CS2 colors washed out in program

[KMye]

I've been using CS2 all morning, dragging and dropping images from Canon's Zoombrowser and doing minor editing. All of a sudden half an hour ago, images' colors became incorrect, much brighter and more washed out than they should be. I figure I must have hit a hotkey that changed something. I've checked through all settings I know of, and must be missing the correct one. Images are displayed correctly in other programs, including Imageready, and images that appear incorrect in PS that are resaved within PS also display correctly in other programs. Any help is appreciated. (Screen shot of PS and ZBrowser difference attached)

Thanks.

[MindBlasting]

Hello my frnd i think you messed up the colour channels. you may accidently hit th hot keys ctrl+1.....6.

Hit F-7 and click the channels tab there check the all colour channels,hit the top most RGB channel.

that it, or try the other way open image>mode> check the RGB is ticked and change inbetween the channels.

[MindBender]

This is because the calibration is off in Photoshop.

1. Make sure you calibrate your monitor. At the very least run through Adobe Gamma ( a couple times if you aren't familiar with it... and make sure your monitor has been on for a good 30 minutes straight before running it).

2. Make sure you are using a standard color profile such as sRGB or Adobe RGB 1998. Also ensure that it stays embedded in the document. FYI, your monitor profile is about the worst color profile you can use... it looks right but it will always be worse than a standard one... don't be tempted to use your monitor's profile as a working profile.

3. Make sure you're in RGB (looks like you are).

4. Make sure you aren't "proofing" your colors in something like CMYK.

If you really want to do this sort of thing a lot you might consider picking up a hardware color calibration tool. Also, the book Real World Color Management by Bruce Fraser is a goldmine of information about these things. Worth at least getting out of the library or borrowing from a friend. Personally, I bought a copy as soon as I could... reference it all the time.

Good luck. Welcome to PSG.

[KMye]

Thanks for both your replies. I was stubbornly refusing to run AG and looking for the problem elsewhere because I couldn't, and still can't figure out how the profile could have gotten tweaked mid work-flow. I think it might have happened during a RAW import(?).
@Mindbender - I've looked into a hardware calibrator before, and the sense I got from my reading was they weren't really worth much unless you dropped a significant amount of money on one, which I haven't been able to justify yet. Is there any one $100 or less you'd personally recommend? Thanks for the tip on the book, I'll try to find that.

k

[Gaussian]

Also, the book Real World Color Management by Bruce Fraser is a goldmine of information about these things.

Thanks for the tip MB

[MindBender]

I've looked into a hardware calibrator before, and the sense I got from my reading was they weren't really worth much unless you dropped a significant amount of money on one, which I haven't been able to justify yet. Is there any one $100 or less you'd personally recommend?

Personally... no. But I don't really use hardware calibration because I've had enough luck just controlling my work environment and using Colorsync. You do have to calibrate your system regularly though... profiles are only good for a certain amount of time which relates to usage and age of hardware. I've seen systems recalibrated yearly, monthly or even daily depending on need. As for losing a profile mid session... it's possible for corruption of a profile to happen at any point. It's just a file on your harddrive... and could be damaged just like any other. Or it could even be that some part of the monitor changed suddenly and now the profile doesn't apply. Too many variables to track down quickly. Basically... recalibrate... if that fixes it... then away you go. If it doesn't fix it... move on to trying to find something else. Just save the profile as a different name as your previous one... that way if you want to revert you can do it quickly. Personally I've adopted this as my monthly recalibration scheme:

Name of device calibrated - date

so my primary monitor is my 21" studio display.. it would look like this: Studio 21 Calibrated - 04.01.07

I then get a list of all my calibrations so if I want to go back I can. I also have some calibrations for different temps and gammas 6500k 5000k 9300k... gamma 1.8 or gamma 2.2. etc. I rarely switch to them.. but they're there if i wanted them for some reason.

Is this overkill? Possibly... but it doesn't take too much work to do.

As for hardware... I've heard good things about the Spyder color tools and you can find them for inexpensive these days. I've been told to avoid the Huey, which is too bad because it sounded promising.

Don't discount that if you are doing color sensitive work you have an age limit on your hardware. CRT monitors are more color true for about 2 years... but start to require frequent calibration after that. LCD monitors don't give as good of color, but tend to last about 3-5 years before they start to fluctuate. These both, of course, assume that you have a quality monitor to begin with (lots of marketting lies in monitor production.).

Good luck with that. Definitely check out that book either from the library or from a book store. It's got tons of useful information in it. There's even a couple tests to see if you have a GOOD profile too which helps me judge when I've done my visual calibrations correctly rather than just relying on my eyes... which are often tired after running Colorsync a couple times. heh