Why is photoshop changing my colors!?!

[Marci C.]

Can anyone help me I am trying to do a project in photoshop and the program is changing the colors on me after I upload them. I put in specific color numbers and then moved on to the next step and when I go back to check why it doesn't look right I see that the color number is changed. I am wondering if anyone out there has had this same problem. Please tell me that it is an easy fix.
Marci C.

 

[Jim Campbell]

Can anyone help me I am trying to do a project in photoshop and the program is changing the colors on me after I upload them. I put in specific color numbers and then moved on to the next step and when I go back to check why it doesn't look right I see that the color number is changed. I am wondering if anyone out there has had this same problem. Please tell me that it is an easy fix.
Marci C.

Are you inputting CMYK values into a document that is in RGB mode?

(Or the reverse?)

Cheers!

Jim

 

[jampat]

Deleted

 

[Mike Teezie]

Can anyone help me I am trying to do a project in photoshop and the program is changing the colors on me after I upload them. I put in specific color numbers and then moved on to the next step and when I go back to check why it doesn't look right I see that the color number is changed. I am wondering if anyone out there has had this same problem. Please tell me that it is an easy fix.
Marci C.

I've had the same problems, and would love to know the solution.

 

[RawBert]

The format you save the image in really affects the colors. For instance, I love png, but red is totally affected. It gets louder. I think BMP is the uncompressed format, however it produces huge file sizes. I use it for printing, not for posting on the internet.

 

[Jim Campbell]

The format you save the image in really affects the colors. For instance, I love png, but red is totally affected. It gets louder. I think BMP is the uncompressed format, however it produces huge file sizes. I use it for printing, not for posting on the internet.

Use TIFF for printing. If you turn on LZW compression (which is lossless, so there is no degradation in quality) then the file sizes should be manageable.

FWIW, the colour profile you select is more likely to affect colours than file format, unless you're ramping up the JPEG compression.

Cheers

Jim

 

[lucidmedia]

colors shifting during save for web?

try unchecking the sRGB conversion

http://www.viget.com/inspire/the-mysterious-save-for-web-color-shift/

 

[mashny]

What color space are you using? CMYK (or any of the CMYK "flavors")? Apple RGB? sRGB? Adobe RGB? Colormatch RGB? ProPhoto RGB?

Each color space will give different colors and/or saturation (sometimes significantly different) depending on what color space you use, even if you feed the same RGB values into them. To see what color space you're using, go to Edit > Color Settings... > Working Spaces. I have mine set to sRGB which, though it doesn't have as wide a color gamut as Adobe RGB or most of the other RGB spaces, is used by the two online photo printers I use, so I leave it on that setting. You can have Photoshop warn you when a picture you're importing does not match your preferred color space, and choose to have Photoshop change it automatically or ask you what you want to do. I like knowing exactly what I'm working with, so I have Photoshop warn me, then ask what I'd like to do.

You may want to do a Google search on "Color Space" to learn more about this. Even if the cause of your problem is not color-space related, it is still good to know about if you plan to work with color.

 

[Marci C.]

Why is photoshop changing my colors?!?

Thank you everyone for your replies. I am still in school for graphic design so a lot of this stuff is very new to me. I hope I can return the help someday.

 

[kurosov]

Colour management is something i would have expected students to be taught before diving into applications.

I suggest you do some extra homework on colour spaces, management and conversions as it is important in the industry.

 

[citizenzen]

Colour management is something i would have expected students to be taught before diving into applications.

Ooo... I think you expect too much. Not that I disagree that it would make for a good foundation. It's like asking people to eat well and get their exercise when Cheetos® and videos games are waaay more alluring.

Anyways... just as an FYI... I'm the graphic lead of a university magazine that is published twice a year (66k circulation). We keep our photos in 16bit RGB (Adobe), unflattened, native PSD format. Colors don't get converted to CMYK until the plates are made by the printer (from PDFs we submit). And from monitor, to laser printer, to contract proofs, to press the results are consistent and beautiful. I know you can't always avoid CMYK, but I am completely sold on the RGB/PSD workflow.