"I have created some graphics with bright, vivid colors but when I use Save for Web… they become very washed out. To see what I mean, look here: "
Jim,
I’ve just encountered the same bug this morning… and came here for a solution, did not find it, so I paged a friend…
The good news is that if you use "save for web" even though your image is washed out and de-saturated… and later open it back in PS and you’ll find that it was saved properly with the original PS color intensity and saturation.
The bad news is: it is definitely a bug, but fortunately it seems it is only a display bug.
My friend is not sure how he came about finding that out (it may be in PS 7 or PS CS…), but to my own knowledge, it is specific to PS CS: I have identical color workflows in both apps and only CS has the display bug.
What do you mean? I obviously read the first post as I say I was having the same problem…
On the other hand if you mean the second post, with the sRGB stuff, it is not a solution… Converting to sRGB is not a solution for me, and it never was a solution in previous versions of Photoshop. If you read back my post and try what I suggest you’ll agree that converting to sRGB is useless. This is not a profile bug it is a display bug.
It is not a display bug. The Save for Web screen has a preference setting that needs to be enabled in order to view the color accurately. Set the preference toggle (found by clicking the small arrow in the upper right corner of the Save for Web screen) to "use document profile." Doing this will display the image using the current color profile you have assigned to it in Photoshop. This is all a bit moot since the image you’re creating won’t look the same when its re-opened Photoshop AFTER you save it, unless you save the taggged profile along with it. This is fine to do, but only a handful of the millions of computer users with web browsers out there have the capability (or even the notion) to accurately display web graphics with profiles.
As G mentioned, sRGB is a better space to work in if your final destination is for the web. It’ll give you a better representation of "most" browser’s default gamut. At least in theory.
You seem to be confused. If you want your image on the web (otherwise why do a Save for web in the first place?), your statement that sRGB is uselss makes no sense whatsoever.
I think M is confused… but his statement "converting to sRGB is useless" was his response to that remedy having no effect to colors being washed out in the Save for Web screen.
Merely converting to sRGB will not change the Save for Web display… if the colors look different between Photoshop and the Save for Web dialog, then the "display document color" preference must be enabled in Save for Web.
Merely converting to sRGB will not change the Save for Web display…
Converting to sRGB will change your RGB values and thus how the image is displayed on the Save for Web screen. It will also give, on average a better result than other profiles when displayed using non colour managed software (like web browsers)
It is therefore the thing to do if you want your images to "look good" on most displays.
Converting to sRGB will change your RGB values and thus how the image is displayed on the Save for Web screen
It will change the RGB values, but those changes (or any profile change) will not be displayed in the Save for Web preview screen unless the Save for Web preference to "display using document color" is selected (this is OFF by default). Only then will Save for Web read the tagged profile and display colors accordingly.
That said, sRGB is the preferred space to work in while designing web graphics.
True… but it won’t look like the colors displayed in the Photoshop working window. That differencce could cause more confusion. If something is corrected to look desireable in the sRGB space, when the Save for Web is brought up it will probably look "washed out" unless the profile is read.
So, the fact that the change in profile WILL be displayed isn’t going to help if it isn’t an accurate representation of what that change is. A Color managed workflow will give proper feedback so visual corrections can be performed, but every link of the chain needs to be in place to do so. That means a tagged profile in the correct color space and that profile being interpreted at every step where visual inspection of the image is required.
True… but it won’t look like the colors displayed in the Photoshop working window
That’s the point!!!
It’s showing you what it will look like in a non-colour managed application, (like a browser).
If something is corrected to look desireable in the sRGB space, when the Save for Web is brought up it will probably look "washed out" unless the profile is read
No, it should look fine, unless you monitor profile is way off what most monitors’ are like.
Since when is web publishing part of a colour managed workflow???
This is getting off of the original poster’s question… which had to do with colors looking very washed out in Save for Web compared to what he was seeing in Photoshop’s working window.
I’m not arguing your points, but I think your assumption that "it should look fine unless your monitor profile is way off what most monitors are like" is flawed.
Web publishing IS a part of a color-managed workflow… right up til it’s saved for web. If it doesn’t look right in the Save for Web dialog WITH the sRGB profile being read, then it probably will not look good on "most monitors." To assume that your particular monitor space is setup similar to the majority of users on the net, and viewing an image in an uncorrected (read: un-calibrated) space during the optimization step to determine how it will look on most monitors is nothing more than a crapshoot.
If it works for you, great. I have a hard time believing everyone is that lucky.
The Save for Web dialog offers many options for optimizing the image for the web: choosing color depth in a gif, for instance. If one is making determinations on which colors to keep and which ones to discard, it is MUCH more accurate to make these decisions while viewing the image in a true sRGB space (ie: one that has been adjusted for the settings of one’s own monitor space). The ONLY way for Photoshop to adjust your own individual monitor space into a canned (and consistant) sRGB space is to convert it on the fly as the image is displayed by READING THE TAGGED PROFILE. This is impossible for Photoshop to do if that feature has been disabled (or not turned on to begin with) in the Save for Web prefs.
Welcome to color-managed web publishing. Sort of takes some of the guess work out of things, don’t it? 🙂
None of this is necessary, of course. People will continue to work the way they are most comfortable. Through all of this, it has been my attempt to illustrate a few tools to make the process easier and, hopefully, more accurate.
Web publishing IS a part of a color-managed workflow… right up til it’s saved for web
Since the output is not colour managed, it is NOT a colour managed workflow. A colour managed workflow is managed from beginning to end, other wise it is broken or not truly colour managed.
If it doesn’t look right in the Save for Web dialog WITH the sRGB profile being read
Then it doesn’t look good in PS either and you shouldn’t even be saving for the web yet.
And if it reads a different profile because you haven’t converted to sRGB then the preview is worth absolutely nothing (and your colours will get washed out once you are in a non colour managed environment, this happens if the profile you have has a wider gammut than sRGB, which quite frankly is not hard to do)
The whole point of not reading the tagged profile is to see what the image looks like in a non color managed environ such as the web. For all you know, the viewer has 256 colours on his screen…
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