Photoshop washing out my colors?

[todd2000]

I just DLed Photoshop Elements, to play with, and niticed that it seems to be washing out the colors of my images. I can open the image side by side in Photoshop, and iPhoto, or preview, and the images looks washed out in Photoshop. It also saves the image washed out. For example I opened this image in Photoshop, and saved it at the highest quality JPEG setting. I didn't do any editing and this is what I got.

Original:

Saved with Photoshop:

Is this normal? Like I said it even looks washed out when viewing in Photoshop, as well as after it is saved. Whats the deal?

EDIT: Just tried it with Gimp and it does the same thing. What gives?

EDIT 2: I just went into "Color Preferences" in Photoshop, and changed it to "Full Color Managment" and it looks right on the screen in PS now, and if I click "Embed Adobe RGB" when saving the image it saves properly. So even though I don't quite understand it I got it working in PS, but can't find any way to do the same in Gimp which is what I'de really lie to use cause it's free Any thoughts?

 

[tsk]

Does Photoshop have the colors set right? I notice similar problems when I save to the web.

 

[colorspace]

I think I know what the problems is....

Adobe RGB is a great color space - nice and broad. However when sharing photos on the internet you really should be working in sRGB space a bit more limited but it creates more punchy images on most monitors. As a matter a fact I think that MS Explorer (70% of the market?) still assumes sRGB for everything and really makes a mess of Adobe RGB images.

BTW - I think you can always work in sRGB on your main photos and convert to sRGB for the web output.

 

[colorspace]

BTW - this is discussed in tons of places, you may wish to check out this one for example:
http://www.miracosta.edu/home/pajones/handouts/handout_pgs/PS_ColSet.htm

 

[todd2000]

I think I know what the problems is....

Adobe RGB is a great color space - nice and broad. However when sharing photos on the internet you really should be working in sRGB space a bit more limited but it creates more punchy images on most monitors. As a matter a fact I think that MS Explorer (70% of the market?) still assumes sRGB for everything and really makes a mess of Adobe RGB images.

BTW - I think you can always work in sRGB on your main photos and convert to sRGB for the web output.

I don't care about web output, the above image was not saved for web output, it was just opened then saved as a standard full quality JPEG.

BTW - this is discussed in tons of places, you may wish to check out this one for example:
http://www.miracosta.edu/home/pajones/handouts/handout_pgs/PS_ColSet.htm

Elements doesn't have the same Color Settings preferences as that page shows, but this is what I set my settings to:

Which I think if im understanding it correctly preserves the color profile that is already in the image from my Camera. Doing it this way the image appears the same as it does in preview.

And when saving if I check the box Embed Camera RGB Profile, it saves pretty much exactly like the original. So I think I've got it figured out. (even though I don't quite understand it ) Unfortunately I would rather use GIMP with doesn't support color profiles yet. Waiting for version 2.4

 

[ChrisA]

I just DLed Photoshop Elements, to play with, and niticed that it seems to be washing out the colors of my images. I can open the image side by side in Photoshop, and iPhoto, or preview, .....

EDIT 2: I just went into "Color Preferences" in Photoshop, and changed it to "Full Color Managment" and it looks right on the screen in PS now, and if I click "Embed Adobe RGB" when saving the image it saves properly. So even though I don't quite understand it I got it working in PS, but can't find any way to do the same in Gimp which is what I'de really lie to use cause it's free Any thoughts?

That's one of the two big problems with Gimp. (1) No color management and (2) only 8-bit color depth. Both are deal breakers for serious use.

The concept of managed color is easy. There is a table that defines how a device maps an RGB value to a visible color. Software changes the RGB values in the image to account for the physical display's characteristics Every device (monitor and printer) needs it's own table but as you discovered you can get "sort of close" with a generic table. Serious photographers will create their own custom table with hardware colorimeters and calibration software, casual users mostly don't care.

 

[todd2000]

Oh didn't realize Gimp was only 8-Bit. They are working on Color Management for version 2.4 though.... I think I'll just wait till Elements 5 comes out for Intel, and buy that.