Colour inconsistency

[miss_fugg]

Hey guys,

I've just started shooting in RAW and with mixed results. Recently, I took some photos that were underexposed and opened them in Adobe Camera RAW to make corrections. Happy with these corrections, I saved the new files to JPEGS. However, when looking at the corrected images in Photoshop CS5, they look fine and reflect my adjustments. I also viewed these images in Windows Photo Gallery, but the blacks look much darker than they do in Photoshop/Camera RAW and actually look underexposed again! I am wondering, does Windows Photo Gallery support colour profiles?

Thanks in advance for any replies,
Jen

[tonylong]

As far as I know, Microsoft software is in the "early stages" of implementing color management and so I would take the viewers with a grain of salt. The same goes for Windows Explorer. You can try the third-party browser like Firefox -- you need to work through some details to get things working properly, but when done you should see a good representation.

Know, though, that all these products also will work best with a calibrated monitor.

Also, are you converting to the jpeg into the sRGB color space? Check the little blue link in ACR below the image preview and it should show the color space -- aRGB, sRGB or ProPhotoRGB. If you click on the link you can change that setting as well as 16/8 bit mode and other things.

[miss_fugg]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, the JPEG is converted to the sRGB colour space. Strange thing is, when checking the JPEG's properties in Windows Explorer, it says the colour representation is uncalibrated!

Thanks,
Jen

[tonylong]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, the JPEG is converted to the sRGB colour space. Strange thing is, when checking the JPEG's properties in Windows Explorer, it says the colour representation is uncalibrated!

Thanks,
Jen

Is that "colour representation is uncalibrated" a direct quote? I don't think that's an Exif property. However, there are a couple places where color space info is stored in Exif. The one that most clearly shows the "embedded" color space is used by converters, but there is one "tag" that apparently is optional. It gets used in Photoshop when you convert or assign to a color space for example, but in Lightroom that tag is not "assigned". But the "embedded" one is, so that tag seems to be the "mandatory" one for a converter, and Lightroom images are correctly read in for example Photoshop. But, some exif viewers evidently don't show the embedded color space but will show the tag (or lack of it) which is why windows likely doesn't "recognize" the color space and why you don't want to open say an aRGB image in a non color-managed viewer that doesn't evidently extract the embedded color space. They just show everything as if it was sRGB which means aRGB images come out lousy.

But, for your original situation, ACR and Photoshop should show what the image correctly looks like especially if your monitor has been calibrated. You can double check by opening it in DPP but if your monitor isn't calibrated you may get different color results. The shadow areas shoud be OK though, I would suppose.

[miss_fugg]

Thanks for the explanation. I managed to get the profile embedded to the JPEG, but it still looks underexposed. However, when I view the same photo in HP's photo viewer, it's the same as in Photoshop, so I suspect you're correct about the Windows build-in photo viewer not being quite up to the job of displaying these correctly.

Thanks,
Jen

[tonylong]

Well, that's a good sign. You basically are just aiming at image quality that looks good in Photoshop and averages out over other viewer -- they will differ, though.

And then, when you are ready for the "acid test" it's finding a good printer, like a very reliable lab or print shop, who can run off some test prints without doing any corrections. If you can get some good quality 4x6 or 5x7 prints and they are reasonably close to the quality you see in Photoshop then that's a nice inspiration to breathe a sigh of relief:)!

[tim]

Hard to say without seeing it. Send me the jpeg, i'll take a look. Send the raw too if you want. I'll PM my email address to you.

[Sdiver2489]

Thanks for the explanation. I managed to get the profile embedded to the JPEG, but it still looks underexposed. However, when I view the same photo in HP's photo viewer, it's the same as in Photoshop, so I suspect you're correct about the Windows build-in photo viewer not being quite up to the job of displaying these correctly.

Thanks,
Jen

Windows 7 photo viewer is color managed if you set it up to be. Look in your color properties in the control panel and set it for ICC profile representation.