Rene,

This is getting off of the original poster's question... which had to do with colors looking very washed out in Save for Web compared to what he was seeing in Photoshop's working window.

I'm not arguing your points, but I think your assumption that "it should look fine unless your monitor profile is way off what most monitors are like" is flawed.

Web publishing IS a part of a color-managed workflow... right up til it's saved for web. If it doesn't look right in the Save for Web dialog WITH the sRGB profile being read, then it probably will not look good on "most monitors." To assume that your particular monitor space is setup similar to the majority of users on the net, and viewing an image in an uncorrected (read: un-calibrated) space during the optimization step to determine how it will look on most monitors is nothing more than a crapshoot.

If it works for you, great. I have a hard time believing everyone is that lucky.

The Save for Web dialog offers many options for optimizing the image for the web: choosing color depth in a gif, for instance. If one is making determinations on which colors to keep and which ones to discard, it is MUCH more accurate to make these decisions while viewing the image in a true sRGB space (ie: one that has been adjusted for the settings of one's own monitor space). The ONLY way for Photoshop to adjust your own individual monitor space into a canned (and consistant) sRGB space is to convert it on the fly as the image is displayed by READING THE TAGGED PROFILE. This is impossible for Photoshop to do if that feature has been disabled (or not turned on to begin with) in the Save for Web prefs.

Welcome to color-managed web publishing. Sort of takes some of the guess work out of things, don't it? :)

None of this is necessary, of course. People will continue to work the way they are most comfortable. Through all of this, it has been my attempt to illustrate a few tools to make the process easier and, hopefully, more accurate.

To each his own.

mh_robert

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Washed out colors when using Save to Web...