PS problem... see if you can figure it out

i have photoshop CS2 and a couple of weeks ago it started acting funny. i have no idea what i did or how to fix it. basically when i open an image in PS the image looks completely different in exposure and color than the version i open up in windows. i took some screen shots so you could see what i'm talking about. please let me know if you have any idea why this would be happening. thanks in advance!

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Have you changed your 'colour space' in either the camera or Photoshop?

kevin_c wrote in post #2576544
Have you changed your 'colour space' in either the camera or Photoshop?

not that i know of. my camera color space says sRGB and it's the same in photoshop... is that what it should be set on?

if you have defined a color profil for you monitor (by calibrating it) then photoshop will automatically use this profil when displaying images. However, windows viewer doesn't use this profil. That is why the colors are different. If you have calibrated correctly your monitor then you can trust what photoshop displays.

NB : color space of the image is a thing, monitor color profil is another thing...
There are some viewers which take into account the monitor profile, for instance acdsee pro.

Try clicking view at the top, and then "proof colors". See what that does. It seems you also need your monitor calibrated.

yb98...VERY good point.

The Windows Picture Viewer is unmanaged, meaning it ignores color profile, using the system default. Photoshop is color managed, and as long as you haven't assigned the wrong profile, and the monitor has been profiles and calibrated, you can rely on Photoshop to show the most accurate color. To preview what the image will look like in an unmanaged application, you'll set up softproofing to use Monitor RGB, and use Ctrl-Y to toggle soft proofing on and off. This is really only important if your monitor is far off the mark without calibration with regards to color cast, and if you gear your images to display on the web. Otherwise, you can trust Photoshop and not worry about the rest, since you can't control how it looks on others' monitors anyway.