Some help with profiles, please

So a while back I bought this laptop for photo editing, had colour problems.

Bought a pantone huey, had colour problems.

Read just about everything I could just to disable colour profiles, still have problems.

To be totally honest I've just about quit photography I've been son frustrated with it and I haven't shot a thing all summer. I went back to it tonight and remembered how disatisfied I've been and am just about ready to break my laptop.

The long and short of it is that no matter what I do, when I save to jpg all my shadow detail goes to pitch black. I'll have plenty of detail in PS, when I save to jpg it just cuts off to black. In a nutshell, this isn't workable.

When I was editing on a CRT I printed and my prints came out "close enough" that I was happy. Now that I've got a calibrator I can't get anything even useable and I've just about quit.

So, Adobe gamme, turned off.
Opened the pantone huey program at startup, don't open it at startup. Doesn't fix it.
Disabled profiles in photoshop, doesn't fix it.
Enabled profiles in photoshop, doesn't fix it.
Used monitor defaults, turned monitor defaults off. Doesn't fix it.


The entire business of ICC profiles doesn't even make sense to me as what it seems to do is give me a profile so that other people's systems can adjust to mine when what I want is for MY system to be adjusted to a more or less standard baseline profile like I had with my old CRT setup where I wasn't using profiles.

Can anyone offer a hand? Everything I've tried so far has done nothing at all and I'm not looking to get into anything complicated like embedded profiles I just want photoshop to stop radically altering my image every time I go to save for web.

Oh and before anyone asks, yes I'm working in sRGB color space

Post a picture.

Also until you've read this book (or something similar) you're flying blind. Read it.

Thanks for the reply Tim, if this helps, here's a prime example

I've enjoyed your shots for a long time and would hate to see you quit.....

I assume you've read this sticky? https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=296149

I agree with you that you should be able to calibrate the monitor/screen and get decent prints from a print shop. I did give up trying to print these images myself. The paper and ink was getting ridiculous just trying to get close to the right color.

That photo looks great to me, dark but I can see enough detail.

Post a screen shot of your color management setup in windows (or mac) and the PS color setup screen.

So, is the problem that you don't get a screen to print match, or that the images look different inside PS and for instance in a browser or other non color managed application?

René Damkot wrote in post #6452194
So, is the problem that you don't get a screen to print match, or that the images look different inside PS and for instance in a browser or other non color managed application?

The images look different going from color managed to non color managed applications. I have something I want to look at when I get home now that I think about it, I'll report back this afternoon.

I can understand color shifts from one space to the next, it's the drastic shift in contrast/black point that I'm finding unworkable since I like to work with alot of shadows.

Okay.
There will *always* be a difference between color managed and not color managed programs.
If you want the images to look good on *your* screen (and only your screen!) you could turn off color management in PS, by selecting "monitor color" in the color settings.

A better option IMO might be to soft proof for "Monitor rgb" and adjust (using a curves adjustment layer) while softproofing. With a bit of experimenting, you might be able to create "one curve that fits all images".

In both cases, you image is likely to look somewhat off on other peoples display (whether color managed / calibrated or not), but in the second case, at least you also have a "properly color managed" version.

In both above cases the image should look *identical* in PS and in a non CM application.

If there is a very drastic difference between color managed and not color managed, I'd suspect something is off..
Your laptop should not be *that* far off sRGB contrast wise.

I can see shadow detail in the above image on my laptop, both with colormanagement on and off. Non color managed is a bit darker though.

How does the image print?