Photoshop 8bit/channel or higher??

Hi,
I have a question and I'm quite new to photoshop, well post processing in general, so I hope I can keep up with your reply's.

I have been using photoshop for a couple of months now and didn't have any problems with color display (our monitor in calibrated etc..). Recently my hubby got new computer parts (mother board and SSD drive) so we had to re-install everything and start the computer from scratch, when we reinstalled photoshop CS6 my photo's now appear that the color looks foggy and dull (no problems any where else on image display).

I noticed in the "image" tab and then go to "modes" that photo's are displayed on 8bit/channel, yet if I select 32bit photo's display as they did before, well much clearer anyway, which they where before we had to redo the computer.

Does anyone know why my photo's now show up foggy in photoshop?
Do I change the setting to 16bit or 32bit before working each photo? and if so can it save that way?
What color bit/channel do you usually use?

Thanks for your help.

Hmm, maybe give us a bit more info:

Do you shoot jpegs, or Raw? In short, do you open your photos in Camera Raw or directly into the Photoshop editor? Camera Raw has a setting that you can use to change to 16 bits, or else you could create an Action in Photoshop to do this. But again, are you shooting Raw or jpeg? I ask 'cause jpegs are 8-bits but Raws are "deeper" than 8-bits.

Tony thanks for stopping by.
I have my camera set to shoot in RAW, when I open my image in photoshop (I don't use lightroom, I have it just haven't ventured into using it yet) I can either open the RAW file or the same image as a JPEG file (and no my camera isn't set to take RAW and jpeg at the same time), I always open the jpeg only because I don't know what I'm doing yet with the RAW file.
I'm only doing basic processing, correcting density and color at this stage.
Am I best to be working from the RAW file?
My camera is a canon EOS 700D if that helps.

Macro girl wrote in post #16237029
Tony thanks for stopping by.
I have my camera set to shoot in RAW, when I open my image in photoshop (I don't use lightroom, I have it just haven't ventured into using it yet) I can either open the RAW file or the same image as a JPEG file (and no my camera isn't set to take RAW and jpeg at the same time), I always open the jpeg only because I don't know what I'm doing yet with the RAW file.
I'm only doing basic processing, correcting density and color at this stage.
Am I best to be working from the RAW file?
My camera is a canon EOS 700D if that helps.

Well, if you want to get the "most" out of your photos, Raw is great!

When you do open a Raw file out of Bridge, the default is to open it in Adobe Camera Raw (although it will open the Photoshop editor in the background). Or you can open Camera Raw stand-alone by clicking the little "aperture" icon in the Bridge upper toolbar. You can also open a jpeg in Camera Raw by right-clicking it in Bridge and selecting "Open in Camera Raw".

Now, Adobe Camera Raw is a very powerful "toolbox" for "enhancing" your photos (Lightroom has the same toolset, so learning one will help you to get a "handle" on the other)!

As to the 8-bit/16-bit issue, I don't know the specifics of what's going on, but to start with you can set Camera Raw to open the images in Photoshop as 16-bit images. You can set up that behavior: open an image in Camera Raw. Below the image "view" is a little link that shows bits of info: color space and bits-per-channel, etc. Click that link and you can change the settings. These settings determine how an image will be "rendered" and opened in the Photoshop editor.

However, we have only touched the surface. Really, opening the image in 8-bits shouldn't make it look bad, there must be something else going on here...

Thanks a bunch Tony for going through this information for me, greatly appreciate it.

I was just thinking before that perhaps this isn't the cause of the "foggy" look at all. In some photo's it isn't as noticeable, it's just very slight and in others it is much stronger.
I'm wondering how much effect this has on my corrections, if then because of the dullness if I'm over correcting as when looking at my images in Corel paintshop prox5 they don't have this haze look at all.

Will take me a little bit to get my head around all this and figure it out.

Thanks heaps.

Well, keep at it and keep us informed!

In the meantime, I'd like to highly recommend a book to you dealing with Raw and the "digital darkroom" using either Photoshop/Camera Raw or Lightroom:

http://www.amazon.com …g-Lightroom/dp/032183957​9

Thanks Tony I'll be sure to check the book out.
I'll post here if I figure out the problem.

Troubleshooting "stuff" is always such fun!

1) Check the desktop color depth. It's possible the newly installed video card drivers are not running at full 24 bit depth.

2) What colorspace is PS running in? (Menu > Edit > Color settings)

3) Please stop using an apostrophe for "photos."

Geonerd wrote in post #16237473
1) Check the desktop color depth. It's possible the newly installed video card drivers are not running at full 24 bit depth.

2) What colorspace is PS running in? (Menu > Edit > Color settings)

3) Please stop using an apostrophe for "photos."

Thanks Geonerd for your suggestions.
1) the desktop color depth is 32 bit.
2) colorspace is sRGB

Did you re-calibrate your monitor after you did the upgrade/re-install? If you did not do that then it may just well be down to the fact that you are no longer correctly colour managed.

Alan

Yes, Monitor is fine and calibrated, as my husband keeps on top of it as he knows it's important for my photography.

The problem is only showing in photoshop, no other programs or even other editing programs. It's not the whole screen that looks foggy it's just the photo when it is displaying in photoshop, however the same photo viewed in another program and the photo looks fine.

I don't believe this is a computer problem, it has to be something wrong with photoshop somewhere, because if it was a computer problem it would show everywhere, no matter what program I used to look at photo's.

One thing you can do is to post pics that show the problem and also to upload a Raw file from the same pic. Post a "screen shot" from Photoshop that shows the problem, then upload the pic directly to here, then upload to a host that accepts Raw files and post the link to here. A good site for this is highlight.com:

https://www.hightail.c​om/

tonylong wrote in post #16239193
Post a "screen shot" from Photoshop that shows the problem,

Good idea Tony , I will attach a screen shot from photoshop and from corel paintshop as an example. My photo's are not edited or corrected in any way, they are as is straight out of the camera.
The screen shot of the photo in corel paintshop is how they use to also look in photoshop before we had to re-install everything.

First image is from Corel paintshop prox5, second image is from Photoshop CS6.
It is like this for every photo displayed in photoshop, the only difference in photoshop is that the strength of the dullness changes for each image, no matter what my lighting was.

Hmm, that's interesting!

I don't have PSP, so I can't do my own comparison, but there are some here that do use PSP, but I don't know if they also have Photoshop...?

One possible factor: since you had to set up a whole new system, is it possible that the monitor calibration has been "thrown off"? Photoshop ties its display into the monitor profile, I don't know what PSP does, but I imagine that it may handle things "differently", and if there is a problem with the monitor profile it could show up in Photoshop...?