How do I make CaptureNX display colours as they will appear?

[ATJ]

I've started using CaptureNX and I really like it. My workflow now is to browse with ViewNX, open the image I want in CaptureNX, make some adjustments (WB, Exposure, Levels) and then open in PaintShop Pro 9. I have been noticing the images look different in PSP9 and thought it was a PSP9 problem. But... the TIFF and JEPG images saved directly from CaptureNX look identical with every other program except CaptureNX. i.e. CaptureNX is not displaying the colours as they really are.

So... how do I make it show colours "accurately"? I've looked in the preferences under Color Management and while it doesn't seem to make sense, changes don't do anything either.

[iluxa]

Do you have any color profile for your monitor installed in Windows? It could be corrupted. Try to delete it in Windows (Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Advanced -> Colour Management) and restart PC. I had the similar problem before with Nikon Capture and Adobe Lightroom on two different computers. Both times there was bad monitor profile.

[chrisk]

in the bottom left corner of the mage in NX it should display the colour profile. sRGB etc. check that is the same profile as the one being used in PSP. i think nikon have there own sRGB profile so you may need to change it. when you save an image, make sure that the ICC profile box is checked.

i used to have the same issues sometimes when transferring to CS2 but for whatever reason, either the latest NX update, (1.2), or the CS3 upgrade seems to have resolved whatever the issue was without me knowing how.

[ATJ]

Thanks for the replies.

It wasn't a bad monitor profile. I recalibrated my monitor and created a new profile and it didn't make any difference.

With PSP I don't have to choose a profile, or if I do, it appears to apply it twice. What I mean is, if I don't have once selected it appears to display everything correctly. If I choose a profile, it appears to apply this on top of the profile used by Windows and it makes a mess.

Anyway, in CaptureNX I switched the default RGB colour space from Adobe RGB (1998) to the Monitor profile created by Eye One Display.



This appears to have fixed things, although I'm not sure why. The images in CaptureNX don't look any different, but the saved and exported images look the same as they do in CaptureNX.

Here was what I was getting when using Adobe RGB (1998) in CaptureNX)



This is what I get now:



The differences may only look subtle in those images, but in other images it is quite significant.

As I said, I'm not sure why it made a difference, but I am glad it did.