FAQ:Why do my colours look odd in Photoshop but not other apps

#1

Q: After installing Photoshop, my display goes black or gray, or the color looks wrong and it displays odd white colours. Why?

A: Your display color profile is not in order. First try re-calibrating through Adobe Gamma, and choose a different profile (such as sRGB) as your starting point. (don’t forget to save the new profile as the last step!)

Adobe Gamma can be found in Windows’ Control panel.

The problem may also be caused by video card incompatibilities. See Adobe CustomerFirst document
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/c832.htm for more information.

Other useful links are

http://computer-darkroom.com/ps8_colour/ps8_1.htm

http://www.gballard.net/psd.html

#2

Hi,

Thanks, it’s a very interesting link but it didn’t help me with this problem. I did another test today. I made the same print with the same settings with Photoshop 7. This version is behaving exactly as I would expect. I contacted Adobe about it. I hope they can help me.

Arjo.

#3

Look at Edit > Color Settings. What do you see in there? This changes how color is viewed inside of Photoshop. Depending on if you have your monitor calibrated, or if you alter your gamma settings- you can turn Color Management OFF, you can do the same for Illustrator as well, because these settings will differ between the 2 programs, which is also why you get a different result when pasting into Photoshop from Illustrator.

#4

I tried some methods provided but it didnt change anything

my problem is that the image looks darker in photoshop but when I “save as web” image or jpeg the colour goes bright (normal)

I played around the colour setting in photoshop but got no luck with it. any idea?

#5

I’m also having problems. There’s too much red in all the pics I open in Photoshop (grey turns to almost purple for example). And the possible solutions provided above didn’t help me unfortunately… :sad:

#6

Bun, your having that problem because most browsers aren’t colour managed…to get the same sort of colour space as the web use an sRGB space as your colour space for the image.

serge, its likely your monitor profile is corrupt, make a new one.

#7

Halo:

Thanks for your reply. It seems like happened after I updated my tft driver which they added a new colour profile.

I played around the setting a little and went to Image>Mode>Assign Profile and assigned my monitor’s Colour profile and it fixed the problem.

I couldnt however assign profile to each image opened automatcially, but those who having similar problem could try this method

#8

you should be able to set your colour prefs to sRGB and get them to “convert to working RGB” upon opening…but you’ll have to remember you’ve done this so you dont trash any profiled files you want to retain in another colour space.

FWIW, using your monitor profile as a working space is a bad idea as your limiting the gamut and bias of your to that of your monitor, but it is a way of getting around the CM problem, but its not an advisable route to keep doing as you can really end up with some odd effects especially if you pass the file to someone else with the profile and it tries to work with their monitorRGB on your profiled file…eek (hue shift).

Best course of action is to set sRGB to your working RGB when working on web images (sRGB is a pants gamut so its not advisable to keep it for other work) and calibrate your monitor…you should then see little to no change as sRGB was designed in part to act like the ideal web representation.

#9

I had same problem i’m working with windows…
My white colour was pretty yellow, and when i was dodging colors from pictures was not same as original…

I have crappy monitor 17" ACER v771 and windows say all the time its: LG 700s (or something like that) and install own drivers for it, i think this was causing displaying wrong colours in PS
Solution for me was to change monitor drivers to standard plug & play.

I dunno if you have that problem with tft or lcd monitor… i’m not sure it will help, but try to do it first and let me know…

Cya!!

#10

I’m not too sure if I have a similar problem as you guys. Images/Canvases in my adobe photoshop CS’s colour turned into saturated hot pink colour. It’s weird, when I first installed CS2, the colour totally changed. So I had to uninstall the whole of my adobe photoshop~ and install back my photoshop CS. The same thing still happened. I’ve checked my color settings… as well as the “Transparency and Gamut”. To make things clearer, here are a few screenshots I took.

http://www.theanimewrld.com/~Yumi-Chan/balablaba.jpg
http://www.theanimewrld.com/~Yumi-Chan/pinku.jpg
http://www.theanimewrld.com/~Yumi-Chan/Untitled-1.jpg

It’s weird isn’t it? I’ve tried many ways, none hasn’t worked. Please help me if possible!

