10D pictures washed out

[whf95222]

I have a 10D. After downloading to my computer, the pictures seem washed out or lacking color. I go in to levels in printshop2 and turn the light side or right side slider up or to where the graph starts going up and they look pretty good. Is this normal?

[henkbos]

Please post an example with EXIF data.

[MediaMagic]

whf95222 wrote:
I have a 10D. After downloading to my computer, the pictures seem washed out or lacking color. I go in to levels in printshop2 and turn the light side or right side slider up or to where the graph starts going up and they look pretty good. Is this normal?

Well, that depends on whether you monitor is calibrated. Your monitor can be displaying the colors improperly and when you adjust the colors, they look better on your screen. You may also have the white balance out of whack. I did this very thing last weekend. I took almost 200 blue football shots because I forgot to set the proper WB before I began shooting.

I would guess though that your monitor needs to be gamma corrected. Do a search on this forum for "monitor calibration" or "calibration", etc. and you'll find many useful posts and links.

David

[design crusader]

Here is the trick, what is your camera set for? Well, set it for Adobe RGB (not sRGB -- sRGB is an old, web oriented, limited color space). However, even if you do this, when you launch FVU and look at your shots, the thumbnails (or previews) seem very washed out and unsaturated. This is because (unfortunately) it has not yet assigned the Adobe RGB images to the Adobe RGB color space (it does not have this problem for the sRGB images -- go figure). Don't fret, just convert the RAW file to TIFF, destination... Photoshop. Then, as you OPEN the TIFF file in Photoshop, choose ASSIGN Adobe RBG profie. When the image file opens up, you should have a rich, saturated pict. Finally, save the file as a PSD and choose EMBED Adobe RGB profile.

That should do it.

[Motorsports Photo]

whf95222 wrote:
I have a 10D. After downloading to my computer, the pictures seem washed out or lacking color. I go in to levels in printshop2 and turn the light side or right side slider up or to where the graph starts going up and they look pretty good. Is this normal?

Normal? It is for me! I have to use exposure compensation to ensure that *most* of my pics turn out OK. If I dont underexpose I get too many washed out pics. It was even worse on my D30.

-Pete

[tarves57]

design crusader wrote:
Finally, save the file as a PSD and choose EMBED Adobe RGB profile.



Design Crusader, Is there a particular reason why we should save the file as a PSD?
And what does embedding a profile do? Can it be "unembedded" later?

Thanks,
Susan

[design crusader]

tarves57 wrote:
design crusader wrote:
Finally, save the file as a PSD and choose EMBED Adobe RGB profile.



Design Crusader, Is there a particular reason why we should save the file as a PSD?
And what does embedding a profile do? Can it be "unembedded" later?

Thanks,
Susan


Native Photoshop files (PSD) open faster and maintain all of the image data, including Layers, Clipping Paths, Alpha Channels, etc. When you have finished manipulating/editing the image, and you are ready to print it or place it into a page layout program, you can Flatten the image, and save it as a TIFF; or, if it has a Clipping Path or it is a Duotone, Tritone, etc. then you should save it as an EPS or DCS.

Embedding a profile provides you with a Source Color Space for your software (such as Photoshop) to reference so that it can map those colors to to the output color space, i.e. you would have Adobe RGB as your Source Profile and then you would have whatever printer and paper stock you were using as your Printer (Output) Profile such as the EPSON 2200 Premium Luster Paper. This is the best way for your images to be reproduced by your printers color space, especially if you want to try and match what you see on your screen (proper monitor calibration is very important, and so is having enough experience to be able to read the RGB or CMYK color values and understand what color is reperesented). If you do not Embed (Assign or Convert to a color profile such as Adobe RGB) then your Source would just be listed as Untagged RGB or Untagged CMYK.

When you are converting your RGB images to the CMYK color space (try to do all of your image manipulating/editing in RGB before converting to CMYK), specify the correct CMYK color space in your Color Settings dialogue box, make sure your image has been assigned an RGB color profile, then choose Convert to CMYK, and you will get better results than if your image was Untagged. You can spend some time playing around with different RGB and CMYK profiles to see just how different your conversion results would be with different settings, it is fascinating... and frightening.

Depending on how you have set your Color Settings in Photoshop, whenever you Open a file you have a choice to Use the embedded color profile, Convert the document to current working color space, or Discard the color profile and not color manage the document.

When saving the image, if you uncheck the checkbox for Embed the color profile, the answer to your question would be yes, it can be discarded and thus saved without a profile.

[tarves57]

Thanks for the extensive reply. Now I will print it out, go away, think it through and do a bit of experimenting.
Brilliant!

Susan