Color Profile Confusion

DM
Posted By
Dennis_MV
May 13, 2008
Views
511
Replies
12
Status
Closed
My monitor is Samsung SyncMaster. Sometimes I get weird color changes during the workflow.

For example:
* I copy a website into the clipboard by pressing PrtScn button * I paste it into Photoshop CS3 Extended
* The colors I observe are different. For example the blues are darker and the reds are more pronounced. I am puzzled.

* I found a way to rectify this: I go to Edit, Assign Profile and change from Working Profile (AdobeRGB1998) to new Profile (Samsung ICM Profile). After that colors are exactly as they were on the website. Do I have to do this every time ?

—————-
Even more puzzling is this:
* I take a photo with my camera, and open the resulting file in Photoshop * I get a message "profile mismatch, current policy is to discard mismatched profiles. Embedded: sRGB IEC61966-2.1, Working: Adobe RGB (1998)"
* When I open, the colors again look weird. I have to
* I have to manually assign "Samsung ICM profile" to get the colors right.

Samsung ICM profile is proprietory to my monitor. If I use it, I don’t want other computers be affected. I just want regular colors at all times. What am I into here and how do I get out of it ?
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color confusion profile

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MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
May 13, 2008
Don’t manually assign the monitor profile to anything other than screenshots.

Set your color preferences not to discard the color profile if it differs from your standard working profile; instead, either preserve the profile (best) or convert to your working profile (better than discarding).

Discarding the embedded sRGB profile means that Photoshop will pretend that the image was created in your working profile, Adobe RGB, without having the profile embedded. In other words, the Adobe RGB profile is applied to the image without converting. This will cause the color and contrast to be wrong, which is what you are experiencing.

By the way, the Samsung profile that came with the monitor, or that you downloaded, is not very good — and it’s useless if you have in any way changed the brightness, contrast, or color settings on your monitor, since it was created with particular settings. You should get a colorimeter and calibrate and profile your monitor. (Before doing this, disable the Samsung software that runs at startup, from msconfig, or you will have serious trouble doing the calibration, as I’ve learned from experience.)
C
Curvemeister
May 13, 2008
On Mon, 12 May 2008 20:05:41 -0700, wrote:

My monitor is Samsung SyncMaster. Sometimes I get weird color changes during the workflow.
For example: * I copy a website into the clipboard by pressing PrtScn button * I paste it into Photoshop CS3 Extended * The colors I observe are different. For example the blues are darker and the reds are more pronounced. I am puzzled.

This is normal behavior that is often mistakenly ignored for screen captures. Photoshop is assigning your working space profile to the pasted color values. After the paste, assign your monitor profile to the pasted image, then convert it to your working space. Wrap this all in an action and assign it to a function key.

* I found a way to rectify this: I go to Edit, Assign Profile and change from Working Profile (AdobeRGB1998) to new Profile (Samsung ICM Profile). After that colors are exactly as they were on the website. Do I have to do this every time ?

This way will work, but it means that your images are more likely to look different on someone else’s monitor, even if both of you have adjusted your monitors to a standard configuration.

—————-
Even more puzzling is this: * I take a photo with my
camera, and open the resulting file in Photoshop * I get a message "profile mismatch, current policy is to discard mismatched profiles. Embedded: sRGB IEC61966-2.1, Working: Adobe RGB (1998)" * When I open, the colors again look weird.

Change the profile mismatch policy to be "Ask when opening", and either retain the profile of the image you are opening, or convert to the working space profile.

I have to * I have to manually assign
"Samsung ICM profile" to get the colors right.

Even better would be to manually assign sRGB.

Samsung ICM profile is proprietory to my monitor. If I use it, I don’t want other computers be affected. I just want regular colors at all times. What am I into here and how do I get out of it ?

In addition to the above info, read Ian Lyons’s description of how to set up your Color Prefs, and why:
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps9_colour/ps9_1.htm

—
Mike Russell – http://www.curvemeister.com
DM
Dennis_MV
May 14, 2008
thanks,

ok, so here’s my workflow now:
* I set my Edit -> Color Settings to North American General Purpose 2, since it was that way and that way colors are synchronized between Adobe applications.
* I open up the photo in Adobe CS3E,
* No warnings result, everything is fine, profiles of workspace and the photo match — sRGB IEC61966-2.1.
* But the colors are still off … ?
* One way to get them right is to assign Samsung ICM profile, but as I understood that’s a bad way and I should not do that.