#11

broken monitor profile.

#12

what does it mean by “broken monitor profile”? How do I fix it?

#13

I think I have the same problem as described by some of you.
If you have put in the color management settings that you are using some of RGB spaces wich are not your monitor color space, before saving for web you should emulate Monitor RGB. You can do it under Window menu or by pressing CTRL+Y (beware! usualy this could be to simulate CMYK color for RGB images so first time you should change it manually).
That solved a problems on my PC.
p.s. I’m using CS2

#14

I’m not sure if this goes in with the other problems described here or not. I’ve just started using photoshop 7, so I’m sorry if this has been covered before. When I am working on a painting in ps, the colors are saturated to my liking, but when I jump to Image Ready, everything is much lighter and washed out. This forces me to work with heavily saturated crazy colors - just to get an end result that looks like what I was trying to do in the first place.

Does that make sense to anyone? lol…haven’t the foggiest what that means, or what a monitor profile is, for that matter. I also tried to open the file in paint shop pro, and it opens with the same washed out colors. The only place I can see it as I want it is in ps. :shrug:

#15

I have a simi;ar problem.
I work in PS (sc2) and colors are “good”… but when I take the image to work in Painter (9.1) colors looks “washed out”.
I’m supposing that the problematic guy here is PS, because the rest of the soft (preview, image converter) represent the colors same as Painter.
I tryed so many things, and at this point I’m pretty shure that my monitor is calibrated and I’m using sRGB as the default color space for every prog.

Please somebody help me.

#16

This was the only way i could fix this problem i had.

Problem:
It was that photoshop render the pictures alot brighter then it should. So I changed from sRGB to Monitor RBG - MX70. And now photoshop renders everything correctly!

#17

I also had problem with this (Windows)

I’ve found out that not installing the monitor drivers was the best solution as it install altered color profiles that mismatch web/online display.

You can also uninstall the color profile in system folder in Safe Mode.

#18

Guys, please keep in mind that it isn´t possible to switch off Colormanagement in PS.
Sure, you ´re able to work without it by checking CM off, but then PS works with an internal profile you absolutley can´t control.

Toledo, i switch a lot between Painter and PS and images look the same in both apps.
I would recommend to work in Adobe RGB in both Painter and PS, this is a profile which is optmised to 2.2 Gamma and 6500 kelvin.
For working with profiles in Painter you should see my little howtoi posted for ahbeejieeh.
Also you should use the PS-Format , because Painter has problems with Tiffs including profiles.

Before posting you should convert the pic into sRGB (in PS ) or, since there are a few browsers which support profiles , delete it by un-checking the “embedd profile” Function in the " save to web" Dialogue.

Hope that helpes.

CU around
art

#19

Many people have commented that my darker images (black wolves mainly) are hard to see because they’re Too dark, while for me they seem fine. I can see all the details clearly without any eye strain.
So I figured I should try and sort this out…

But I don’t understand the Adobe Gamma calibration… I’ve followed it through once along with the tutorial linked, but it’s turned out way too bright.

I think it’s the matching the boxes thing.
The first one, where it gets you to pump up the contrast then adjust the brightness so that the center box is ‘only just visible against the black surround’ while keeping the frame bright white. I can’t get that. The center box is always grey and clearly visible. The darkest it’ll go doesn’t make much of a difference, it just darkens the white.

Then the Gamma box matching… Adjusting the slider so the center box fades into the patterned frame. How can a solid colour ‘fade’ into a black and white lined frame? I kind of just left it in the middle.

Then with the coloured ones, I just matched the solid box with the colored lines, ignoring the black. But obviously that’s wrong.

Any help? B:

#20

sRGB is a pretty generic profile. Especially when you’re actually working with color. As opposed to simply viewing color.
Adobe RGB has a much wider gamma and can display many more colors than a generic profile like sRGB.
It’s a shame to use such a generic profile when using such an advanced app like PS.
Or any other design app that deals with precise color.