Issues with consistent colors

[Douglas Bolt]

I must have something set wrong in PSCC because the colors I see in images (with sRGB profiles) on the web do not agree with what I see when I copy the images into CC. For that matter, there is considerable variation in color tones among IE, Firefox and Chrome. My monitor (DEL 2410) is profiled with iProfiler.

Here is a clip I made of an nice image of a Leopard posted by Rachel Hollander on the Wildlife forum. As you can see, there are four different shades of blue sky depicted. I don't expect the colors to be precisely the same, but differences as great as these certainly make me worry about making fine (or even coarse) color adjustments.

I'd certainly appreciate advice on how to adjust my PC to give more consistent colors.

[Douglas Bolt]

Moderators: Please move the above post to the Digital Workflow forum.

Thanks.

[Diane Miller]

Color management can be different with different browsers, even those that claim to be color managed.

Here' some information in Educational Resources that may help:

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...tly-on-the-Web

And there can be variations if an image is prepared properly -- there are two other posts there dealing with that.

[Douglas Bolt]

Thank you Diane. I will dig into the info in hopes of resolving this issue. It is really frustrating to not trust your system to produce predictable colors.

[Douglas Bolt]

Diane,

I had recently deleted the profile files, which must have set the Profile Management Policies to Yes. I changed the settings to Preserve Embedded and the colors match better. Still not as close as I would hope, but better.

As to calibrating the monitor (Dell 2410), I do that about once a month. My prints (3880) match the monitor pretty well. But, images I put on the web do not match as well.

Thanks again for your link. Very helpful.

[Don Lacy]

Douglas, This looks like a browser issue to me if your prints are matching what you are seeing in PS. Looking at your sample I would say the CC colors look the most natural which again points to the browsers

[Douglas Bolt]

Don,

Agree and thanks. Chrome is my default browser and it is configured (about:config) to be aware of embedded color profiles. Any advice on how to fix the issue?

[Diane Miller]

I'm not sure what you mean by this: "I had recently deleted the profile files, which must have set the Profile Management Policies to Yes. I changed the settings to Preserve Embedded and the colors match better. Are you talking about PS here? Check the PS Color Management screenshot in one of those tutorials in Educational Resources.

And of course you need to have PS set to warn you of a profile mismatch if you are pulling someone's picture into PS for a closer look, so you can decide how to handle it.

I think the simplest answer to your question is to use whichever browser gives the closest match to PS, using your own pictures that you know are prepared correctly for the web -- that is, converted to sRGB and tagged. You can use one browser for general use and another one for viewing this forum or other sources of picture files that you want to see accurately.

The bottom line may just be that different browsers represent colors that diffrently. There has been some discussion here recently that Internet Explorer shows a bias toward stronger reds.

[Douglas Bolt]

Deleting the profile sometimes fixes issues with PS, but it sets the config back to the defaults. I must have overlooked the Color Settings page.

[Diane Miller]

Do you mean deleting the Preferences? That can fix very strange behavior issues, but not ones related to color management as far as I know. Color settings are very important.

[Douglas Bolt]

Diane,

Yes, I should have said Preferences. Not sure how, but the Color Settings got changed somehow.

[Diane Miller]

Several years ago I was using a PC and it was fairly routine for the color settings to reset themselves, both for me and other people. Don't know if it was a PC issue or just an older version of PS, or the combination. Since switching to Mac several years ago I haven't had the problem.

[Douglas Bolt]

I think I may have stumbled onto an explanation why I was getting such variation and deviation from the original colors. When I click New (in CC after rt-clicking on an image), the window that pops up under Advanced has the Color Profile set to ProPhoto by default. When I select sRGB as the Color Profile, the imported image has a much better match to the original. I don't see a way to change the default. I assume it may be set for ProPhoto because that is my default color profile.