jpeg color does not match Photoshop color

[Tom Mann]

puppychew -

a) What version of Windows are you using?

b) You mentioned the program, "Windows Picture Viewer" in some of your posts. Do you really mean "Windows Picture Viewer" or do you mean "Windows Photo Viewer". The former was superseded by the latter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Photo_Viewer), and as I recall, at least some, if not all of the versions of "Picture" were not correctly color managed. If you are indeed using "Windows Picture Viewer" and not "Windows Photo Viewer", this could explain some of your problems, and is why I strongly suggest you begin to use Chrome, a program that has been kept up to date and has no such problems. Unless we have a golden standard (like Chrome) to compare images against, we are not going to get anywhere.

Tom M

 

[puppychew]

Thank you for your patience.
First let me explain that to open a image on my hard drive, I would just double click it. It is opened by Windows Photo Viewer by default. When I say jpeg, I meant that I am viewing a jpeg image through windows. Until yesterday I had never heard of opening a photo in a browser. I thought in terms of just viewing it on my computer which is Windows version 7. This is how I have been comparing the image to the image shown in PS.

My friend helped me be able to open the image in foxfire and chrome and to add firefox to the "open with". Both are the current version. In foxfire the config settings were changed except the full path to the monitor remains blank for I don't know what to put in there. (I'm using a laptop and a secondary Asus monitor). In doing the test where you mouse over the photo, there is no change in firefox but a slight change in chrome.

Now that I FINALLY understand how to open an image in firefox and chrome, I compared the image in firefox, chrome, and bridge and they are the same. Only in photoshop it looks correct. The biggest differences are in the yellow and gold colors.

Because of this I would think that maybe I am doing something wrong when saving a PS image as a jpeg???

 

[Tom Mann]

... Because of this I would think that maybe I am doing something wrong when saving a PS image as a jpeg???

No. We can be almost 100% confident that this isn't the case because both Steve and I double-checked you and we both got exactly the same results for the conversion of a PSD file to a JPG using PS.

Also, *please* ... this may sound pedantic, but precise terminology is of the utmost importance when someone is trying to help you remotely. Not using precise terminology just results in wasting time going back-and-forth a zillion times, to find out exactly what you meant.

Specifically, there is no such thing as a "PS image". There are PSD files viewed in PS and then possibly saved from PS; there are JPGs opened in PS, there are JPGs opened in other programs such as Bridge, Chrome, etc. etc.

Similarly, your comment, "...I meant that I am viewing a jpeg image through windows..." conveys no useful information. We already know that you are running Windows, so everything you do on that computer is done "through Windows". Photoshop is done "through Windows', "Windows Photo Viewer" is "done through Windows", etc.

BTW, I'm truly trying to help you, not just bust your chops needlessly. Almost always, imprecise / improper terminology signals an incomplete understanding of how something works, and when you are trying to diagnose a difficult problem like this, understanding and terminology are paramount.

...snip...I compared the image in firefox, chrome, and bridge and they are the same. Only in photoshop it looks correct. The biggest differences are in the yellow and gold colors...snip...

OK. This is exactly what I wanted to determine. Since it appears that you have set up Firefox correctly and all three of these programs have very few ways in which color management can be set up incorrectly, we can regard them as the golden standard for determining colors. This means that what you are seeing in these programs is almost certainly almost exactly the same as what other people will see using a properly color-managed viewer.

In contrast, there are lots of ways PS can be set up (either accidentally or intentionally) that will make images appear improperly rendered. Since you optimized this image using PS, of course it will continue to look good to you in PS, even if it is set up improperly. This is exactly why I urged you to reset PS back to its original settings by deleting the preference file (as I described in earlier posts) or simply deleting it and re-installing it from scratch. If you do the latter, be sure you deactivate your license before you uninstall it.

...snip... In foxfire the config settings were changed except the full path to the monitor remains blank for I don't know what to put in there. ...snip...