It sounds like I am repeating what I’ve said before, but now I am somewhat know what I’m doing. But if I am to do things the right way, I end up with wrong colors, and if I assign the Samsung profile I shouldn’t assign, I get the right colors. That’s why I am confused.

Did I miss something ? Is my camera wrong ? When I open the photo in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, colors are correct, so camera should be fine. What’s going on then ?
CB
charles badland
May 14, 2008
From post #1:
"You should get a colorimeter and calibrate and profile your monitor."
MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
May 15, 2008
If the Samsung canned profile was right when it was made, it would remain correct only on the very same monitor it was made for, the controls for the monitor were unchanged, and the backlight tubes didn’t age. Strike 1: The profile wasn’t made using your monitor. Strike 2: You don’t know what settings were used on the monitor used for making the profile, and your settings are almost certainly different. Strike 3: If you’ve used your monitor for a month or more, it’s likely that the backlighting is slightly different from the way it was when it left the factory. And to further dissuade you from using a canned profile: Your room lighting is definitely not identical to the lighting in the Samsung lab where the profile was made.

Spend a hundred bucks or so on a colorimeter and you will be able to have your color display calibrated and profiled, and this color mismatch issue will go away.
DM
Dennis_MV
May 16, 2008
After looking further, turns out my monitor’s (card’s) settings had a weird profile assigned to it. After removing the profile, the colors in Adobe PS CS3 and Windows’ viewer are now identical. I believe my issue was in mismatched profiles and in how Adobe and Windows handled them differently.

Colorimeter wouldn’t have helped here as I was looking in the wrong direction — assigning a profile to an image that by accident looked the way it was supposed to look with the assigned profile. Or something like that.

Colorimeter certainly will help, but for a different reason.
MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
May 17, 2008
Glad you fixed the immediate problem, but a colorimeter will definitely help overall.
DM
Dennis_MV
May 18, 2008
I went out and got Eye One Display 2 Colorimeter.

I’ve calibrated my monitor. I did it twice, just to check repeatability and the results were the same.

I am now experiencing the same problem that I did at the beginning. Colors are different in "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer" and in Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended. Assigning Monitor’s profile to the JPEG inside Photoshop rectifies the problem.

I’m now not sure which application is supposed to have the true color. But it now looks like that there is something here, and fixing the colors by re-assigning the profile is not a coincidence.

I’m back to square one for now.
DM
Dennis_MV
May 18, 2008
I got it, I think.

It’s simple
My Windows and Fax Viewer is not color managed, as it is not icc-aware. Photoshop on the other hand is icc-aware and manages color.

When I open the image in Photoshop, it manages the color by removing the ‘color casts and inaccuracies’ from the image.
I add them back by assigning the Monitor Profile, which adds the ‘color casts and uncalibrated colors’ back to the image, hence giving me the ‘unmanaged’ version that matches my Windows and Fax Viewer.

The End

Best possible fix is to get icc-aware Windows and Fax Viewer. Also, in the original post I’ve mentioned that the colors looked better (in the unmanaged version). Well, that’s just the way it is. In fact the color managed version looks a bit worse, but it is more true to life (i.e. truer white balance), according to my findings.
DM
dave_milbut
May 18, 2008
I dunno. i’d say something is still screwy if your images are off by THAT much…
DM
Dennis_MV
May 18, 2008
After calibration the colors are not that much different.

However … I’m still looking into the colors and it’s not all that simple.

* Changes in Viewer for same image – huge changes: Photoshop and WinViewer display the image differently when I choose the uncalibrated display profile. The difference is like night and day. I’m still not getting that.

* Changes in Profile for Photoshop – huge changes:
* Changes in Profile for WinViewer- almost no changes: When I change to calibrated profile, the change in WinViewer barely changes if at all for the same image, and in Photoshop it’s a huge difference.

* I think Photoshop tries to adjust for the monitor calibration, besides adjusting for icc profile embedded into the picture.
* Windows viewer adjusts only for icc (although I can’t explain the reason for small changes in viewer, when Photoshop has big changes)

It’s not that simple afterall.
DM
dave_milbut
May 18, 2008
I didn’t say simple.

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