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Hello,
I'm having a strange color management issue in Bridge (64 bit). Essentially, Bridge is not displaying images in either the thumbnails or preview pane using the correct color profile.
Background: I'm on Windows using a dual monitor setup (both independantly calibrated) but I have the issue even when I use only one monitor. Photoshop has no issues with color settings. I've tried resetting all settings (hitting Ctrl as Bridge starts). I've tried purging my cache and having Bridge generate monitor-size previews.
The weirdest part is when I start Bridge, for a split second images appear to be in the correct profile, and then Bridge adjusts everything to the wrong color profile.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
Sorry. Been a busy week...
...
Nrbelex wrote:
The following look the same to me in Bridge but different in Photoshop:
However Yammer's statement...
Bridge previews all images in sRGB regardless of the workspace. This is because Bridge generates previews in 8-bit sRGB (relative colormetric intent) and stores them in a cache as JPEGs.
...makes a lot of sense. If that is the case, both images above will look the same when downloaded and previewed in Bridge.
Would anyone with a wide gamut monitor mind testin
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Yammer P wrote:
Sorry. Been a busy week...
I have a wide-gamut monitor, and I can confirm that I see the same as you:
Both images look the same in Bridge, and markedly different in Photoshop (and Firefox*), with the ProPhoto image much brighter (especially the four patches on the right).
If you do a RC conversion to sRGB in Photoshop they look the same.
BTW, no need to keep saying "if Yammer is correct", I am 100% confident that this is the way Bridge does still image previews. Just look at your cache folders for proof.
(* although, for some reason, the two image thumbnails in your above post above look the same until they are clicked on. Must be something to do with the Jive forum software.)
Thanks! I kept saying "if" because A. There was another member on these forums who was convinced this couldn't be problem, and B. It's pretty shocking that Bridge makes no attempt to inform you the preview is in sRGB, even when next to the preview it says you're looking at an image in a much wider gamut. I would think that's a pretty terrible design flaw, but hey, that's just me.
Thanks again!
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That's (one of the reasons) why Bridge has no editing capabilities whatsoever. It would be nonsensical to catastrophic if it did.
One has to keep in mind that Bridge is just an ad-hoc image file browser. It essentially was created as nothing more and nothing less than Photoshop's file browser and it was called exactly that in its first iteration.
Using the Bridge Preview panel to attempt to judge colors is futile.
I have on numerous past occasions posted on the fallacy of the totally artificial Adobe Creative "Suite" concept, for which Bridge was jerry-rigged to somehow mimic the function of a connection element among the applications that were presented as a "suite", e.g.:
Inconsistency between or among applications in the artificial "suites" should come as no surprise.
The "suite" concept is a fabrication of Adobe marketing and bean-counting types. The engineering teams are totally independent of each other, they are not only in different buildings but in different cities and states of the American Union, even in different countries.
The fact that they have little if any communication among them is highlighted by requests occasionally made in these forums by top Adobe engineers to let the other teams know when there are problems in one application that impact our workflow in another one.
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station_two wrote:
That's (one of the reasons) why Bridge has no editing capabilities whatsoever. It would be nonsensical to catastrophic if it did.
One has to keep in mind that Bridge is just an ad-hoc image file browser. It essentially was created as nothing more and nothing less than Photoshop's file browser and it was called exactly that in its first iteration.
Using the Bridge Preview panel to attempt to judge colors is futile.
I have on numerous past occasions posted on the fallacy of the totally artificial Adobe Creative "Suite" concept, for which Bridge was jerry-rigged to somehow mimic the function of a connection element among the applications that were presented as a "suite", e.g.:
Inconsistency between or among applications in the artificial "suites" should come as no surprise.
The "suite" concept is a fabrication of Adobe marketing and bean-counting types. The engineering teams are totally independent of each other, they are not only in different buildings but in different cities and states of the American Union, even in different countries.
The fact that they have little if any communication among them is highlighted by requests occasionally made in these forums by top Adobe engineers to let the other teams know when there are problems in one application that impact our workflow in another one.