Sorry, but there is no "path to the monitor", per se. I presume you mean the path to the monitor profile, ie, something like this:
gfx.color_management.display_profile;C:\Windows\System32\Spool\Drivers\Color\PA242W 37100490TW.icc

This brings up another possible issue: You should check that your calibration system really is correctly storing the monitor color profiles that it generates. To do this, open "Color Management" by clicking the the Start button, and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type color management, and then click Color Management. Browse through the window that appears and become familiar with it. You should see a list of the monitor profiles generated by your hardware calibrator. If you don't, something is wrong with your calibration methodology. For more info on this, read through: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/change-color-management-settings . You should be able to tell the full path to the current monitor profile from this window.

HTH,

Tom M

PS - The wife and I are taking a long weekend to a cabin starting in an hour or so. I'll have my iPad with me, but limited Internet connectivity, so, if I don't respond, you'll know why. We should return on Tuesday.

 

[puppychew]

Hi Tom - Hope your weekend was enjoyable.

I checked my color management on the Control Panel and the color profile names I used look good.

I am wondering if my color settings showing 20% desaturation have an effect. see screen shot.


I did that because photoshop color was too saturated when viewing in PS.
Now a psd viewed in PS looks accurate but the saved jpeg viewed in firefox is not.

It starts with a paper color swatch. I input the code in PS and the color showing in PS matches the paper swatch.


Playing with this saturation makes a big difference for some colors.
Maybe I should match the paper color swatch to the jpeg and work backwards adjusting PS until the paper swatch and jpeg matches?

 

[thebestcpu]

I checked my color management on the Control Panel and the color profile names I used look good.

I am wondering if my color settings showing 20% desaturation have an effect. see screen shot.
View attachment 56587

I did that because photoshop color was too saturated when viewing in PS.
Now a psd viewed in PS looks accurate but the saved jpeg viewed in firefox is not.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. Note that the PS info when hovering over that option is :



That option should not be checked and may explain many of your issues. By checking that box you have bypassed normal color management and pretty much guaranteed you will not get a match from PS to anywhere else. Soft proofing should be used if needed and not that checkbox option.

You have guaranteed that any image in PS will look under saturated and therefore you will turn up the saturation in PS. When viewed with proper Color Management in another application that file will then be over saturated. Sound familiar.

I think you found your root cause issue. Uncheck that box and then see how things work. If they look over saturated with a calibrated monitor, then they are over saturated in the data of the image if the checkmark is not longer checked. That is why they call that option for advanced users only (and even then I do not recommend that checkmark)

Youch

 

[Tom Mann]

Well, it took a while to narrow down the possibilities and then check the only remaining possibility, namely, there was an error in your installation of PS, but finally have arrived at this wonderful point.

John - Thank your very much for the wonderful explanation.

Puppy - You see how being precise and persistent pays off. Also, I would comment that if you had renamed PS's preference file, as I suggested in post #14, we could have jumped right to this point.

Also, Puppy, I don't know where you got this procedure using Sherwin-Williams paint colors or any other such ad hoc method involving tweaking bits and pieces of your system *after* hardware calibration of your monitor, but just get rid of it. It defeats the whole point of hardware calibration. You either have to trust your hardware calibrator or you might as well just throw it out and go back to trying to adjust everything by eye. After the monitor and video system are calibrated, I can see how something like that might possibly be useful to calibrate your printer, but for the moment, just leave printers completely out of this.

With respect to your system, and the one image in question, here's my suggestion:

1. Delete photoshop's preference file, as suggested earlier. There may be other parameters in addition to the 20% saturation setting that have become corrupt, either by you setting them, or completely inadvertently, and non-volitionally. If you want to make some changes in the photoshop setup preferences, and you think there is any chance they might affect either colors or tonalities (ie, brightness, contrast, etc.), ask us first before you change them.

