondering why you were using CYMK mode? A quick search suggests that it has quite specialised uses?
Though if you are printing through a CYMK printer you should get what you see in CYMK mode in PS and not the way it looks in other applications especially through a browser.

In the second laptop - I viewed both on Picasa and PS - in PS, the colours were right, in Picasa they weren't... however in Picasa on my 1st laptop the colours were "right" too

nilhg

Thirdfox wrote: »

In the second laptop - I viewed both on Picasa and PS - in PS, the colours were right, in Picasa they weren't... however in Picasa on my 1st laptop the colours were "right" too

Getting in way out of my depth here but I would put that down to coincidence, would I be wrong in guessing that the first laptop is not colour calibrated?

Stcstc will probably be able to clear most of this up when he pops by.

Thirdfox

nilhg wrote: »

If it was shot in jpeg then the colour space would have been set in the camera, if in RAW then you should have picked the it in ACR.

Most of the online labs will want it in sRGB, I'm not sure about the speciality printers.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with what went wrong - I don't usually use RAW so may have done something wrong there...


...hmm, but when I print it out (and ask photoshop to determine the colours the print looks fine). Curious-er and curious-er as Alice would say.

eolair

aargh we're rapidly descending into colour madness.

Protip: Stick to one colour space - sRGB. Calibrate your monitor and printer. Go back to the original image and start again. Life will be simpler.

I think you're getting lost in a world of colour modes, colour space, colour profile, and conversion.

About colour space and profile
* CMYK is not a colour space, it is a colour mode and/or a method of printing. A mode is how the colour values are defined.
* sRGB, AdobeRGb, ProPHOTO are colour spaces. A space is a limited 3d volume of colour - nothing to do with how we store the colour values.
* There are profiles available for cameras, monitors and printers in general. A profile (amongst other things) defines what colours the device can and can't use.
* There are colour profiles available for standard type printers which use CMYK
* Unless you have profiles for all the items in your production chain, there's little point in messing with colour management. If you don't, the profile is lost or ignored at some point, leading the colours to be rendered incorrectly.

About the tools you're working with:
* Unless the image was taken with a serious camera, you can be 99.9% sure its colour mode is RGB, and its colour space is sRGB. The other 0.1% is for Adobe RGB.
* The camera has a very large colour space, but will squeeze the final image to fit sRGB.
* Your average CRT monitor has a colour space that is mostly, but not quite sRGB. Laptop LCDs have even smaller colour spaces. Laptop LCDs with 6-bit mapping have tiny colour spaces.
* Your printer has large colour space, some of which covers most of sRGB. Your printer sw might try to use any colour profiling in an image sent to it.
* Outside of serious amateurs and (most) professionals, sRGB is the way to go.

About CMYK
* Editing RGB images in CMYK modes is an exercise in frustration unless you have the equipment, experience and skills.
* If you have edited an RGB image using CMYK, the conversion is non linear, by changing one colour to suit your taste, you're also changing other colours you may not want to.
* Editing RGB images in CMYK mode leads to casts and tints, see point above
* If you must use CMYK, either leave the conversion from RGB->CMYK to the very last step, after you've done your other edits, or leave it as RGB, and let the printer do the conversion.

Thirdfox

Went back to my ACR RAW converter and found I didn't change the default setting which was Adobe RGB (hmm...so I was in that 0.1%).

That means I need to re-do this photo in sRGB again? Or is there some way of converting from Adobe RGB ot sRGB without messing up the colours?

Well good thing I caught it before I processed 20 images!

eolair

hmmm at least we're getting somewhere.

If I get this right, you have an image in AdobeRGB space, you've edited in CMYK? If yes, you need to do two conversions. CMYK -> RGB and AdobeRGB to sRGB.

The first might lead to some colour cast. The second shouldn't have any noticeable impact, unless you were using some far out saturations in the image.

Thirdfox

The CYMK thing was something that I thought was a problem (I don't think so).

It looks like I opened the file from RAW in Adobe RGB, and saved it as a psd/jpg in that format...but the other programmes I'm using probably displays it in sRGB and hence the colour desaturation.

I'll see if I can copy and paste from one colour space into another (copying layers from my original Adobe RGB file into a newly created sRGB RAW conversion).

Fingers crossed! And lesson learnt I think

Thirdfox

Here's the one saved in sRGB instead of Adobe:



The skin tone is more pink and foliage greener right?

Ghost Train

Thirdfox wrote: »

The skin tone is more pink and foliage greener right?

Yep this looks right to me, good saturation, the first post looks more neutral.