WYSIWYG with Color Profiles

[diarrhea]

Having a colour profile for your image file is great. It makes your image more colorful, however there is a problem and the problem is you can't get what you see on screen when you save it to another file and view it in another program.

Sometimes I have to printscreen the file in Photoshop WITH the color profile and paste it into a new document... I don't mind doing this for small images but when I'm designing a layout for a website and I like the colors the way it is, I want to save it as it is WITHOUT the color profile being embedded into my image. I don?t' know how to explain this I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.

Is there a solution to this madness?

 

[Erik]

russian roulette, pills, marriage, listening to Marilyn Manson,... [confused]

just tell photoshop not to use a profile and you're done. For the web this is perhaps even best.
That, or evt sRGB.
Use AdobeRGB for print on offset colour presses. And forget the others or see them as effects inside PS.

 

[jonbalza]

Yep. Especially if you are saving out for the Web. In that case, make sure you are using a sRGB profile to create your artwork, (Edit-Color Settings, and the for RGB, set it to "sRGB IED61966-2.1") and then use Save for Web (or ImageReady) to export that artwork out.

If you were saving for different applications, like print, then the answer gets a little more complicated, but that should be about it for web.

(edit: Erik beat me to it, but you get the idea...)

 

[Welles]

If a color profile is making your image 'more colorful' in Photoshop, something isn't quite right. That's not the purpose of color profiles at all. They are maps of color spaces which theoretically allow one hardware device to translate color data to another to keep consistency throughout a workflow.

When you capture an image your camera or scanner will have a color profile embedded. For example most consumer cameras and scanners use sRGB IEC61966-2-1 for it is a very safe working gamut. That is translated to your screen, using the color profile of your monitor for viewing. Then the output device has a profile that translates the file into it's own color space.

This ideal tends to break down because most monitors really aren't capable of identifying or holding more than a vague color profile and then if you are posting the image to the internet, you have no control whatever over the end viewiers' monitors which will, most often, have no calibration at all.

So in all likelihood your best option is to start by using Adobe Gamma to create a general screen profile. Then in your Photoshop Color Settings... dialog, try using Web Graphics Defaults if your work is primarily for screen or your own local printers. If you are sending images out for professional printing in the US, the US Prepress default is the best way to go.

To begin learning about color space here is a fine page of information.

Am I the last one to this party or what?

 

[diarrhea]

*note: Image taken from: http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=285734

The first one is without a profile. The second one with a profile but I printscreen it while viewing it with a profile.

Now you are seeing both WITHOUT a profile and yet the second one looks brighter with more colours. Now how do I get the second version without printscreen?

By the way, if I keep on printscreening it gets more saturate and brighter.

 

[Welles]

What are you trying to accomplish? Print or screen? If screen use is your intent, why are you taking screen shots anyway, instead of using Save For Web straight out of Photoshop? Have you ever tried to calibrate your monitor? What kind of monitor is it? What kind of video card? Is there a profile embedded in the original photo? If you don't use a profile but take a series of screen shots of the image, does it keep lightening up? What profile are you using to achieve the effect you are after?

A similar but better (consistency and control) could easily be accomplished with Image > Adjustment > Shadow/Highlight.

Again, I'll repeat myself. The purpose of profiling images is not for making color adjustments but for trying to obtain color consistency through a workflow of different hardware inputs and outputs. It seems to me that your use here is such a departure of that intent that consistent results would be impossible to guess in advance. Only experimentation and observation would do and your results would vary on every computer you tried them on.

 

[Sark]

Hmm, like Welles I'm a little confused by where you're starting and where you want to go.

All I can add is that if you're set up for a Printer profile, which is how I work, as print is generally may final destination, then use the Image/Mode/Convert to profile dialogue and choose sRGB IED61966-2.1. This should change the colours very little, if at all, and you can now Save to Web with results that should resemble the image in PS.

Getting perfect results depends on many factors and ultimately, you're results will almost certainly differ from monitor to monitor, so how critical you need to be is subjective.

Sark

 

[Welles]

Hi Sark,

I was trying to find out what diarrhea is trying to accomplish and how his computer is set up. Color management is specifically designed to translate data from input devices through your monitor to output devices. Using sRGB IED61966-2.1 is a good profile to use if you are printing on your own printer, not if you are sending it out to an image setter.

It actually is the basic profile used by most consumer grade scanners and cameras. If you look at a graphic representation of the gamut of this profile in relation to the 'normal' print gamut of most ink jet printers, you would see that the colors allowed in that profile are almost completely within the printer's possibilities.

Now that's an excellent workflow but has little or no relationship to diarrhea's question which had to do with screen shots, multiple screen shots etc. I was trying to clarify what was going on and why. Without more info, it seemed to me that an accurate answer was impossible.

 

[diarrhea]

You can try it on any colors profile. I?m using Adobe RGB (1998). I?ve learned that Adobe RGB contains a wider gamut whereas sRGB IED61966-2.1 has a shorter range.

