colour trueness??

[Ms Monny]

I am putting my photos from my photo shoot of my friends family on a few discs for them. When I am in Elements 10, the colour is perfect but when I transfer them to jpg and into the folder they are washed out. They still look washed out when I am putting the images into an order online with Atkins Lab. Which is the correct colour....the PS Elements 10 or the jpg in the folder??? If it is the jpg in the folder, I can easily adjust the warmth etc and vice versa. Just need to know which is which!! Please help!

[ricktas]

are you saving them with a colourspace (sRGB, AdobeRGB, etc) it could well be that you are saving them in a different colourspace into the folder. Differing colourspaces mean different colours and thus washed out can happen. Esp an sRGB photo being saved as AdobeRGB.

[Ms Monny]

Thanks Rick

I checked at it was saving as sRGB from PS, so I changed it to 'let me choose'. I then tested my 'save as' with AdobeRGB as jpg, sRGB as jpg and also saved as a TIFF just to see if there was any difference. There wasn't. I have looked through past threads on this issue (that's where I saw the post from you saying try different ones).

The colour in PS is more vibrant and less washed out than the versions in the folder.

I am happy to send off to Atkins like they are as I know they can correct the issue (if there is one) but if my friends decide to get them printed themselves (I gave them the option), then I want to ensure the images are of the correct colour, esp as it involves people.

Unless I quickly get a few printed from Big W myself just to see how they turn out if they decided to get them done themselves??

[JM Tran]

save your photos as SRGB and not Adobe RGB, as your monitor does not sound like it is Adobe RGB capable/calibrated for it.

Atkins CANNOT correct your issue, as you cant just change from Adobe RGB back to sRGB and get the 'vibrancy' again. Just save it as sRGB for any sort of printing/web posting etc. They will probably just increase saturation as the 'fix'.

The only times I had to ever submit photos to commercial clients is when certain ones request it to be in Adobe RGB, otherwise its not needed.

[Ms Monny]

thanks Jackie. I think I might need to get a calibrator soon, if I am to do more photo shoot with people. Landscapes are not to much of a problem but skin is!!

I thought AdobeRGB was for printing and sRGB was for screen??

I just did a test but this time from LIGHTROOM not PS. I saved an image with AdobeRGB and then one with sRGB. Guess what???? The AdobeRGB one LOST SATURATION OF COLOUR and the sRGB one didn't!!!! So, I am figuring somehow when I save with Ps (which I usually don't, I usually do stuff in Ps and then save with the updated version in Lr) it loses colour saturation regardless if saved with AdobeRGB or sRGB.

Now I am in the poo because of the change of names.

Not happy Jan. What a mess. Grrrrr.

Got a bit of work ahead of me now.

I am still perplexed as to why the Ps wouldn't save the proper colour even in sRGB.

[arthurking83]

.....

I just did a test but this time from LIGHTROOM not PS. I saved an image with AdobeRGB and then one with sRGB. Guess what???? The AdobeRGB one LOST SATURATION OF COLOUR and the sRGB one didn't!!!! So, I am figuring somehow when I save with Ps (which I usually don't, I usually do stuff in Ps and then save with the updated version in Lr) it loses colour saturation regardless if saved with AdobeRGB or sRGB.

Now I am in the poo because of the change of names.

Not happy Jan. What a mess. Grrrrr.

Got a bit of work ahead of me now.

I am still perplexed as to why the Ps wouldn't save the proper colour even in sRGB.

As JMT said, it could be your screen not displaying the colour profiles correctly with your aRGB images.
A calibrator won't actually help with this. The screen's ability is fixed.
You can calibrate the screen to display colours to a reference point .. but you can't calibrate a non aRGB screen to display the aRGB colourspace.

