I am working on a Team photo with CS3 where the player's jerseys are a bright purple. I have the picture lookin perfect in photo shop but when I display the picture with anything but photoshop the Jerseys look blue not purple. Anyone have any Ideas what I'm doing wrong? I have tried saving the photo under jpeg, Tiff, BMP all display as blue unless I load them with PS. I even tried sending one to my smugmug account and looking at it there and again the purple jerseys look blue.
I’m still confused here.. The picture straight out of the camera of the team with bright purple jerseys looks blue in everything but Photoshop. Photoshop shows them as bright purple. The web when I post the picture to my Smugmug account shows them as Blue which makes me think they are going to print out as blue & not purple as I need.
In Photoshop Edit/Convert to Profile/sRGB I tried this then saved the file but it still is blue instead of purple.
What type of monitor do you have and how has it been calibrated? Photoshop is color managed, and as long as you have good calibration and monitor profiles, it will show you a fairly accurate representation of your image. You other applications are not color managed and can only assume the image to be in "Monitor RGB". The further your monitor is from sRGB the larger the difference you will see between your apps. I guarantee if you convert to MonitorRGB and then compare, they will be identical, but then anyone else looking through a browser will see a funky image.
I am running on a Toshiba Satellite P25-S607 Laptop. I tried doing a Monitor Calibration with my Spyder II Pro a while back and haven't noticed anything until the Purple issue here. Though as I look closer it's not just purple there is a noticeable difference between what Photoshop displays and what every other viewer or the web shows me. I could live with that part for now if I was sure my pictures were going to print out as shown in Photo shop not as they are displayed outside of PS.
If my photos don't print out as I'm seeing them in PS but print out more like I'm seeing them when I look at them on my Smugmug website then I'll have a very big problem. I'm currently working on 200 photo packages to print once I get them back from print would be a bad time to find out my fear is justified and they didn't print the same as they were displayed in PS.
If you can download the icc profile of the printer you'll be having this printed on, you can soft proof it in Photoshop to see what the print will look like (though this isn't going to work very well if your laptop monitor is 'off').
At any rate, your question has a very complicated answer. Here's a link to a partial explanation, but you should use Google to search for explanations of this topic of color management.
EDIT: Just saw this link in another thread, which might be more on-target for you.
Skipper -- I'm uncertain whether you are a fulltime professional or if you are just getting started so forgive me if I'm telling you what you already know. But, for me, and for most other pros, calibration between my monitor/equipment and my lab(s) is something that is done in well in advance of actually printing a job.
What you have to do is contact the lab who is printing your work, get them to send you a "shirley" (a/k/a calibration print), then calibrate your monitor. Then you select a few images, adjust them on your freshly calibrated monitor, using the shirley for a guide print. Then, have the lab print these test prints for you. Once you get back a set of test prints that are satisfactory to you, you are set up with that particular lab to get the predictable results you want.
Be sure to check "Do not Adjust my images" when you submit prints to the lab after you have gone through the calibration process.
I know how hard it is to get one's head wrapped around all this but the fact is that different monitors and output devices are all different - thus the different looking results. The ONLY way to get completely predictable results is, at the minimum, to use a monitor that you have calibrated to sync with your lab.
That doesn't mean all is lost if you are pressed to do this job without going through this calibration process. I'm just telling you the BEST way. One thing you COULD do is send ONE test package through before you send all 200 through, just to make sure you are going to be within tolerance. I would send 2 test packages -- one where the lab adjusts the color and the other where you tell the lab NOT to adjust the color, then pick the best one.
"I am running on a Toshiba Satellite P25-S607 Laptop. I tried doing a Monitor Calibration with my Spyder II Pro a while back and haven't noticed anything until the Purple issue here."
The biggest problem is that you're trying to judge color on a laptop. That's almost impossible to do with any degree of certainty. Laptop screens aren't as bright, as uniform, and don't have the gamut of either desktop LCDs or CRTs. And they are very sensitive to angle of viewing changes. Even with a hardware calibration, that screen may have problems displaying some colors accurately. I suggest that you at least view your images on a known calibrated display to see if you see the same thing. Remember that everything you view through Photoshop is viewed through the filter of the monitor profile. Even if your images are in sRGB color, your monitor is not and the further your monitor varies from sRGB, the bigger the difference you'll see in sRGB images viewed in Ps and in your other non-color managed applications.
"Though as I look closer it's not just purple there is a noticeable difference between what
If my photos don't print out as I'm seeing them in PS but print out more like I'm seeing them when I look at them on my Smugmug website then I'll have a very big problem. I'm currently working on 200 photo packages to print once I get them back from print would be a bad time to find out my fear is justified and they didn't print the same as they were displayed in PS."
Wherever you print, even if you make custom profiles of the printer, you should always make a print test, especially before a big job.
