Color Spaces...heeeeeeelp!

[katia]

so i edited an entire photoshoot, uploaded to my website, and AHHHHHHHHHHHHH all the colors were washed out and ugly. i blamed it on the NextGen plugin for Wordpress, as they looked fine on Facebook, other than compression of course. i later learned that some things have support for different color spaces, which is why the photos looked as they should sometimes, but varied from website to website and browser to browser.

figured out that somehow, the color space got changed to Adobe RGB (1998). whatever the heck that means.

the best i could do aside from re-editing the whole shoot was to create a photoshop action to re-assign the color profile to sRGB, and all is now well.

HOWEVER

a) how did this happen in the first place?

b) how do i prevent it from happening. there must be some sort of default that i messed with, a keyboard shortcut i don't know about maybe?

c) is sRGB the "default" or most widespread color profile that i should be using?

i know the settings in my camera are to shoot in sRGB and NOT Adobe RGB so i have no idea what happened. i do know this was my first time converting from NEF to TIFF to JPEG, which is also something i blamed. when i saved the TIFFs, the "pixel order" was set to RGBRGB as opposed to RRGGBB. do you suppose that could have something to do with it?

also, i edited half the session from NEF to TIFF to JPEG, and the other directly from NEF to JPEG (saved PSD as well) but the whole session was affected.

so i don't know if this is a Bridge, ACR, or Photoshop thing.

HELP!!!!!!

[ravncat]

Could have to do with your color management policies in your software,

for example in photoshop, go to edit, color settings and look to see if you are preserving embedded profiles or assigning new ones, etc.

if not there it could also be in your saving, for example saving to jpg will allow you to check to save a profile, it will be the profile currently assigned to the image if in photoshop. While save for web has a few other color profile options enabled.

Finally, depending on your browser, you may have to enable reading of color profiles embedded in images.

sRGB is the profile you should be using for the purpose of the internet

[ArmySoldier777]

I don't know you're whole editing process, but if you're working with the Raw files in Photoshop, using the Camera Raw Editor, is it set to sRGB? At the very bottom of the window where it lists the information for the photo "MP, Resolution, PPI, and all that" make sure it's set to sRGB. If not, click on it and change it. When I first starting editing photos, I noticed that although my camera was set for sRGB, Photoshop is set to Adobe RGB as default in the Camera Raw Editor. Lightroom may be the same way.

[ravncat]

Originally Posted by ArmySoldier777

I don't know you're whole editing process, but if you're working with the Raw files in Photoshop, using the Camera Raw Editor, is it set to sRGB? At the very bottom of the window where it lists the information for the photo "MP, Resolution, PPI, and all that" make sure it's set to sRGB. If not, click on it and change it. When I first starting editing photos, I noticed that although my camera was set for sRGB, Photoshop is set to Adobe RGB as default in the Camera Raw Editor. Lightroom may be the same way.

Lightroom uses Pro-photo-RGB as the workspace, but saves color profile to jpg based on the export settings. should you hit "edit in" in lightroom - the color space is determined by settings in the preferences for external editing

[katia]

thanks! you were right, when opening a NEF in ACR (or a TIFF) it was set to Adobe RGB.

i have no idea how that happened, it must have been an accident somewhere. but once i did that i checked, and NEF's seem to be opening in sRGB so hopefully it stays that way in the future!