More help with colour management PLEASE!!

[Marvin]

Hi all,
I have had this problem for a while but still haven't figured it out. Now I have a nice calibtrated monitor (thanks to hlop's spyder) I thought I could fix it but alas....
When I open or view a picture in Nikon Capture or NV it looks fine. When I open the same picture in PSCS2 (and previously PSCS) the colours look very ordinary, kind of flat. No amount of tweaking in camera raw or PS afterwards can get them to look anything like what I see in NC. I notice it most on pictures of people - I guess it's a bit more obvious when a picture of a person is off. I shoot in RAW.
I have tried most of the different colour management options in PS to no avail. Can anyone tell me what settings I should use?

Here is an example of what I mean. No pp at all, just opened and re-saved as jpegs in each of the programs.

 PS


NC

I'm sure it's something simple that I am missing, I just have no idea what!


Thanks,
Marvin

[sirhc55]

Marvin - it might be my eyes but I do prefer the PS version over the NC. The NC looks washed out compared to the PS one.

[Marvin]

Hi Chris. The NC one (bottom) is quite true to what I saw on the day. The eye colour is pretty much spot on although the hair is slightly yellow.

[Glen]

Marvin it sounds like a colour profile is not being picked up by one of the programs. What colour mode do you shoot in? Maybe try a different one for some test shots?

[Hlop]

Hi Marvin,

Are you opening file from NC? What I mean, I'm doing initial NEF tweaking in NC and then pushing "Open in PS" button, so, image is transferred to PS as I saw it in NC. Is it what you're doing?

[stubbsy]

Marvin

In both NC and photoshop you can specify a default colour profile to be used INSTEAD of what's embedded in the image my guess is you've done this in one or both hence the colour difference (and to me the PS version seems to have a yellow cast). Check if you are overriding the image rgb in either of these progs. I'm at work so I can't tell you the steps, but in both progs you go to the colour management tab. For me I elected to go with sRGB so my camera is set that way and I've also set both PS and NC to always use sRGB just to play safe.

[Hlop]

Hi Peter,

May I ask you why you've choosen sRGB? AdobeRGB has wider colour gamut and seems to be looking more natural

[Marvin]

Hi guys. Thanks for the replies. I use Adobe RGB as my camera colour space. Mikhail, when I open in NC first and then go to PS from there, the colours look just like I saw them in NC. It makes me think that NC is picking up on some setting that PS isn't. I have fiddled around with the settings so much that I'm not sure what the defaults are now!
Stubbsy - you were right. PS had this option ticked. I just changed it all back to what I thought were the defaults, but it is still the same sort of problem. PS looks slightly better than before but still is very yellow.
I know I can get around it by opening in NC first then transferring to PS but then I don't get the camera raw options.
Thanks Glen, will try some different settings.
Marvin

[stubbsy]

Hi Peter,

May I ask you why you've choosen sRGB? AdobeRGB has wider colour gamut and seems to be looking more natural

Mikhail

Simple - while adobeRGB has a wider gamut it's not web compatible (web images in AdobeRGB are dull vs sRGB) so rather than have to remember to change to sRGB for web posting I decided to live with the sRGB gamut for consistency and simplicity.

[stubbsy]

Hi guys. Thanks for the replies. I use Adobe RGB as my camera colour space. Mikhail, when I open in NC first and then go to PS from there, the colours look just like I saw them in NC. It makes me think that NC is picking up on some setting that PS isn't. I have fiddled around with the settings so much that I'm not sure what the defaults are now!
Stubbsy - you were right. PS had this option ticked. I just changed it all back to what I thought were the defaults, but it is still the same sort of problem. PS looks slightly better than before but still is very yellow.
I know I can get around it by opening in NC first then transferring to PS but then I don't get the camera raw options.
Thanks Glen, will try some different settings.
Marvin

Marvin

Do you have a custom curve loaded in camera. Maybe NC is applying the custom curve and PS CS isn't. That could also explain the colour cast.

[Marvin]

Ah yes, I think I do. Will check it out. I haven't really thought much about it since I started taking in raw. Thanks Stubbsy!

[Glen]

Marvin, I think Stubbsy has nailed it

[Marvin]

Well, I removed the custom curve and took a snap of daughter #2 who is a fair bit darker than #1. The PS picture now looks quite accurate and the NC one too dark and saturated, although it is very overcast and dark here and PS tends to brighten the pictures. I think I will go down to the shops and buy a can of coke and try to get a more controlled sort of test happening. Surely they could both look the same?? I set the colour management to the same thing.
Thanks for all your help so far guys!


NC

 PS

(The PS one doesn't look quite as washed out on the original)

[Glen]

Marvin, do you have anything like auto levels turned on? Maybe in PS? That is a big difference between images.


ps Both very photogenic girls

[Marvin]

I don't know Glen. I'll have a look. Thanks!
Not sure about the photogenicness (is that a word??) of #2. She had a lovely mouth full of crunched up biscuits when I took the picture!
I think I will spend a bit of time on the weekend playing with the settings again. At least I know the monitor is calibrated so I must get an accurate picture somewhere!

[sirhc55]

Hi Peter,

May I ask you why you've choosen sRGB? AdobeRGB has wider colour gamut and seems to be looking more natural

Mikhail

Simple - while adobeRGB has a wider gamut it's not web compatible (web images in AdobeRGB are dull vs sRGB) so rather than have to remember to change to sRGB for web posting I decided to live with the sRGB gamut for consistency and simplicity.

