Really confused about color space

I've looked through the old posts adnauseum but am just not figuring out my problem.

I take children's portraits. I shoot RAW and process in Adobe RGB 1998. My processor develops them even though he says I'm supposed to give him SRGB. The resulting prints look great. WHEN I do convert to SRGB and give my processor a SRGB file, it looks terrible. The skin tones are all wrong - too orange, even though it looks fine on my Adobe Photoshop CS screen.

And this is even weirder. When I look at the resulting JPGs in Corel PhotoPaint, the SRGB JPGs have that same horrible orange tint that I see on my prints while my Adobe RGB (1998) JPGs look great like they do on my prints!

I have two CRT monitors that are both calibrated with spyders. My images on these monitors look just like the Adobe RGB 1998 prints.

So I just can't figure out why I can't work in SRGB when everyone else in the world can. I try to ignore this problem but it has come back to haunt me because some of my clients are having Christmas card prints made with my files and my processor has to put them into SRGB space to make the Christmas Cards and guess what! Horrible orange tint on my images. argh!

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!
Thanks,
Amy

Does this occurr if you have another lab print your images?

Just want to try to rule out the Lab here.

This is straight from Deke McClelland's book, "Photoshop CS Bible", more or less.

If at all possible, you should get a look at his Chapter 16 and try to follow it.

Sounds like you have properly accomplished the first step, which is to calibrate your monitor.

His second step for people more interested in printing than "For the Web " is to set Edit->Color Settings... to "US Prepress Defaults", which uses AdobeRGB.

Lastly, when you are ready to deliver the images to your print facility, since he wants them to be sRGB, I assume that your present difficulty arises when you convert your images from Adobe RGB to sRGB - the prints don't look right, correct?

This is where I'm on shakey ground, because it's not an area in which I have much practical experience, so familiarize yourself with these principles and see for yourself.
You can either "Assign" a profile to the images (without actually converting the pixels) [not sure why you would want to do that], or you can do a "Convert to Profile", which actually converts the pixels to the new profile (seems like the reasonable thing to do).

I'm sure that the Help file in PSCS can explain this better than I, so good luck!

Bob, It is my understanding that you are correct to convert to profile. Assigning is just a screen representation and will not alter the actual pixels. I have to say that converting makes little or no difference on my calibrated monitor (perhaps because a lcd monitor can not show argb). When opened after saving, do you open using the embedded profile?

Graham

My limited understanding of it is that "Convert to Profile" actually changes the pixels, thus making them appear consistent on the screen.

In regard to your question about whether or not I open after saving using the embedded profile, I have to say that that would depend upon what I'm going to do next. However, the strong liklihood is that I have changed it to my working space (sRGB) and that would be the space in which I would want to continue.

I hope that makes sense!

Good point. I haven't tried any other labs. I may have to do that if nothing else works.

Yes, my SRGB JPGs don't look right when printed or when viewed in Corel Photopaint. But they look fine when view in Adobe PS CS. My Adobe RGB 1998 JPGs look great when printed and when viewed in Corel PhotoPaint. I have used convert to SRGB rather than assign, but the off-color problem still exists.

I didn't have US Prepress Defaults set. But it still doesn't seem to work when I set it to that setting. At least the SRGB JPG still is off-colored when I view it in Corel Photopaint. It makes me wonder if something else isn't set quite right in my Adobe PS.

This is just unbelievably frustrating. Is there anyway to completely reset all defaults in Adobe Photoshop? Or maybe I should just completely reinstall the whole package?

Amy

I wonder how they would look if you didn't actually convert the pixels but simply removed the profile from the JPG. In that case Photoshop may use the default profile (ARGB) and they would look good but Corel might default to sRGB (As will IE) and they look bad.

How do they look when you view them in Internet Explorer (right click, Open With...)? Can you post one of the "bad" files here?

I think converting is correct too. Thinking about it, converting the file to use the narrower sRGB space should not make too much difference when viewed in photoshop using the Adobe RGB colour space.

