Image quality horrible in photoshop!

LP
Posted By
Lucas_Powell
Oct 23, 2005
Views
476
Replies
14
Status
Closed
I have been using photoshop for years with no issues… i just bought a new computer and installed photoshop on the new system… and i downloaded photos off of my CF cards, and looked at them in breezebrowser… they look great! i look at them in windows picture viewer, they look great! but then I open them up in Adobe Bridge, and the quality looks very graphic, very blocky… at first I didn’t think anything of it, but then I open the photos in photoshop, and they look the same way… they look similar to how a nice JPEG would look if you converted it to a 256 color gif… that’s the best way I can think to describe it… but then when I select the ‘save for web’ feature, the preview box that comes up, the photos look fine! but any working space within photoshop or bridge, everything looks awful!

What could possibly be wrong???

Thank you in advance for your help
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BL
Bob Levine
Oct 23, 2005
Could be a bad video driver. Try turning hardware acceleration down to zero as a test.

Bob
LP
Lucas_Powell
Oct 23, 2005
Just attempted turning hardware acceleration down, that only made the screen darker. Everything is still blocky in photoshop.

I highly doubt the video driver is the issue… the thing that is really messing with me is the fact that everything looks PERFECT in every program EXCEPT for photoshop and bridge!

Thanks for the suggestion though… anyone else have any other thoughts?
R
RobertHJones
Oct 23, 2005
When I hear the words "new computer", I’m more likely to suspect an uncalibrated monitor. And, the described symptoms are consistant with that.

Lucas, did you calibrate your monitor with adobe gamma or some other calibration tool to ensure a valid monitor profile was being assigned? Or, if an lcd, did you assign the manufacturer’s lcd profile for your model?

Of the software you mention, only Photoshop and Bridge would be using your monitor profile. The others would ignore it. That it would look good in them and lousy in Photoshop is a classic symptom of an incorrect monitor profile.
LP
Lucas_Powell
Oct 23, 2005
I ordered a Gretag Macbeth Eye One Display 2, and the tracking number says that it will be delivered tomorrow… so no, I do not have it properly calibrated and profiled yet, but I will tomorrow.

I have tried changing the "proof setup" within photoshop… using view>proof setup> and I’ve cycled through all of those profile options in there… but none of them look decent (An dyes, I have tried the Dell 2405 profile that came with the monitor I just bought under the ‘custom’ option, and that looked awful as well)

Is there another option that I should be changing somewhere? Or is this all pointless to even try today, and everything should be fixed tomorrow when I get the Eye One?
BL
Bob Levine
Oct 23, 2005
You are viewing at 100%, aren’t you?

Bob
LP
Lucas_Powell
Oct 23, 2005
Yes, it’s not the magnification that’s the issue… it’s the pixels themselves… it’s as if the monitor isn’t displaying as wide a range of colors as it should be when I’m viewing in adobe applications
BL
Bob Levine
Oct 23, 2005
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/331827.html

Bob
LP
Lucas_Powell
Oct 23, 2005
Before I change all the drivers out–would the driver be the issue when the only problem is how photos look within bridge and photoshop? Because everything looks great in every other program. And even when I select "save for web" within photoshop, it looks great there, too… it’s just the working space within adobe applications that is the problem.
BL
Bob Levine
Oct 23, 2005
Honestly, I don’t know.

Bob
BB
brent bertram
Oct 23, 2005
Have you deleted the "Prefs " file, as per the FAQ’s ? You might download the ICC Colorspace profiles from the Adobe download page and re-install them. I can’t say what might happen if something overwrote the ICC Profile of your working space. Wierd symptoms.

😕

Brent
J
Jim
Oct 23, 2005
wrote in message
I ordered a Gretag Macbeth Eye One Display 2, and the tracking number says that it will be delivered tomorrow… so no, I do not have it properly calibrated and profiled yet, but I will tomorrow.
Get the monitor properly profiled before spending any more time with this problem.
Jim
R
RobertHJones
Oct 24, 2005
Lucas,

Is there another option that I should be changing somewhere? Or is this all pointless to even try today, and everything should be fixed tomorrow when I get the Eye One?

It’s best to wait until after you’ve calibrated and profiled your monitor. Until you know that you’ve got an accurate monitor profile, you’re just spinning your wheels making other changes — which you’ll probably have to undo after you’ve calibrated the monitor.

Since your images look good in the Windows viewer, you are probably using either untagged or sRGB images. You can get a pretty good feel for whether you have issues other than the monitor profile by simply setting your color settings to "Monitor Color". This will set your working color space to the monitor profile and set your color management policies to "off". This causes any embedded profiles in your images to be ignored and there will be no profile conversions; the color numbers in the image will be passed unaltered to the video driver and it should look like it did in those other programs you mentioned. If it doesn’t, you have something else going on. But, wait until the monitor is profiled anyway to avoid confusing things.

You don’t want to work this way on a regular basis and definitely don’t save the image with your monitor profile embedded. After you’ve calibrated your monitor, you should set the color settings to something more appropriate.

Just out of curiosity, what are your color settings?
MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
Oct 24, 2005
And also:

(A) Make sure your display driver is set to the proper resolution. If you are using an LCD display, it should be set to its native resolution, not more and not less.

(B) Make sure your display driver is set to what Windows refers to as 32-bit graphics (it’s a 32-bit number, but only 24 bits are used).

And these suggestions presuppose that you have already downloaded and properly installed the latest driver for your graphics card.
PB
Paul_Budzik
Oct 24, 2005
What Michael said X 2 about the native resolution of LCD’s. Always use the 32 bit native resolution setting. Even though you think you have a choice, you don’t.

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