2. Once you've got PS running again with default parameters, run a hardware caliabration on your system.


3. Take a set of sRGB JPGs and compare how they look in the 3 file viewers to how they look in PS. If they agree, great - you are almost done - just let us know. If they don't agree with each other, also let us know.

4. With your system now calibrated and 4 software packages all agree with each other, go back and make the house image the way you want using Photoshop.

5. (I think) You're done!!!

Tom M

 

[thebestcpu]

56588[/ATTACH]

Playing with this saturation makes a big difference for some colors.
Maybe I should match the paper color swatch to the jpeg and work backwards adjusting PS until the paper swatch and jpeg matches?

Hi Puppychew
The second part of your previous post got me thinking to why you even considered adjusting the advanced "Saturation" feature in the Color Settings dialog. I may have discovered another root issue in your process.

Sherwin Williams RGB numbers are based on the sRGB Color Space (aka Color scale). Given that your sample example above was in Adobe RGB, I will give you odds that you plugged in the numbers you indicated in Adobe RGB which is a totally different color scale.

It turns out that it you use the same color numbers in a wider gamut Color Space, you will visually have more highly saturated colors.

"ADDED EDIT for clarity: So if you were comparing those data numbers plugged into an Adobe RGB image in PS, against the Sherwin Williams color chip in a calibrated browser (which color chips was in sRGB), then your PS image would have looked more saturated just because you were using a wider gamut color space with color numbers meant for an sRGB space."

If my hypothesis is correct, when you saw this mismatch and not realizing that the difference in colors was due to a different color space rather than a calibration issue, you went and used the special advanced feature to reduce saturation to get a better match.

The real issue is that if you are going to plug in color numbers for a particular visual color, you have to be using the same color space that is associated with those numbers (in the case of Sherwin Williams sRGB).

So open a new image in sRGB instead of Adobe RGB (again with the "Desaturate Colors by" checkbox unchecked, and if your monitor is calibrated, you should have a pretty good match when using the Sherwin Williams numbers typed into PS.

The image below demonstrates how the same color numbers can have a totally different color when the color space is changed. I used similar numbers to what you used in the image below:



Hope this incremental information helps you get to a better understanding and solution for you JPEG image matches.

 

[puppychew]

Wow - I really appreciate all this awesome information guys!

It's all starting to make sense although I need to re-read it all a few times.

It looks like thebestcpu really figured out my original problem.

I have a color chart that I view in PS when working with these colors. I just noticed that it automatically opens in Adobe 1998.
When I work on an image of a house, and open it up in PS, I select "Use the Embedded profile (srgb) instead of the working space (adobe 1998)
I then plug in the sherwin williams color numbers to the srgb and compare them and sometimes adjust them to the color chart viewed in PS adobe 1998

I remember back awhile ago when I created my color chart, I had difficulty matching to the paper color chart. By reducing the saturation, it matched up great.

The reason I had the color chart in Adobe 1998 is because I would be able to have a wider range of colors.

Should I, in the color settings, change the working space to srgb?

I created a 2nd color chart in srgb to compare to adobe 1998 and don't see a difference when viewed in PS
The problem when converting to srgb, I lose my layers. Is there another way to convert?

 

[thebestcpu]

I have a color chart that I view in PS when working with these colors. I just noticed that it automatically opens in Adobe 1998.

I do not know how your color chart was created so it is hard to comment yet given the issues you had and misunderstandings of using sRGB color numbers in an Adobe color space, it would be well worth you time to invest in Color Management education/tutorials. Less likely to get yourself in trouble. There are free ones online yet if you want a two hour course from Lynda.com it is at this link: http://www.lynda.com/Design-Color-tutorials/Color-Management-Fundamentals/135361-2.html

A very key point is that color numbers do not equate to a visualized color unless the color numbers are tied to a specific color space with which they were created. If you have color numbers always ask which color space they belong with. A parallel is temperature. If I say it is 72 degrees, you may say that is comfortable if you assume Fahrenheit temperature scale, yet if that temperature was in the Celsius scale, then it would be unbearably hot. A temperature number tells you nothing about how hot or cold it is without knowing the temperature scale. So it is with color numbers.

