color profiling inconsistancies

[BrianKitts]

going out to all you color profiling gurus.....

 

have you ever noticed an inconsistancy in viewing images even with a color profile between different image viewers? attached is an image that is a screenshot from my monitor with the same image opened in an explorer window (local not on the internet) and also the same image in windows picture and fax viewer (WPFV). The image looks darker in WPFV.... I guess I just assumed all applications if they didn't have their own control over the color profile would use the defualt windows profile (yes I have that set too)

 

now I've noticed a slight difference before between photoshop and WPFV and I have never really gave it much thought, assuming photoshop was correct because it has the color profiles assigned directly. when WPFV came out a hair darker it didn't bother me. But now that I see what it looks like in a standard explorer window as brighter it has caught my curioustiy.

 

anyone have any experience, knowledge, or insight onto this one????

 

thx!

[signet]

One way to control what your client sees and basically makes the problem go away is doing all of your colour correcting in Photoshop ( guess you do anyway) and delvier your images as PDFs

 

Then you always know that your client is seeing what you want them to and not what a picture viewer is interpreting it as.

 

I dont know why exactly picture viewers do that. maybe they compress the image making them able to browse large files quickly.

 

just a thought, how hard can it be to display the same image through different pieces of software?!

[bavanor]

Is the original image a 16-bit image or an 8-bit image? If 16-bit the WPFV might be converting down to 8-bit, making you shaded areas seem darker.

 

Or it could be the color space/profile. In photoshop are you using srgb or adobe rgb 98 as the color profile for the image? If adobe rgb 98, again WPFV might be assigning the image as a srgb color profile, and messing with the colors.

 

Just a couple of guesses. But I would make an action in Photoshop to change all images to 8-bit SRGB when sending out to clients. That way your colors will show the best on their monitors.

 

Aaron

[BrianKitts]

actaully I have been delivering most of my stuff lately as pdf's... but that was more for compression and organization purposes... now it has another reason.

 

No I don't use adobe RGB, I calibrate my monitors about once a month and use that profile for my color space.

 

It's just a simple 8 bit image... I just found it odd that two pieces of microsoft software would pop up the same image different ways.

[Matt McDonald]

Photoshop is embedding an ICC profile in your image. The profile is typically your working RGB space. If you view the image in an application that is ICC aware it should display the image as it was in Photoshop. If the application is not ICC aware the image will not display the same way that it did in Photoshop.

 

As for your clients, its a crap shoot. PDF or no. Unless you can control the calibration of the monitor used to view the image you have no say in how anything will display.

 

Professional printers will always use a hard copy for client sign-off. If you are really concerned about this becoming an issue, I would too.

 

I hope this helps.

Matt

[Matt McDonald]

uh, oh. I just read your most recent post. Never use your monitor profile as your working space. never, never. It only describes your monitor at one minute of one day. Use a stadarized working space such as Adobe 1998, or sRGB so that you are working in a consistent RGB space that is well defined and not sbuject to any peculiarities that might be present in your monitor.

 

The best book ever on the this subject is Real World Color Management. I recomend it to anyone I know dealing with color issues.

 

So long.

Matt