Hello everybody.

Yes, another topic about color mismatch in Photoshop! But I can't find a single forum post on the Internet that has a clear answer to this very simple question.

It's very, very simple! Take our forum logo on the top left corner that says "INVISION" (logo4.gif). Save and open on Photoshop (don't color manage) and now open elsewhere (there's no ICC profile embedded). Now, why are the colors different?

I have a calibrated monitor (Spyder 3) and the calibration resulting ICC profile is associated with Vista's color managent engine.

My biggest problem is working with images out of Capture NX in PS CS3. The colors are just not the same! And I do color manage everything (ProPhoto or Adobe RGB).

WHY!?

Regards,
Luis

Oh, and don't blame Vista!

Luis

Because Photoshop uses whatever RGB working space you have set in the color preference as the assumption for the untagged document. You can't turn off color management in Photoshop, its always looking at the embedded profile or it just takes a guess, the reason that untagged documents are so evil.

The other application, assuming its non ICC aware just sends the RGB numbers to the display. It hasn't a clue about the color space, nor is it making a guess.

Andrew,

Thank you so much for putting it so simple! Now I got it. I thought Photoshop would just use the RGB numbers, just like any other application.

And I believe the color mismatch I'm having with exported TIFFs from Capture NX that are opened on CS3 has something to do with my dual monitor setup. Maybe Capture NX is loading the profile from the primary monitor, from where it is first started, and using it on the secondary monitor, where I do my post processing work. Is that a possibility?

Best regards,
Luis

Of course it will look different because, as stated below, it doesn't have a specific profile attached, which should be sRGB for web (monitor) use. Once you assign the sRGB profile, it would look pretty much the same on all calibrated monitors, and even pretty close on non calibrated monitors, since your eyes adjust automatically the white point. I've tested this many, many times over the years, and I'm pretty happy wit the results ranging from friends high end monitors to those old 15" CRTs you find still in State Universities in the library--mainly to look up resources and retrieve information--but definitely not to images. Converting to sRGB does a good job all around for web/monitor based reproduction.

Thank you all for the help! I see that my problem was understanding how Photoshop color manage things, not color management itself.

Anyways, I just bought Andrew's book ;-)

Luis

A very good book, indeed.