Once you have color numbers associated with a color space and such space embedded with the image file, the Color Management system will properly translate the color numbers as needed to change color spaces, view on your monitor, or ot a printer all which have different color scales/spaces/icc profiles. This all assumes you have a properly calibrated monitor and are using the proper ICC profiles for your printer/paper/ink combination.

The only issue that I saw was that you were using sRGB numbers while in the Adobe RGB color space and also messing around with an option to desaturate the monitor and negate all Color Management efforts.

When I work on an image of a house, and open it up in PS, I select "Use the Embedded profile (srgb) instead of the working space (adobe 1998)
I then plug in the sherwin williams color numbers to the srgb and compare them and sometimes adjust them to the color chart viewed in PS adobe 1998

If you use an image in sRGB and use sRGB numbers from Sherwin Williams there should be not issues as long as your system is appropriately Color Managed and calibrated

I remember back awhile ago when I created my color chart, I had difficulty matching to the paper color chart. By reducing the saturation, it matched up great.

As I mentioned, this is where you broke the Color Management of your system. More training may help you avoid such pitfalls (there are more in PS) in the future.

The reason I had the color chart in Adobe 1998 is because I would be able to have a wider range of colors.

Nothing wrong with that. Note that you cannot see those wider gamut colors on your monitor unless it is a wide gamut monitor. If you don't have a wide gamut monitor, the Color Management System will take those highly saturated colors (if they exist in your image) and map them down into the narrower color gamut of the monitor. Here is a chart that shows some tradeoffs

Should I, in the color settings, change the working space to srgb?

If you are typing in sRGB color numbers it needs either to be done in sRGB space or have the numbers converted to the Color Space you want to use.

I created a 2nd color chart in srgb to compare to adobe 1998 and don't see a difference when viewed in PS

I don't know how you created you color charts so it is hard to comment. Yet, if you created the new color chart by converting the Adobe RGB chart to sRGB, then most if not all of the colors will look the same on PS. The whole idea of color management is to have matched color (as best as possible) not matter the color space/scale that is being used. So quite possibly, the Color Management system as just doing its job. Again, without more details on how you created your color charts I am just doing my best guessing.

The problem when converting to srgb, I lose my layers. Is there another way to convert?

I have not had trouble convert to another RGB color space and having to flatten layers. However, if you are having trouble there are ways to get around the issue if you are having trouble.

- Select all of you Layers and turn into a Smart Object
- Now convert your document to sRGB

If you open up the Smart Object, with your color settings it will ask you if you should open in Adobe RGB the embedded profile and just say OK. So the Layers will be preserved in Adobe RGB color space, just buried down in a Smart Object.

Hope this helps.

 

[Tom Mann]

Puppy - In post #28, you mentioned your attempts to match that appear on your monitor to colors that are printed on a paper color chart. While this may seem like a logical approach, it is fraught with difficulty and you should abandon this approach immediately. Among the reasons behind such a very strong recommendation are:

1. Comparing colors produced by self-luminous displays will never, ever look like colors produced by reflection of light off a paper, even if you illuminated that paper with a perfect illuminant (ie, a bulb with perfect daylight color temperature and perfect color rendering index, which I doubt you have).

2. If you printed out the paper color chart yourself, I am 100% sure the colors on it (ie, as measured by a spectrophotometer) will be seriously in error. Getting a personal printer to print colors according to international specs is even more difficult than getting a monitor to display colors according to the same specs. Change one thing, ie, type of paper, source and freshness of the ink cartridges, etc., and a formerly accurate printer calibration will almost certainly no longer be even close to what it used to be.