Yea, this makes sense. I'm not saying it's a fatal flaw that Bridge can't preview anything better than sRGB, but it would certainly be nice, especially because it's partially designed to allow you to quickly appraise your images and sort the winners from the losers. If you don't have all the colors in front of you, that becomes much harder.
Worse is the fact that nowhere is it made clear Bridge is only displaying sRGB. And when you look at an image in a wider gamut, Bridge seems to indicate you're looking at a wider-gamut shot:
If they were upfront about it, I'd be less concerned.
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Nrbelex wrote:
Anyway, it looks like Bridge is showing you colors outside sRGB, which means I'm probably experiencing a bug. [I believe there's a flaw in your workflow. If the file was originally sRGB, you can't convert it to a wider gamut without being sure the actual values of the new image are correct. Although your colors also look out of the sRGB gamut, so not sure what's going on there.] The following look the same to me in Bridge but different in Photoshop:
Sorry, when editing a forum post it does not seem to get updated in the mail nor do all the screenshots appear.
I only use ProphotoRGB and 16 bit for critical situations with blue skies or interiors (more detail preserved), it leaves me more room for editing contrast before banding and posterisation steps in. For normal work I only use 8 bit AdobeRGB (when the 16 bit is finished I also convert to 8 bit AdobeRGB) for the simple reason that for the majority of my work my clients need 8 bit AdobeRGB (magazines, press etc) and often convert some again to sRGB for the simple fact 'normal' (non business) people have everything set to sRGB so converting for the job needed makes sense to me.
So to show you again I have little to none difference between Bridge and PS here is a screenshot of my whole 30" screen (a messed up workspace for PS because otherwise I could not get the screenshot showing only the image floating).
The files are only edited for a better Dynamic Range in Photomatix and need more processing so they are halfway and yet not finished. However it shows that it does not matter for me starting with an original DNG or converting from jpeg, the result is the same.
And in agreement with Station-Two, I never use Bridge for color judgement.
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Omke Oudeman wrote:
I only use ProphotoRGB and 16 bit for critical situations with blue skies or interiors (more detail preserved), it leaves me more room for editing contrast before banding and posterisation steps in. For normal work I only use 8 bit AdobeRGB (when the 16 bit is finished I also convert to 8 bit AdobeRGB) for the simple reason that for the majority of my work my clients need 8 bit AdobeRGB (magazines, press etc) and often convert some again to sRGB for the simple fact 'normal' (non business) people have everything set to sRGB so converting for the job needed makes sense to me.
So to show you again I have little to none difference between Bridge and PS here is a screenshot of my whole 30" screen (a messed up workspace for PS because otherwise I could not get the screenshot showing only the image floating).
The files are only edited for a better Dynamic Range in Photomatix and need more processing so they are halfway and yet not finished. However it shows that it does not matter for me starting with an original DNG or converting from jpeg, the result is the same.
And in agreement with Station-Two, I never use Bridge for color judgement.
Omke Oudeman,
Your workflow sounds totally logical. That's the same reason I use 16 bit ProPhotoRGB during the editing stages for many of my shots.
But I would just point out: A. your screenshot doesn't have a color profile embedded, which makes any comparison of colors between Bridge and Photoshop pretty much impossible for anyone else (your custom monitor profile should usually be embedded in the screenshot), and B. there don't appear to be many colors in your example that are outside sRGB, so I wouldn't expect to see a difference between how it appears in Bridge versus Photoshop. It's only when colors are vastly outside the sRGB gamut that the difference would be obvious. e.g. the color patches from post 22. If you download the ProPhotoRGB patch and put it side-by-side, like you did with this example (and you're using a wide-gamut monitor), you should see a vast difference.
I also don't use Bridge for any adjustments. But I do (did) use it for appraising shots before I brought them into Photoshop. Color is obviously a part of that appraisment, so Bridge is not helpful in that sense.
