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Image viewer contrast differences?


Ky Lane
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Gday guys,

 

Just doing some work on a new project, and when Im opening the images in the default windows JPG viewer, the image looks very dark and blotchy - same image in quicktime image viewer, and it looks nice and smooth..

 

Any ideas what in the bloody hell is going on?

 

Cheers.

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I believe what is happening is that windows picture & fax viewer is doing the same thing that and inserted image in outlook does, and that is down-sample and color convert all willy nilly. you shold do a test for your own edification do print the same image out of the pic & fax viewer, the QT viewer and your color managed Photoshop. the web likes srgb space, same thing max kicks out as you render. Until you assign a profile to an image, you have no color management...

Edited by scotty
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What happens if you uncheck save ICC profile with the jpeg when saving out of PS?

 

...as mentioned Windows Picture and Fax viewer sucks, but if you email an image to someone, there is a very good chance that they are going to view it in Windows Picture and Fax. So whatever you send should look at least half decent in it, otherwise you will get annoying responses about it being to saturated or this or that.

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What happens if you uncheck save ICC profile with the jpeg when saving out of PS?

 

...as mentioned Windows Picture and Fax viewer sucks, but if you email an image to someone, there is a very good chance that they are going to view it in Windows Picture and Fax. So whatever you send should look at least half decent in it, otherwise you will get annoying responses about it being to saturated or this or that.

 

Very likely, but what I try to do is always embed color profiles and send in PDF format.

 

The ugly truth is whatever you do or send out, you no longer control how it is presented - lighting conditions, printers, monitors, et al. Nothing you can do there at all. I recommend having a simple, direct statement regarding color in your head ready to repeat or write over and over.

 

Hopefully every once in a while your client base will push that little button at the bottom of their LCD monitors to auto adjust.

 

Had a client actually say they liked the brick on "joe's" monitor, the sky on "beth's" monitor, but the color copier - the veg looked good. No description of what was wrong. Wild huh. Good luck.

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What? Forcing the client to view through a PDF viewer? What's the difference? Either way, it comes down to how their monitor/ projector/ latop/ Palm Pilot is calibrated.

 

Asking a client to validate colour settings is like asking a Granny to critique the latest Acid-Jazz House party. Sure, they know one, but how does it relate to the other??? (Acid? Jazz, you choose).

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Yes, it comes out different because all of calibration.

 

But from my experience if you open an image with an ICC profile in Window Picture and Fax viewer, it looks bad. Contrast is off, skies are crazy saturated, etc... Now if you forced the client to view the image though Acrobat, then you would be reassured that any embedded ICC profile is properly accounted for by the software. I try to remove all profiles before files, especially jpegs, go out. But occasionally stuff still goes out with them embedded.

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What happens if you uncheck save ICC profile with the jpeg when saving out of PS?

 

...as mentioned Windows Picture and Fax viewer sucks, but if you email an image to someone, there is a very good chance that they are going to view it in Windows Picture and Fax. So whatever you send should look at least half decent in it, otherwise you will get annoying responses about it being to saturated or this or that.

 

Nothing should happen except the file size be slightly smaller. QT and windows viewer do not have color management and can not read ICC profiles. Regardless of whether they are embeded or not, they will not be used.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I found this...

 

The photo viewer in Photo Gallery is a color managed environment (it can use a color profile to render a color-accurate representation of your photo). The XP Viewer and IE (and many other applications) are not color managed. Color management can be a complex topic. It's possible that there is an incorrect color profile embedded in the photo, or perhaps you have an incorrect color profile applied to your display device. Following these instructions may fix the problem:

1. Control Panel->Hardware and Sound->Color Management

2. Select your display device

3. Check the box “Use my setting for this device”

4. Click Add

5. Choose “sRGB IEC61966-2.1” (this is the color profile that IE is using)

6. Set it as default.

 

 

It made a bit of a difference, but *shrug* who knows really.

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I think this may have been my problem also. I have a ICC assigned to my monitor display. I was using the same ICC in Photoshop, so I am thinking I might have been applying the profile twice. Not sure? When I switch to a sRGB profile, the image seemed to be more predicatable. I need to go back and reread Jeff's articles he wrote while at Smoothe, and see if that gives any insight.

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II have a ICC assigned to my monitor display.

 

Could you clarify what you meant here? You can't assign an ICC profile to a display. You can only create an ICC profile using calibration/profiling software which "describes" how the display behaves. The display profile is then used by the OS to transform the color data sent to the video card, so it conforms with a known standard.

 

I was using the same ICC in Photoshop, so I am thinking I might have been applying the profile twice. Not sure? When I switch to a sRGB profile, the image seemed to be more predicatable.

 

Do you mean you were using the display profile Photoshop?

Edited by Jeff Mottle
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Could you clarify what you meant here? You can't assign an ICC profile to a display. You can only create an ICC profile using calibration/profiling software which "describes" how the display behaves. The display profile is then used by the OS to transform the color data sent to the video card, so it conforms with a known standard.

 

Yes. Using the profile chooser, I have the profile selected that I created when I ran the calibration on the monitor. I meant I was using that ICC profile to describe how the display behaves.

 

Do you mean you were using the display profile Photoshop?

 

In Photoshop I also had that profile assigned under the "Color Settings" "Working Spaces" dialog in the RGB slot.

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In Photoshop I also had that profile assigned under the "Color Settings" "Working Spaces" dialog in the RGB slot.

 

You should only ever use device-independant color spaces for your working profile (ie. sRGB, AdobeRGB, ProPhotoRGB etc). The reason for this is that they are the only spaces that have a neutral behavior. For example, if you were to enter in 240/240/240, you expect to see a neutral color without any color shift. Depending upon the behavior of the device this might not be the case with a device-dependant profile (Monitor, Printer etc). You could enter in 240/240/240 and see a red shift or something similar.

 

The general workflow for CG images is the following:

 

1. Save RGB image from your 3d app

2. Open in PhotoShop and "ASSIGN" the sRGB color space and select the "convert to working space" option.

3. When you save the RGB image out again, make sure you save the sRGB ICC profile with the image.

 

There are some other workflows and tricks, but I'll go into that in more depth in Brian's book and some videos I'm going to produce this year.

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Just an FYI anyone who is using a wide gammut display can run into all sorts of problems when viewing images in an applicaiton that do not support color management. There are some tricks I've come up with to get around this, but that's for another thread.

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You should only ever use device-independant color spaces for your working profile (ie. sRGB, AdobeRGB, ProPhotoRGB etc). The reason for this is that they are the only spaces that have a neutral behavior. For example, if you were to enter in 240/240/240, you expect to see a neutral color without any color shift. Depending upon the behavior of the device this might not be the case with a device-dependant profile (Monitor, Printer etc). You could enter in 240/240/240 and see a red shift or something similar.

 

The general workflow for CG images is the following:

 

1. Save RGB image from your 3d app

2. Open in PhotoShop and "ASSIGN" the sRGB color space and select the "convert to working space" option.

3. When you save the RGB image out again, make sure you save the sRGB ICC profile with the image.

 

There are some other workflows and tricks, but I'll go into that in more depth in Brian's book and some videos I'm going to produce this year.

 

Ok. I will try to work that way for a little while to see if that takes care of my problem. Looking forward to the book and videos.

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