Now what I don?t understand is WHY I can printscreen an AdobeRGB(1998) image and save it into sRGB IE? and the colors remains intact. Shouldn?t color information be reduced? Instead I got the exact duplicate.

Sometimes I like the color AdobeRGB produced and I can just printscreen it and save it into sRGB the problem is when I work on BIG resolution (like 2000x2000) I can?t printscreen so I was wondering if there?s such thing as Color Profile Collapsed where you can remove the color profile and have the look on screen intact.

Haha, I know this sound funny.

 

[Welles]

Hi diarrhea. I'm afraid I'm confused enough by what you are doing and why to just give up. Perhaps someone else will understand and be able to help.

I still don't know why you are saving images using print screen rather than adjusting the file in Photoshop and saving that? I don't understand your intended use. Does print screen use any profile at all other than your monitor profile? I doubt if it deals with profiles at all but not being much of a Windows user I don't know. When you take a print screen what application are you using to look at it?

I'm sorry to repeat myself but it seems to me you really are using profiles in a manner which is outside their intended use.

 

[Erik]

Looks like you are using this just like any other filter.
Which is why I wrote that the way you use it is for effects.

Nothing wrong with that.

There's a difference between what you see on a monitor and what is really available. A clear example is CMY. Your monitor cannot show you Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, real black, real white...
Same goes for AdobeRGB.

What your monitor does is simulate what it would look like as calculated by Photoshop and within the boundaries of its own technical material limitations.

Some CRT monitors have an sRGB setting. Ever tried this if yours has it?
Mine has, and I did.
Once.

 

[Sark]

Welles, Hi.

Welles said

Now that's an excellent workflow but has little or no relationship to diarrhea's question which had to do with screen shots, multiple screen shots etc.

diarrhea said

Having a colour profile for your image file is great. It makes your image more colorful, however there is a problem and the problem is you can't get what you see on screen when you save it to another file and view it in another program.

Welles, while diarrhea mentioned screenshots etc, his initial question suggested this was as an attempt to resolve other issues.

I had assumed he was maybe scruggling to get his Save for Web images (jpegs) to look the same as his open PS files.

Print Screen is good for nothing other than capturing menus, palettes and property bars etc, in my opinion, at least. Quite why diarrhea has got bogged down using this to transfer images I'm not sure.

Without a precise explaination of where diarrhea is starting from and the final output, it's difficult to offer clear advice.

diarrhea, one point you need to understand is Print screen does nothing more than capture the pixels on your screen. If your monitor is running at 800 x 600 you'll get 800 x 600 pixels on the clipboard. In what colour profile these will be I have no idea.

If you have a 1200 x 1200 image in PS reduced to 50% to fit, you'll lose 75% of the pixels when you use Print Screen. It would only capture what you see, 600 x 600 pixels of the image (plus the PS interface).

AVOID USING PRINT SCREEN I don't think it will resolve your problems.

Sark

 

[diarrhea]

Sorry I wasn?t clear on my first post or maybe I?m the one that is confused here.

Believe it or not I?ve actually done the printscreen twice (of the same image) on some images and it worked nicely both onscreen and on the web. Beyond 2 printscreens the image looks very saturated and not good to the eyes.

dair: I?ve learned that Adobe RGB contains a wider gamut whereas sRGB IED61966-2.1 has a shorter range.

As in shorter gamut. Normally if I want to brighten my images or increase its color I would do it with adjustment layers but forget about that for a moment because when I include an AdobeRGB profile into my images it get brighter and colorful. When I switched to another color profile the color/brightness changes according to the profile.

Now what I don?t understand is why I can printscreen an AdobeRGB profile image and paste it into a sRGB IED61966 profile and the colors/brightness remained intact as if I have captured an AdobeRGB data? (AdobeRGB translation of the pixel on screen). Shouldn't the sRGB profile reduce the colour? (The box did appeared asking me if I want to convert the pasted image to sRGB or ignore it - I ignored)

Ignore everything else just focus on this for a moment. I find this strange because printscreen only prints the pixel, and the color profiles just play with monitor setting? (not sure if I get this right)

Just a check: The image I posted above are they the same or different?

 

[Erik]

truly sorry. I was writing an extensive reply but hit the Ctrl button by mistake. So everything is lost. I'll try again later as I am very busy.

short: you don't *see* AdobeRGB on your monitor. What you see is PS trying to give you an idea of what it looks like. This always influences rosy red oranges and blue greens.
When you printscreen that, you can easily enter it in sRGB because what you see on your monitor isn't even full sRGB.

If you print on your home printer the result will seem different because your monitor, to simulate AdobeRGB's extention colours, adds more rosy red oranges and blueish greens.
But that printer always works with CMYK and eventually additional light blue, light red, light black etc.
But NEVER and under NO circumstances can your monitor display what your print will look like.

AdobeRGB is only advisable for offset printing (or a home printer that allows for it).
What you do with it is use it as a filter. It gives more accent on greenish blues and rosy oranges but within the range of your monitor, not within the extend AdobeRGB colourspace.

I don't think I can explain this more clearly. It's my third attempt, and I feel like repeating myself.