Thanks
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I also don't use Bridge for any adjustments. But I do (did) use it for appraising shots before I brought them into Photoshop. Color is obviously a part of that appraisment, so Bridge is not helpful in that sense.
about A:
I don't get that, I have a custom made monitor profile based on D65 and with or without this profile the only difference one would spot would be in the total picture, this screenshot shows what I see and that is not as much difference between the Bridge thumb and preview (and in the metadata placard you can see they are 16 bit ProPhoto with on top of it the floating PS panel with the same image. It is one picture of one screen, without my monitor profile (and without knowing what happens during the adding process to the Adobe site) or with, the difference between both applications would not change, only the total picture. (or I really don't understand anything anymore about color management )
about B:
There you have a point but this was a current project at hand and at this moment there is a bit over saturation in the wood. In real life I also almost never have to deal with the bright colors of your example. I don't want to go again messing my workspaces to create a screenshot for the files you provided but I can assure you I have less to none difference between both files in both Bridge and PS, like I never have seen your problem on my current computer (Mac Pro, 2 x 2,4 6 core intel Xeon mid 2012 and a lot of RAM and SSD etc including ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB VRAM running OSX 10.8.3) as well as my former MacPro with same graphic card - and two others - that I used since 2008 during OSX 10.5 to 10.7 with all used versions of CS.
And as for the quote, I also never make my choices based on colors for DNG in Bridge, in fact, I always shoot with manual WB set to 5500 K, whether in daylight or artificial light, I just don't bother because I want my colors to be adjusted in ACR and refined the way I want them in PS. The plus side of manual WB is that all colors are off in the same way and can be adjusted in the correct direction in one go for a series
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Omke Oudeman wrote:
about A:
I don't get that, I have a custom made monitor profile based on D65 and with or without this profile the only difference one would spot would be in the total picture, this screenshot shows what I see and that is not as much difference between the Bridge thumb and preview (and in the metadata placard you can see they are 16 bit ProPhoto with on top of it the floating PS panel with the same image. It is one picture of one screen, without my monitor profile (and without knowing what happens during the adding process to the Adobe site) or with, the difference between both applications would not change, only the total picture. (or I really don't understand anything anymore about color management )
The first threshold question is whether you're using a wide gamut monitor. I'm going to assume the answer is yes. The reason it's essential to embed your monitor profile in your screenshot is if you do not have a wide gamut monitor, someone looking at your image who does will be able to tell since the gamut will be smaller than it should be. If you are not using a wide gamut monitor, that would explain why you cannot see the difference. Additionally, whether you have a wide-gamut monitor or not, if you do not embed a profile, the untagged image will appear way oversaturated when brought into Photoshop (this is happening for me) unless I can guess the approximate color space of your monitor.
Admittedly, if you are using a wide-gamut monitor, then although the image will be way oversatured without a profile (until I assign one), both the Photoshop portion and Bridge portion should be way oversatured by the same amount. However it's not particularly helpful to use guesswork and approximation when trying to narrow down a problem like this. You say "this screenshot shows what I see," but you have to keep in mind you are looking at it on your monitor. Even though your screenshot will obviously look right to you on your monitor, someone looking at it on a smaller gamut monitor won't see what you're talking about.
about B:
There you have a point but this was a current project at hand and at this moment there is a bit over saturation in the wood. In real life I also almost never have to deal with the bright colors of your example. I don't want to go again messing my workspaces to create a screenshot for the files you provided but I can assure you I have less to none difference between both files in both Bridge and PS, like I never have seen your problem on my current computer (Mac Pro, 2 x 2,4 6 core intel Xeon mid 2012 and a lot of RAM and SSD etc including ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB VRAM running OSX 10.8.3) as well as my former MacPro with same graphic card - and two others - that I used since 2008 during OSX 10.5 to 10.7 with all used versions of CS.
Yea, I understand why you don't want to mess with your workflow. I wouldn't either if I were in the middle of a project. But (assuming you have a wide-gamut monitor) if you finish a project and do get the chance, I encourage you to try the ProPhotoRGB color patch in Photoshop versus Bridge. When you really stray from sRGB, you, like me and Yammer, should see a major difference. I suppose there's the possibility that the Mac version of Bridge works differently, but that doesn't seem likely. It's possible you've never noticed the difference before because (again, assuming you have a wide-gamut monitor) you've never been looking for it, or you don't shoot many subjects with colors vastly outside sRGB - things like flowers, dyes, clothing, bright lights, etc.