3. If you are using a paint color chart produced by a paint mfgr, it almost certainly was designed for the paint-purchasing public, not someone attempting to match the colors to a digital workflow. Even if they used very high quality printing techniques, it is almost guaranteed that that the mfgrs color chart was printed out in CMYK which has an even narrower gamut than sRGB.

Bottom line -- ONE MORE, ONE FINAL TIME !!! -- stop attempting to use or even justify this ad-hoc paper-to-monitor matching approach that you came up with. To use John's words, as well as what I said in an earlier post, this is negating your attempts at color management. No commercial / pro user of PS to whom color is important *ever* does this. They may compare one paper color test sheet to another printed object to check their printer, but they never attempt to get a paper-to-monitor match.

At this point, you should not be making statements like, "Should I, in the color settings, change the working space to srgb?". Let me be blunt one more time: You may have mucked up other PS settings in addition to the one we identified. I certainly don't know exactly what you have done, and I doubt you do, either. First, get PS into a stable, known state by either deleting the preferences file, or simply re-installing it and THEN, AND ONLY THEN should be concern your self with more normal color management issues like which working space should I use.

Tom M

PS - I fully second John's recommendation that you read up on the basics of color management, and do so immediately. I think I previously pointed you to a paper on the subject, and will try to find other suitable literature for you.

 

[puppychew]

Ok - I have found the color managed file to rename so I can reset my settings.
I am also subscribed to Lynda.com to watch the tutorial.

I will report back.
Thank you!

 

[Tom Mann]

Ok - I have found the color managed file to rename so I can reset my settings....

That's good, but because of the way you just described it, ie, "color managed file", I'm very concerned that you haven't found the correct file, the Photoshop preferences file, but rather, you inadvertently found one of the color profile files for your system.

If the name of the file you found is "something" dot "icc", eg, 20150622-1730.icc or monitor1.icc, etc. etc., ie, a name that ends in "icc", you didn't find the PS preferences file, but instead, you mistakenly found a color profile file. If this is the case, leave it alone and go back to one of my early posts where I gave you a couple of links to the Adobe help website where it describes how to locate and identify the PS preferences file in various versions of Windows and various versions of PS. Make sure the file extension (ie, the three letters after the "dot" in the file name) agrees exactly with what is stated in the Adobe Help site.

... I am also subscribed to Lynda.com to watch the tutorial...

Great!!!

... I will report back. Thank you!

Thank YOU. Please keep us posted.

Best regards,

Tom M

 

[puppychew]

I found the file for Windows 7 and added the word "old" to the end. I rebooted my computer and reopened PS but a new preference file was not generated.

 

[Tom Mann]

I'm not at my computer, but just from the file names and your description of what you did (ie, I just added "old" to the name), it seems like you probably have both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of PS on your computer and you modified the name of the preference file for one version, but not the other.

That article I referred you to should list the file names and locations of the pref file for both 32 and 64 bit versions. Double check this, and make sure that when you fire up PS after the change, you are firing up the correct version.

Tom M

PS - While I'm thinking of it, I wanted to add to my last post that when one refers to a "color managed file", as you did, that specifically means an image file to which color management info has been added. That phrase is never used to describe a file that describes a specific color profile, eg, a device color profile, a working color space, etc., and certainly is NEVER used to describe the Photoshop Preferences File.

So, a JPG, a TIF, or even a PSD file might have absolutely no color management info added, or it might include either a full color profile or just a couple of extra bytes that specify one of the common color profiles like sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB, one of the CMYK profiles, etc. Any of these latter possibilities could be described as being color managed files.

 

[puppychew]

When I go to help - about photoshop it shows Version 12.0 x 64
I'm assuming the 64 means 64 bit. Is this the version I should have? How would I know if I also have the 34?