Peter - my workflow is Adobe RGB from start to finish - even the pics I post are within that workflow and I never change to sRGB. To date, I have never had anyone say that my pics are dull

[stubbsy]

Hi Peter,

May I ask you why you've choosen sRGB? AdobeRGB has wider colour gamut and seems to be looking more natural

Mikhail

Simple - while adobeRGB has a wider gamut it's not web compatible (web images in AdobeRGB are dull vs sRGB) so rather than have to remember to change to sRGB for web posting I decided to live with the sRGB gamut for consistency and simplicity.

Peter - my workflow is Adobe RGB from start to finish - even the pics I post are within that workflow and I never change to sRGB. To date, I have never had anyone say that my pics are dull

Chris

Interesting. This all flowed from my ruminations and discoveries in this thread where you can see the colorspace problems at their worst

[Hlop]

Peter,

I was trying to use sRGB from camera to the end of PP when I just started doing digital but, personally, I found that colours look funny and unnaturally bright an vivid. So I decided to go AdobeRGB even if it looks dull sometimes it's colors are more natural to me

For web I might just assign sRGB profiles and see what it does and it might solve another problem I raised in another topic

[big pix]

Hi Peter,

May I ask you why you've choosen sRGB? AdobeRGB has wider colour gamut and seems to be looking more natural

Mikhail

Simple - while adobeRGB has a wider gamut it's not web compatible (web images in AdobeRGB are dull vs sRGB) so rather than have to remember to change to sRGB for web posting I decided to live with the sRGB gamut for consistency and simplicity.

I tend to disagree stubbsy as I shot in RGB, colour management is set in PSCS2 to ADOBE1998 my colour space is RGB my screen is profiled and I post my images as RGB unless pixspot changes them.....

cheers
bp

[sirhc55]

Yep - I am with bp and Mikhail on this one: this pic is all Adobe RGB

[stubbsy]

Ok

I'll have a play again tonight, but is it adobergb as posted ie not converted to sRGB for web posting?

(again I refer you to the images in the post I referred to above)

To be honest I'd dearly love to be wrong on this since I'd prefer to use adobeRGB exclusively because of the wider gamut issues already discussed above.

[robboh]

Yep - I am with bp and Mikhail on this one: this pic is all Adobe RGB

Chris, from what I recall of the gamuts for various colour spaces, this picture is AdobeRGB's forte, which has a vastly extended green portion of the gamut in comparison to sRGB. I believe that the reds are the main area where AdobeRGB pics will appear dull (eg skin tones, especially lips etc).

Now, here's a question for you. Is there actually any point converting to AdobeRGB if you have shot sRGB-1 in the camera??

Cheers
Rob.

[Hlop]

If I understood that correctly, when you're shooting RAW you just attaching color space tag to the file for the future post-processing. When you're shooting JPEG it actually changes color gamut of an image.

I don't find skin tones on pictures (JPEG) shoot with sRGB natural. For me they look reddish or with orange cast. My dughter has got Coolpix 4100 which shoots sRGB JPEGs only and I really don't like how people look at her pictures and she's got most neutral color settings instead of "vivid color" or other funny ones

[robboh]

Here is some more stuff to add to the mix:
Why Use the Pro Photo RGB Colour Space (by Uwe Steinmueller 1/9/05)

[sirhc55]

I always shoot Adobe RGB in camera - now the question is this: If you have a lower gamut i.e. sRGB you will not be able to increase the gamut to RGB except by interpolation. Whereas, with RGB you have a wide enough gamut to downgrade to sRGB (this will still be interpolation, but more successful)

[robboh]

I always shoot Adobe RGB in camera - now the question is this: If you have a lower gamut i.e. sRGB you will not be able to increase the gamut to RGB except by interpolation. Whereas, with RGB you have a wide enough gamut to downgrade to sRGB (this will still be interpolation, but more successful)

Ive done a bit more looking around on this and it seems that (someone else already mentioned this) if you are using RAW, then the colour space doesnt actually matter and you can just map over it with the colour space you want.

[big pix]

If you are not sure in PSCS2......

go EDIT: ASSIGN PROFILE

CHECK WORKING PROFILE ADOBE RGB1998 {THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN SET IN COLOUR MANAGEMENT}

CLICK:OK

NOTE:
YOUR WORKING PROFILE IS THE COLOUR SPACE YOU DO YOUR IMAGE WORK............. YOUR PRINTER PROFILE IS THE COLOUR SPACE YOU PRINT WITH ........ WHICH IS DIFFERENT

This is why your screen should be profiled and also your printer to get the best results and to save on the amount of printing materials used.

[Glen]

Chris, that photo you posted of (I think) a water meter looks, how can I put this, ..lifeless

[sirhc55]

I always shoot Adobe RGB in camera - now the question is this: If you have a lower gamut i.e. sRGB you will not be able to increase the gamut to RGB except by interpolation. Whereas, with RGB you have a wide enough gamut to downgrade to sRGB (this will still be interpolation, but more successful)

Ive done a bit more looking around on this and it seems that (someone else already mentioned this) if you are using RAW, then the colour space doesnt actually matter and you can just map over it with the colour space you want.

I don’t know where this information is coming from but when you shoot with a D70 using any of the 3 colour modes in any of the shooting prefs the colour model is attached as per EXIF data. Colour space does matter and is applicable to any photograph taken - a digital camera has to work with a colour space and when working with Adobe RGB on the D70 the resulting files are underscored i.e. _DSC1234. Adobe RGB is the recommended colour mode to use (in camera) for PP in PS and don’t forget that WB is attached to Adobe RGB NEF’s but can be changed in ACR.

[Hlop]

Hi Chris,

What I meant and robboh echoed it - Color Space settings in the camera, while you're shooting RAW, don't change colors of an image. It's just a tag which tells to image manipulation application how to interpret image colours in the future. So, you can painlessly switch between color spaces.
Correct me if I'm wrong

[MattC]

Mode I aRGB anyone???

Cheers

Matt PS That is for users of NC