Hope that makes sense to you.
if it doesn't, then try to think of it more like this: If you had an older non LCD/TFT/Plasma type TV screen .. you know the old CRT type screens of yesteryear. They run very basic resolutions .. something like 720x576.
Of course now everything is HD .. or Ultra HD, or WXGZHD .. or whatever idiotic acronym sounds really cool to the masses ... but HD is defined as 1920x1080(for the most part).
if your collection of BluRay/DVD movies are HD quality, you really wouldn't expect to see as much detail from the old CRT tv(being 720x576) compared to the U-beaut ultra high res HD LCD tv, when watching these HD movies, would you. No amount of tweaking the old CRT will reveal more detail than it is possible to display.
An aRGB capable screen usually cost a lot more than your average PC screen.

With that out of the way, the question has yet to be asked.
When you save your images in Ps, does Ps remove any exif info?
While this may not be the problem, it may pay to check anyhow.
If you save an image in the aRGB colourspace and the exif data is removed(with the assumption that the colourspace info may also be deleted) .. then, if the image was saved in aRGB all image editors will mistakenly assume the image is saved in the sRGB colourspace.
That's how they all work .. it's just assumed that if colourspace info is not available, then sRGB is assumed. This is one reason why sRGB is usually the best colourspace to use.
aRGB won't actually give you much advantage if your images are jpgs anyhow.
I'm lead to believe that there is (or can be) an advantage in using aRGB for tiffs for printing.

I doubt that the problem is related to the removal of exif, as this usually means that colours may be distorted badly.

Have you checked the images in other image viewing software ... what other methods are you using to view the images.
This issue could also be a problem with something as simple as Windows Image Viewer!(wouldn't surprise me).
IrfanView, or FSViewer(amongst many other good freebies) are available for confirming what the images actually look like.

I've seen differences between how some image viewers render the exact same image. Took screen shots to confirm my sanity hasn't taken a nasty turn ... 1 image, three different image viewing programs, and they all have subtle differences in the way that jpg looked. I can't say that the colours looked too different, but the contrast rendering was certainly different.
Unfortunately(and with no bias) LR was the offender in this situation. Nikon's software, CNX2 and VNX2 both rendered the image similarly(but not exactly), and then viewing in many other image viewers(irfanView/FSViewer/GIMP/Paintdotnet/and any other I could get free) showed that they all rendered close to the Nikon way .... and LR was the spanner in the works.

Maybe LR or Ps don't respect the monitor calibration setting on your PC or something.
I checked so many settings with respect to monitor calibrations and what was supposed to display what and how .. but couldn't find any way to see what LR was set to use for monitor calibration.

Even tho you haven't set your screen with a calibration, it still has a calibration point(they all do). It's just that your screen's calibration is set internally.
Are you on Windows7?
(if so)
Rightclick desktop: choose monitor resolution:look for the small link to Advanced Settings.
There's a colour management tab. if you click on this, you should see the Colour Management button.
These are all the settings for Windows programs to 'adhere too' when it comes to displaying stuff onto the screen. you can click to your hearts content within many of the options available to you in this area.
you can't really do any damage to your PC.
The only time any settings in this area shouldn't be tampered with, is if you have manually done a screen calibration via a colourimeter tool(screen calibrator).

[Ms Monny]

Wow, thanks Arthur! Very I depth and loads of good info.

I am sorry if this is a bit late ( thought I had out it up here) ... I worked out that when I started editing these images from my friend I changed the colour space from adobe to sRGB in the drop down box when exporting from Lr to PS. I thought this was the correct thing to do as I was going to print them. It has always been sRGB before because 1. I only recently learnt about AdobeRGB and sRGB and 2. I usually only use pics in the web.

So when I saved from Ps it didn't matter if I chose Adobe or sRGB, because it had previously been exported as Adobe!!

Why didn't I realise this immediately after Jackie mentioned about sRGB? My mind has been a sieve lately, due to circumstances, and retaining any memory if things has been hard!!

Yes, Jackie and yourself are correct...my monitor is sRGB!

A good learning curve and one I needed to come across sooner or later!

Btw, I'm typing on my phone, so if the above is a bit jumbled I apologise. It is hard to read back what I wrote!