"lawdoggy" wrote in message
I hope someone can help me. I have used the Spyder2pro to calibrate my monitor and it works perfectly in photoshop. The color profile does not work with Lightroom? I can not figure out how to get it loaded. If I print the photo (Sams Club) it matches exactly to the photo in PS (CS2) but not even close when open in Lightroom? What am I missing?
Thanks…mitch
I presume here you are using Windows. You really need to state if you are using a Mac as a Mac.
The basic concept of "colour profiles" is to match paper, software and hardware components to each other.
Lightroom and Photoshop ( like all other programs and Windows itself) will display every image you have, using their own management system based on the sRGB standard. This is the standard Microsoft use and nearly every monitor maker uses.
Calibrating your monitor only causes it to look like a sample image for colour and contrast. When you open a photo with a different colour profile than sRGB using Photoshop, it will (unless you turned off the feature) ask you to use the existing profile or convert it to the working profile.
It is the "working profile" of Photoshop which causes the most confusion. Photoshop will alter the image rendering so it "looks" the same or Adobe’s idea of the same as an sRGB image, regardless of the actual profile the image has embedded.
If this is starting to get confusing… The monitor ALWAYS displays sRGB. Photoshop is a colour managed program in that it works seamlessly to show you a sRGB image on the screen while it may be working with a "Pro Photo" or any of a plethora of other colour profiles. It does this because you monitor cannot see a "pro photo" image in it’s correct colours.
Lightroom may or may not (depending on it’s setup) display an image as a "colour managed" one. You could for example open a "pro photo" profiled image that Photoshop has created and see it without rendering for the screen output. This would cause the image to look way different than it does in Photoshop.
I have struggled with lightroom for nearly a year. For every 100 images it processes, I still have to use Photoshop on 15 of them afterwards. I personally do not think it is a mature program. Other, older RAW converters do a much better job of processing bulk RAW images. However if you bought it, Like me, you’ll have to struggle with it until it either gets better or you figure out how to work with it.
Your biggest challenge will be figuring out the relationship each component of colour management has with each other. Many people unable to grasp this critical issue, simply turn off all colour management in Photoshop and other colour managed programs and rely on Windows to manage the colours and their printer to handle paper types. OK for home and semi pro use but not good enough for working professionals.
Douglas