Digital Photos dark when opened in photoshop

[George_McKim@adobeforums.com]

When I open digital photos in photoshop they are darker than they appeared on camera screen. Is there some calibration I need to perform in Photoshop?

[Buko@adobeforums.com]

Maybe you need to adjust the camera screen??

have you calibrated your monitor??

what system??

what version of Photoshop??

what computer??

[George_McKim@adobeforums.com]

OLYMPUS CAMERA, E-Mac computer, MAC OSX Jaguar, Photoshop V7.0. Actually, here is the problem, I transfer digital photos to MAC open in Photoshop, and the photos look a little dark, so I lighten them up and insert them into WORD on the Mac and they look fairly normal. I do this newsletter layout in Word. I then open the WORD file on a PC (Dell Precision 330) and the photos look light and washed out in comparison to the way they looked on the E-Mac in WORD program. So the problem is they look lighter on the PC than they did on the E-Mac.
However most photos look normal on the Dell PC, for instance if I open a web page on internet all photos look normal, not light and washed out.

[Buko@adobeforums.com]

Calibrate your Mac with 2.2 gamma

[George_McKim@adobeforums.com]

I'll give it a shot. Thanks. I won't be able to do that until later tonight.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda@adobeforums.com]

George,

Can you be more precise about the exact versions? For instance, we'd be wasting time advising you to upgrade to Photoshop 7.0.1 if you already have it, but you just mention "7". "Jaguar" 10.2.8?

[Paul_Hokanson@adobeforums.com]

George,

>I then open the WORD file on a PC (Dell Precision 330) and the photos

look light and washed out in comparison to the way they looked on the
E-Mac in WORD program




Word is not a Colorsync-aware app on the Mac and will not display colors the same way Photoshop does. This is true of most programs on BOTH Windows and Mac platforms.

The trick is to get your own monitor calibrated properly, make sure Photoshop is in an approriate color space for your output needs (sRGB, AdobeRGB1998, etc) and then adjust your images so all looks well in Photoshop. There is no way to make an image look great on every computer monitor that might ever view your work. The important thing is that the image detail and tonal range is there. Let others balance their own monitors if they want a more accurate representation of how things are supposed to look.

That said, if you have a carefully calibrated monitor and do some softproofing in Photoshop, you can get a pretty good idea of how an image will look on a Windows monitor. But again, hardly anyone in the "business office computer" world bothers to calibrate monitors, so don't lose too much sleep when your image looks different on different screens.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

The Magic of Digital Photography solving all the problems with the click of the shutter!

Hmmm…they still use shutters…is this an advancement?

Film is dead…long live film!

[Tim_Lookingbill@adobeforums.com]

If you just calibrate to 2.2 and pick a 2.2 colorspace in PS, there shouldn't be that much of a shift. The shift I get on most websites I've visited having Colorsync turned on and off in IE on my Mac even calibrated to 1.8 is very subtle. Usually deep shadows around the 13 RGB level or 90-85% black region plug up with it on or flatten lighter with it off with very little shift in hue or saturation.

About half of the off the shelf Wintel machines I've seen at CompUSA have their monitors set to a bright blue cast (brighter than the Macs) to begin with so saturation is the first to go no matter how color managed you are. 2.2 gamma is a good middle ground to reduce these shifts.

[George_McKim@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the tips. I changed to gamma 2.2 on the eMac, re-opened the files in photoshop, re-adjusted lightness and contrast, re-inserted into WORD on Mac and re-opened in WORD on PC and yes indeed there is a difference and the photos do not look as light and as washed out as before. Good job gentlemen, may the force be with you!