"What you have to do is contact the lab who is printing your work, get them to send you a "shirley" (a/k/a calibration print), then calibrate your monitor. Then you select a few images, adjust them on your freshly calibrated monitor, using the shirley for a guide print. Then, have the lab print these test prints for you. Once you get back a set of test prints that are satisfactory to you, you are set up with that particular lab to get the predictable results you want. "
Peggy,
Please, don't confuse the issue further with completely outdated and useless advice. Any lab asking you to adjust your screen to their test print is hopelessly out of touch. Anyone still advising someone to do the same is just as bad. Even if you succeeded in getting somewhat close, you'd end up with a screen that was sort of okay for one lab and completely whacked for everything else. You really just need to hardware calibrate to a known standard and leave you monitor there. Then you need to make or have made custom printer profiles for that printer and use them to soft proof and convert to the output color space.
" The ONLY way to get completely predictable results is, at the minimum, to use a monitor that you have calibrated to sync with your lab."
Yes, but not the way you describe. You're doing everyone a great disservice with your advice. We used to do this, oh nine or ten years ago, before we had the ability to make and convert to different RGB profile. Printing on RGB printers was a pain back then but it's quite easy today.
Skipper1613 wrote:
I’m still confused here.. The picture straight out of the camera of the team with bright purple jerseys looks blue in everything but Photoshop. Photoshop shows them as bright purple. The web when I post the picture to my Smugmug account shows them as Blue which makes me think they are going to print out as blue & not purple as I need.
In Photoshop Edit/Convert to Profile/sRGB I tried this then saved the file but it still is blue instead of purple.
Skipper, have you asked your lab to print one just to see how it prints? Ask them of course how they want it saved, or perhaps you already know this, but you might find that it prints out fine. Can you take the media in to the lab & see how it views on their lcd?
First let me say that I really appreciate all of the, suggestions, advice, and information that everyone has offered.
I did send off a test print and verified that what I see in Photoshop is an accurate representation of what I am getting from my print lab. I hope when I have time to work on it I can figure out how to get the photos to look right when I am viewing them outside of Photoshop also.
I've been up to my eyes with work lately. My fulltime Job as an Industrial Mechanic for ESSEX Magnet Wire keeps me busy working a 6 day on 2 day off midnight shift. Our USW Local 7-509 Union has been in contract talks since September with ESSEX & as a member of our bargaining committee that has taken a lot of my time in the past few months. We just ratified a contract on 12/28/2007 so I will get a little bit of my life back now. Trying to get all of my photos finished in time to have them done by the end of basketball season hasn't left me a lot of time free time lately so I apologize for not responding sooner. I certainly don't want anyone to think that I asked a question and then never bothered to read the responses or didn't appreciate them.
I kind of fell into the photography business part time following my grandson around taking pictures of his sporting events at the Cub League & YMCA. I was taking action shots no one else was taking and started getting request from parents for pictures. At that time I was shooting with a Sony Mavica CD300 3.3MP camera. I decided to spend some money that the wife wasn’t happy about and purchased a Canon Digital Rebel XT, wow what an up grade from where I was. I put in a bid at the local YMCA and for the last 2 years now have been doing all of their T&I shots as well as some games that I can attend. While I’m not going to retire anytime soon I’ve been making enough to keep upgrading my equipment purchasing studio lights, lenses and a new EOS 1D Mark III. I do not have any formal training in photography, I’m learning on the run. This site and it’s members and their willingness to share information have been invaluable!
By the way, I think paulhodsen has it right. Check your color space settings.
In Photoshop Edit/Convert to Profile/sRGB I tried this then saved the file but it still is blue instead of purple.
I don't know where "when I display the picture with anything but photoshop" means but assuming you are displaying these on the same lcd, nothing other than calibration & color space affects color display if you have done no editing to the files.
Here's an interesting forum discussion that might offer a little insight, though it's not quite what you are experiencing. Spending a little time in their forums might help. It's a great site to sit in front of the fire at. Sounds like you are taking on more than you have time for. Life goes too fast when you do that. Take it easy.
Say I process a picture in Photoshop using my Toshiba Satellite laptop LCD display and get the colors looking good there and save the file as a JPEG file with sRGB IEC61966-2.1 color.
If I look open that same JPEG picture using IrfanView, Windows Picture & fax viewer, Microsoft Paint they all look different than Photoshop or my test print (which matches Photoshop) & purples come out looking more blue than purple. If I upload a file to my Smugmug account and view the picture there with Internet Explorer purples will tend to look blue on my laptops display. I did try loading the jpeg file with Bible Pro after I set the color space to the profile I created with Spyder pro for my laptop and Purples were the same then as Photoshop & my test print.
I guess my problem is that the other viewing programs don't have the color space set for my laptop display?
