Images are desaturating after uploading to the web...

[Seijun]

I am not a photoshop expert.

My work involves editing lots of photos to be uploaded to ebay. The images I save to be uploaded to eBay are very vivid in color. After being uploaded to eBay, the colors are very, very desaturated. This problem started happening immediately after I upgraded from photoshop CS2 to photoshop CS4, and also changed my camera from a Canon EOS 5D to an EOS 5DII. I have not changed the way I save images. I take the photos as RAW images, save them as psd files, and then save them as jpg's (baseline jpg, image quality of 12; mode is RGB, 8 Bits/Channel).

Besides looking desaturated on eBay, the image also looks desaturated in irfanview. The image uploads fine to photobucket. There must be something I am missing, that is causing my photos to look desaturated in irfanview, and when uploaded to eBay, but does not effect them when they are uploaded to photobucket. Any ideas? I am pulling my hair out over this.

 

[Seijun]

I cant figure out how to edit my original post, but the two images I attached were supposed to show the original image and the desaturated one. However, it looks like the original also uploads as desaturated to this forum. If it is any help, here is an image that I took with the old camera and old photoshop.

 

[ibclare]

Right, You have to have 8 posts to edit. But a 2nd post works fine.

Since you upgraded, have you re-calibrated your monitor?

 

[MikeMc]

I see two issues here...either or both could be your problem.

First camera change...The cameras white balance is close, and the end result is poop. Have you tried your old camera with CS 4 ? OR your new camera with CS 2 ?

I went from PS 7 to CS 5.5 with no color shifts. I shoot a Pentax DSLR and use Adobe Bridge from CS5.5 to move both DNG and jpeg versions to my harddrive. Are you using Canons software to transfer to your harddrive ?

More info please, I suspect camera over software but I need more, and you need to isolate camera vs camera first . Also a JPEG from different software will be different due to so many different algorithums used to make jpeg images I don't think photobucket will cause any issues as all they do is store files.

 

[Tom Mann]

The 1st image you posted is in Adobe RGB. This will appear desaturated in applications (including browsers) that aren't aware of the differences between color spaces. The 2nd does not have a color space specified, so it will be interpreted by almost all software as simple sRGB. Your 3rd image has sRGB specified, so it will display properly in almost all software, both modern, color-managed tools, as well as legacy software.

There is a very common problem and is poorly understood by almost everyone that dabbles in post processing.

Fortunately, there is lots of discussion of this on the web, but the short version of the advice is to make sure that everything you post on the web is in sRGB.

If you really want to stick to Adobe RGB for processing, then you will be forced to convert each image to sRGB when you are done. IMHO, sticking to Adobe RGB for processing is not worth the hassle for uses like this. My suggestion is to simply start in sRGB and stay in sRGB for your whole workflow and you won't have this problem.

Sincerely,

Tom M

 

[MikeMc]

Great answer Tom ! Thank you for explaining why I am in sRGB.