Sorry, the second point was aimed at the OP. I was suggesting they opened the converted file using the attached profile and see if it looked different. Quite often the labs ignore the profile attached, so it's probably worth deleting it and seeing what happens when opened in photoshop. Trying to view the horrible results will be the key to understanding where it is going wrong.

Graham

I think this would be solved fairly quickly if you posted one of the bad files here. Many people on this forum could probably tell you very quickly what is wrong with the file (bad colours, bad profile, no profile, etc.)

Here's an easy way to find out. My Color Management Configuration is defined precisely in the following document at my web site. Look to see how mine is set up - it will take you all of 5 minutes or less to set up exactly as mine. Then see if you still have a problem. If you do, then either your monitor is not calibrated or some important file in your configuration has been inadvertently altered.
http://zaffora.f2o.org​/W9DMK/MyColorPolicy.h​tm

Seriously, try it. This could be a source of the problem. And a simple way to eliminate this from the mess.

Have not used Correl Paint but, go over the color management settings if any, and make sure they match to your PSCS settings as well.

Here are example files:

A file saved in Adobe RGB 1998 space:


A file after being *converted* to Adobe SRGB space


A file showing the screen shot when looking at it in Corel PhotoPaint. Now the only reason I bring Corel into this is because it shows perfectly what my prints look like. You can see the orange tint to the skin tones in the srgb file.


I will look at the color management page to make sure my Adobe PS is set up ok.
Thanks!
Amy

adjohnson wrote:
Here are example files:

A file saved in Adobe RGB 1998 space:
http://www.KidsBeingKi​dsPortraits.com …blem/CRW_7117_r​gb1998.jpg

A file after being *converted* to Adobe SRGB space
http://www.KidsBeingKi​dsPortraits.com …problem/CRW_711​7_srgb.jpg

A file showing the screen shot when looking at it in Corel PhotoPaint. Now the only reason I bring Corel into this is because it shows perfectly what my prints look like. You can see the orange tint to the skin tones in the srgb file.
http://www.KidsBeingKi​dsPortraits.com/srgb_p​roblem/screen_shot.jpg

I will look at the color management page to make sure my Adobe PS is set up ok.
Thanks!
Amy

Until I got my color policies organized, I had exactly the same problem as you are having. In other words, when I saved files in sRGB they always had warmer tones that if I saved them in Adobe RGB1998 (or, looking at it from the other perspective, the Adobe RGB 1998 files always look cool), but the usual venue in which to make that observation was by posting them on the Web.

This drove me nuts. I could also take the same files and open them in Micrografx Picture Publisher and they would have the same differences in tone and color.

So, now I take one of my RAW images and I process it and save it as sRGB (see 1st image at left, below). Then I do the exact same thing except that this time I take an additional step and do a conversion to Adobe RBGB 1998 and save it that way (see 2nd image at right, below), and I show them together. Lo and behold they look different. The sRGB image is definitely warmer ( or the Adobe RGB 1998 is definitely cooler), just as yours.

So far as I know, that's the way it's supposed to work. Remember, within Photoshop, I never see this difference!

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I went back to your original post and read it very carefully.

I now have to ask a rhetorical question.

Since your print shop does the prints the way you like them, even though you are giving him Adobe RGB 1998 and he says you should be giving him sRGB, why do you even think about actually converting them to sRGB - especially, when you know they are not going to look like you want them to look?

As I said, that's rhetorical.

My suggestion now is that you should continue to do the processing in Adobe RGB 1998, the way you like it, and just do an "Assign" of the sRGB color space, which changes nothing in the pixels and only changes how the file is tagged. That way, the printer gets the file tagged the way he wants it, and you keep on working with Adobe RGB 1998, and everyone is happy.

My HTML version of My Color Policies seems to not be working correctly. You might try the PDF version instead, at:
http://www.qsl.net …wnloads/MyColor​Policy.pdf
Right click on that link and select "Save Target as...". That should work.