Different software = Different image display

[Inga]

Hello all ... hope someone can help me out.
I'm a new owner of the S50 and so far so good...however I have one concern.

When I view the resulting pictures using Canon's own software (ZoomBrowers, FileViewerUtility) the pics look *great*. Sharp, vibrant, clear and so forth.

When the same pic is viewed using PSP, or Adobe's PhotoAlbum, the colours are off and they appear to be "faded".

What do I do? I would like to have the editing capabilities available with Adobe products, but don't want to have to manually adjust each pic to salvage the loss in quality by using this product.

Any help, suggestions, and thoughts would be most welcome. I'm rather frustrated at this point.

Best Regards,
Inga

[Guillermo Freige]

Probably you have a color calibration problem.
Are you shooting JPEG or RAW?
What happens if you open the picture in the browser ? Same results than Canon, or similar to Adobe one?

[Inga]

Thank you for your prompt reply.

The camera is pretty much "out of the box" with factory settings....I've only had it since this weekend.

In any case, I've double checked that it's not set to RAW format.

When I open the image in IE (browser) it's closer to Canon s/w than PSP and Adobe.

I appreciate your input and thoughts.

~Inga

[Guillermo Freige]

What do you mean the colors are "off" and "faded"? Is the image tinted, the colors are wrong (greenish yellows, reddish oranges, etc) or is only a low color saturation issue, like a TV with the "color" setting too low?

[CyberDyneSystems]

Somewhere on this forum there is thread on this subject...

The upshot seemed to be that different software display images differently. I know that I have noticed this with the two image tools I have used for years now. ACDsee and Photoshop ALLWAYS look very different. And IE Explorer looks different too.

Ah ha! Hre it is;

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=12086

Read Slejhammers post :)

[marcel wouters]

Inga,
Kep cool! The display difference could be happily maintained to a minimum (not obviously visible).
The browsers only uses the image asis without using the embedded profile, it use the hardware settings i.e. the result of the adobe gamma settings.
The main cause of this phenomen is a huge gamma difference between the adobe setting and the profile value (gamma 2.2 for sRGB).
To rapidly see if it's your problem just use the middle cursor in the level adjust in photoshop.
Move the cursor and note the value at wich your display looks well.
If you don't succeed be shure that you use your adobe gamma monitor profile as monitor profile in photoshop.

[Inga]

Thank you all for the suggestions and replies. I'll drill into this problem later in the week and report back my findings.

I appreciate your help!

Regards,
Inga

[Inga]

Hello again,

Things have improved! I set my monitor to "sRGB Colour Management" and the pics now look great in Adobe PhotoAlbum.

But (and there's always a "but") they are now slightly under-saturated in PhotoShop LE. .

Adjusting the middle level of the pics to a smaller value corrects this problem.

The other posts I was steered to talked about setting up PS to use the sRGB colour space, but it appears that this may not be an option in the LE version.

Folks were also talking about Adobe Gamma on thier monitors..again, this is probably a different product.

If there are any other comments about this problem, please feel free to post. I'm on a huge learning curve here and no doubt you all will be hearing more from me. :-) Next post will be to do with the camera itself. Like the "P" mode for example.
:-)

Best Regards, Inga