Why Does this happen!?!

[StunGunAshley]

Hi Everybody!

I've had this issue before, and tried to figure it out to no avail. But this was the last straw. I edit a photo in LR, and it looks great. I export, and upload to the web, usually picasa or facebook, and the colors are messed up - usually darker and redder. See the example below. And its not just on the web. If I open up the actual files in microsoft photo viewer or any other microsoft photos software, the colors look fine, like LR. But if I open it in picasa or even paint, dark and red. I haven't had anything printed it a while, so I can't say how the prints would come out.

Does anyone know what is going on here and how to fix/prevent it?

Thank you!!!

[RichardTaylor]

What colour space are using when exporting?
sRGB?

[StunGunAshley]

Yes, sRGB.

[i speak in math]

Look like you are editing in adobeRGB and viewing in sRGB -- I'm certain there's a color space issue somewhere in your workflow. Make sure you are either editing in sRGB or converting to sRGB when finished (note: saving as sRGB is not the same as converting to sRGB)

[kcoppock]

Yeah, definitely going to second what was said before and guarantee it's a color profile issue. I can't speak for Lightroom, but in Photoshop, you can just hit Edit > Convert to Profile and pick sRGB from the list. I like to edit in Adobe RGB personally, but in the majority of cases, you're really not gaining anything from it. Adobe RGB has a wider color gamut than sRGB, but the majority of displays out there can only handle colors within the sRGB color space anyway, so unless your image contains colors that fall outside of sRGB, and your printer can output a wider color gamut as well, there's not really any reason to work in that color space.

I believe most modern browsers, by default, don't respect color profiles, and just render everything as though it is sRGB, which is why this issue pops up. This page may be useful.