James,
You can’t really turn off Photoshop’s using the monitor profile to accurately interpret the image. Ian Lyons Image Flow <
http://www.btinternet.com/~ian.lyons/ps7-colour/ps7_color.gi f>
..
That may be the difference you’re seeing. The idea that you can get two images to appear identical in Photoshop and a non color managed ( randomly selected ) application is questionable. Without a defined colorspace for the image, there’s no rule on how the pixel values will be interpreted ( monitor RGB, maybe ? ) .
🙂
Brent
It sounds like PS is writing the file based on a different monitor profile from the one your system is really set to. Since we don’t know where these images came from or if they were converted, you only have the data to go by. Check the info palette after the save and see if the data changes.
Check to see if the name of your profile used in PS in Color Settings is the same as your system. Some Windows systems have problems with Gamma Loader bumping the intended user defined monitor profile during startup. Since some profiles don’t download a gamma correction curve to the video card, you will not see a global change to your display if a darker or lighter based gamma profile is loaded. Not sure if this your problem.
You shouldn’t have gamma changes if your monitor profile is the same 2.2 gamma PS sees. Something seems amiss going by this alone.
When you have Color Management turned off in Photoshop, it still uses whatever profiles you have loaded for your RGB or CMYK working spaces to display your images. It HAS to assume something, even if you don’t. It also uses whatever is loaded as the current display profile as part of the mix. When you then open the same file in a non ICC application, that application must display using "Monitor RGB".
If you are opening these images up on the same computer you are viewing them in PS 7, then the culprit has to be the working space you have loaded in PS. It is substantially different that YOUR monitor RGB.
What application are you needing that is not ICC compliant and what purpose does it serve you. It’s not really a problem once you understand how the different programs deal with color.
Thanks for those replies… the application is a high-volume pack production app. Photoshop is used for the retouching element of the workflow, and everything it touches is different colour from the rest. Photoshop touches around 20% if the images meaning 20% of the finished images are slightly different. If we can, we’d like not to implement ICC as the results we have are perfectly good without it.
The interesting thing is that there are no monitor profiles attached to the System Display (throught the Windows ‘Display Properties > Color Managment’ dialog). The Working space is set to sRGB which relatively closely matches the source images (Nikon SLR Digital Cameras)
Thanks!
James
Have you used the IgnoreEXIF utility with Photoshop to ignore the EXIF color info? If not, that might be a possibility to explore.
🙂
Brent
That’s an interesting thought… I’ll check that out next week. Thanks!
James
ALso, it might be a good idea to really read up on colour management.
Whenever I’ve been to a place that claimed not to use it or need it, I always get the rep as the fastest colour correction guy they’ve evr seen, because I implement it on the sly.
What I mean is once you find out what colour space matches your non-colour managed app’s requirements (and there is one, have no doubts about that) then you can get PS to convert all the images to that space.
Colour management is all about increasing productivity. (Faster turnaround, less tests and corrections, easier matching of samples etc…)
We do understand about ICC – there are some smart color guys in the place who have implemented many ICC workflows. There are some local constraints that make ICC difficult to implement right away (ie – in full production, some output device challenges that mean ICC is simply difficult to do and non-ICC savvy production software).
James,
Sorry, from your posts I infered (wrongly) that you did not know a lot about colour management.
I know what you mean as I have worked with ICC allerigc systems too. All I am saying is there is often a way to apply the profile upstream in your workflow, thus fooling the ICC allergic app into thinking it isn’t getting done (so to speak)
Dealing wiht ICC allergic people is another matter entirely 😉
Too right. Thanks for the sentiment of your post!
Just out of curiosity, when you have the two images open side-by-side, the original and the saved one, what does the info palette tell you about the numbers in the files comparing the same spots between the 2 images?
If you see different numbers then your policy for profile mismatches is probably set to convert to your working space and the numbers are being changed.
If the numbers are the same but the images still display differently it is because another profile is being honored in one image or the other.
If your profile mismatch policy is set to ignore (don’t color manage) and you just save the file to a new file name, reopening the 2 files should preview the same color. Same numbers, no imported profile to alter the color meaning of those numbers, should preview the same.
Since most color spaces and profiles on Window’s systems are based in 2.2 gamma, anyway, why would there be a gamma change. I can understand a color shift.
This is what puzzles me most about James’ issue.
