Weird color issue in PS5

[Jeff Vickers]

I would appreciate any help you can give, as I am about to give up...

Recently I calibrated my monitor using the ADobe Gamma utility. I did not notice much of a change. I am using a Nikon D100 as my camera and have started to notice a weird issue with the colors and images appearing lighter than they do in any other software. The color issue is that it appears as though it is being displayed in fewer colors than I would expect. The colors are blotchy and do not have a natural progression from one to the next. I have never noticed this problem previously. I will adjust the image in Photoshop to appear good brightness-wise and then I save it. If I open it in another program (Microsoft Image Editor) it appears dark, but the color transition issue is gone. The same exact file looks vastly different when opened by 2 programs. When I print an image it appears more like the non-photoshop version. I have a images that shows just what I am talking about, but I don't know how to post it here so that you can see. If anyone could help with that, I would greatly appreciate it, or I would be happy to email it to anyone who might have an idea on how to help. I apologize for my ignorance, I am somewhat new to this...I don't think this should be so hard, should it? :)

[Thee_DarkOverLord]

Have you set up a colour profile yet? Thats more than just running adboe gamma.

Edit/coloursettings what do you have set up in this window?

[Jeff Vickers]

NO, I don't think I have. I am running sRGB under that setting. Gamma 2.20. Primaries HDTV. As far as I know they should be the factory defaults. What is getting me on this is that I have never had this issue before...??? Thanks for the tip, I will try to learn more about that...

[Jeff Vickers]

I think I may have it! I just thought of something. I set the color mode output of my camera to type II which is adobe RGB. I figured that would be better than the sRGB. After I did a test, that is what was causing the weird appearence. I guess I will switch it back to sRGB as it is by default. I would think Adobe would be able to compensate for this and that it would yield better results, but there is obviously something I am missing. Unfortuneately I took about 200 photos with it set to the Adobe RGB and I guess I will just have to throw those away...thanks again, Jeff

[YrbkMgr]

No. Don't throw them away. Two things:

First, you cannot evaluate an image in MS Image editor and expect the same as what you see in PS. The issue is color management. PS is a color managed application, Image Editor is not.

That means that PS carefully embeds a profile to tell your montior what red is red, and what blue is blue. Image editor ignores this information.

Spend 15 minutes at Ian Lyons site and you'll be on your way in no time:

<http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps7-colour/ps7_1.htm>

Also, see this thread discussing the same issue.

YrbkMgr "Photos load dark @ 27% RGB" 8/27/03 3:33pm </cgi-bin/webx?14@@.2ccd1f58/0>