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi Puppychew
Just to be really clear, I am assuming you are running CS5 and not some other version of Photoshop. That would change everything if you were on a different version and to be honest, I could not see in the 4 pages of posts where you specified which version you were using (I may have missed it)

Assuming CS5, the preference files for 32 bit and 64 bit are stored in the same location with a different file name per the info in this link: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/preference-file-functions-names-locations.html
The cut and paste snippet of what was appropriate is:


In you Windows Explorer window it looks as if you changed the 32 bit preferences and not the 64 bit preferences directly below it. Since Preferences are changed all the time, from the modification date on your file listing it is clear you changed the wrong one as the 64 bit version directly below it was modified as of yesterday and the 32 bit version has not been changed since 2011 (probably with the initial install).

So you are close yet not quite there. Rename the 64 bit version of Preferences and see if that helps in your process.

Not 100% positive that is your issue yet pretty sure that is your problem.

John Wheeler

 

[puppychew]

You were right! I changed the name and reopened PS. When viewing my color chart in PS - now in srgb there is quite a bit less saturation when I compare it to a jpeg viewed in firefox!


I then resaved it as a jpeg but when viewed in firefox the colors are saturated. Mostly the yellows.
By the way, I watched the Lynda.com video (except for the printing part). Getting a better understanding - slowly.

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi Puppychew

Please note that your posted color chart does not have an embedded Color Space. The standard error that comes up is:


Part of resetting Preferences is that all of the Edit > Color Settings will be reset as well and I suspect your system will not flag you that there there is no embedded profile.

To get on the same page please post you complete expanded Color Settings and also remember the golden rule. An image to be interpreted correctly must have an associated color space. If your image has not embedded color space, that along with your Color Settings need to be fixed. Sooooo

- Fix the Color Settings so that you Preserve embedded color spaces, that you are alerted for all missing or mismatch profiles (as you had it set before) and share a screen shot
- Make sure your image has an embedded profile (always) and repost your chart with the included profile after you verified how the colors look on your system in PS and Firefox

Just trying to cover the bases to eliminate sources of errors because we have had a few and want to avoid going down that path again.

Getting closer I believe

 

[Tom Mann]

Thanks, John. I was just about to write exactly the same post that you did, but you beat me to it.


Tom

 

[thebestcpu]

Your welcome Tom

Also, for Puppychew and general information (not sure if this was already posted in this thread), let me disabuse anyone about Firefox being fully color managed. Today's Firefox setting defaults has full color management only if the image has an embedded color profile. The default Color Management Settings in Firefox for images with no embedded profile will not be color managed. What this means is that the color numbers given to Firefox for an image with no profile will be sent directly to the monitor and bypass the ICC profiles for the monitor. An image with sRGB data yet with no profile going to a ~sRGB color space monitor may look not too far off. Yet that same image with no profile going to a wide gamut monitor will look oversaturated.

With default Firefox settings, images with no profile are not color managed!

However, Firefox can have its settings changed so the images with no profile are given a default profile. That is changing the following color mode to "1" instead of "2":

gfx.color_management.mode
0 - Disable color management.
1 - Enable color management for all rendered graphics. (Recommended)
2 - Enable color management only for tagged images only. (Default)

Mode 1 is better and Firefox and others call this full Color Management yet not quite. For images with no embedded profile it will "assume" that the profile is sRGB. That works perfect for images with no profile that actually contain sRGB data. If the image had Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB data or similar wider gamut data, the image on Firefox would come out with lower than appropriate saturation.

So having mode 1 set is a help yet the best is to have images with embedded profiles in which case either mode 1 or mode 2 will get it right all the time.

Puppychew - Just wanted to make sure it was crystal clear why embedded profiles were important even with the so-called color managed Firefox browser.

Hope this incremental information is helpful

BTW - the following image shows all the color settings for Firefox and how to change them:



ADDED EDIT - If you are using V4 ICC profiles with Firefox, you also need to turn on that option in Firefox to recognize those profiles per that above image (I have not checked if more recent versions of Firefox automatically allow V4 profiles)