Skip to main content
E
efjrgqiy0D44
Participant
November 25, 2020
Question

New to photoshop! My exported image looks different to the one in photoshop.

  • November 25, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 144 views

I have tried converting the profile to sRGB and that doesn't seem to have worked at all. Does anyone know what I could do to fix this? I know windows photo viewer can't see the image properly, this needs to go to someone that I've finished it for and now its just sitting in my files. Usually, I pop the image into Imgur so that they can download it for themselves, but now I can't

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 25, 2020

They don’t look very different from here. In this case I don’t see a problem at all.

 

Anyway. I need to briefly explain why and how Photoshop displays correctly and Windows “Photos” does not.

 

Photoshop is really designed to be used together with a monitor calibration tool (Spyder, i1 Display, ColorMunki etc). Photoshop’s whole architecture rests on that.

 

What this calibrator does is measure your display and write a full description of how it behaves, in detail. It’s like a detailed map of the monitor’s “terrain”. This is the monitor profile.

 

Photoshop uses this monitor profile to correct, on the fly, the numbers it sends out to the video card/display. If, say, your monitor has a slight lift in the midtones, the profile records that. The numbers sent out by Photoshop compensates with a corresponding dip to neutralize. This way, the file is always correctly represented on screen.

 

This is what we all know as color management. Windows “Photos” doesn’t do any of that. It just takes the original numbers and send them straight through without any correction.

 

----

 

When you send out images and don’t know how they will be treated, like for web, there isn’t much you can do, except take basic precautions. The most important is to convert to sRGB. The reason is that most monitors are natively fairly close to sRGB, so it should appear roughly right even without color management. Not accurate, not perfect, but close enough. Not very much correction is needed.

 

Embed the sRGB profile to ensure it will always be correctly treated in applications that are color managed. That’s all you can do.

 

You can’t really worry too much about this. You have no control over how people set up their systems, and most importantly – it’s not really your problem. What you can do is get it right from your end. If people want to see it correctly, they can if they want.

    E
    efjrgqiy0D44Author
    Participant
    November 26, 2020

    Thank you for the well-detailed reply, you have explained it very well! I will play around and try to make it safe as close to the original as possible. It might not look too different at first view but you might notice the original is more 'red' skinned while the saved image is more of a brown/chocolate.
    Thanks so much!

    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    D FosseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 26, 2020

    If you have a calibrator, you can always trust Photoshop and use that as reference.

     

    If you don't, you have two options. One is to rely on the manufacturer profiles that (in most cases) get automatically distributed and installed through Windows Update. That can work reasonably well, but the problem is that these profiles are very often defective in various ways. Then Photoshop can't display correctly. That can be difficult to troubleshoot.

     

    The other is to just use a generic profile like sRGB IEC61966-2.1. That's the default in Windows if no other profile is installed. sRGB is usually very trouble-free, but it's not entirely accurate.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices