If you have color management turned on appropriately in Photoshop and have calibrated your monitor then what you see in Photoshop is "correct" with regard to how the image should print, presuming you are printing with correct color managed techniques.
The Microsoft viewer is not color managed and is most likely using a different color space and images will appear different. Neither Windows (any version) or the Mac displays images in a uniform color managed format in anything other than in programs specifically set up to do so. If you prepare an image in a color managed Photoshop session to use as desktop wallpaper it will not look identical to what it looks like in Photoshop; you can switch back and forth between the desktop and Photoshop to convince yourself. It should be a close match however and not wildly different in brightness or contrast. However if you have color management set up properly the image should print more like what you see in Photoshop than what you see as wallpaper.
Could be a combination of your color management policies and monitor calibration. What are your color preferences set to? And has your monitor been calibrated and profiled using a hardware device like Spyder or EyeOne?
I have not used a hardware calibrator. I opened the picture again and told it to ignore the embedded profile and it worked. I did not get that message the first time which is strange AND I don’t know where these profiles got embedded from!
Hello,
I’ve just upgraded to CS3 (windows Vista) and I’m having the same problem. Images are dark adn have an almost brownish tone to them. I tried "leave as is" "assign RGB" and all the options under "Assign profile" and nothing helped.
How can it be an ICC profile issue if the pictures look fine in CS2?
Please help, right now I’m thinking I blew $199 on an upgrade I won’t be able to use.