And as for the quote, I also never make my choices based on colors for DNG in Bridge, in fact, I always shoot with manual WB set to 5500 K, whether in daylight or artificial light, I just don't bother because I want my colors to be adjusted in ACR and refined the way I want them in PS. The plus side of manual WB is that all colors are off in the same way and can be adjusted in the correct direction in one go for a series
That's an interesting idea and really illustrates the beauty of shooting RAW - tons on flexibility. And in fact, whether you use manual white balance, or don't, with RAW everything can be corrected or adjusted from a certain baseline by the same amount after the fact anyway.
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I think Omke has a MacPro, or something like that. I think these use IPS displays, which are all wide-gamut, as far as I know. Certainly, my HP LP2475w is IPS and has a close-to-AdobeRGB gamut. I bought mine after being impressed by a friend's MacPro.
As Nrbelex correctly points out, a screenshot is ill-defined colourwise unless accompanied by a colour profile, or, more usually, correctly converted to sRGB (which would be inappropriate in this case).
I made a Photoshop action for making screengrabs. After using the Windows Alt-PrtScn hotkey for grabbing the current window, Photoshop creates a New File (which is automatically sized for the grab in the buffer) and pastes the RGB into the document. The action then Assigns the monitor profile to the document. Finally, the document is Converted to sRGB. Clearly, this last step isn't much use here, and is really only for standard web use, where gamut isn't important.
How this might work on a Mac I have no idea. I don't know anything about the Mac screen grab process.
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How this might work on a Mac I have no idea. I don't know anything about the Mac screen grab process.
I have an Apple Cinema Display 30" and no idea if this is a wide Gamut, I believe so but will have to do more digging to find out and at this moment time is limited. Just tried a bit of rereading on the sites of G. Ballard but it has been a while I looked at this and there is plenty to study. Using Safari all is color managed for the example also shown somewhere on this or the related thread and this always has been so.
Also I'm not sure about the profile for screenshots but nevertheless I keep stating that the screenshot shows what I see, no significant difference between Bridge and PS. Regardless what profile you have are use to see my screenshot, under- or over saturated, the difference between both applications on the same screen is not there as you clearly have in the OP problem.
I do use bright colors every now and then but don't have them at hand at this moment, (on our calendar spring already started last week but this morning there was a bit snow so bright and nice colored flowers are also no option at this moment I'm afraid…) and the shocking difference of the earlier provided examples will be noticeable for many occasions and also unmissable. I never have seen this.
So the used Color settings and monitor for your windows set up seems to do something with Bridge that I can't replicate on my Mac.
When having more time I will try to get back, for the moment I step a little back.
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Omke Oudeman wrote:
I have an Apple Cinema Display 30" and no idea if this is a wide Gamut, I believe so but will have to do more digging to find out and at this moment time is limited. Just tried a bit of rereading on the sites of G. Ballard but it has been a while I looked at this and there is plenty to study. Using Safari all is color managed for the example also shown somewhere on this or the related thread and this always has been so.
Also I'm not sure about the profile for screenshots but nevertheless I keep stating that the screenshot shows what I see, no significant difference between Bridge and PS. Regardless what profile you have are use to see my screenshot, under- or over saturated, the difference between both applications on the same screen is not there as you clearly have in the OP problem.
I just did a bit of research, and the available information is scant, but it seems that although the Apple 30" Cinema display is quoted to be "wide gamut", it is said to be about 70-75% of AdobeRGB, which isn't actually very wide. It may be "wide gamut" in the same sense that cassette tapes were often described as "low noise" (i.e. marketing speak). One source actually said they were sRGB, and not wide at all.
If that is correct, it will be difficult to see the difference between images containing colours outside the sRGB gamut, even in colour-managed applications, as the wide gamut images will be restricted to the display profile, which will be quite close to sRGB.
The thing about screen shots is that you check them on your own computer, not someone else's. Certainly in Windows, all a screenshot does is record the display's pixel RGB values--not the colour space. If you then display this screen grab with the same colour space, it will look the same. If you display it with a different colour space, it will look differently. This is why Nrbelex suggested embedding the display profile.
Here is an illustration of a screen grab with and without an embedded display profile...
Wide gamut screen grab with display profile assigned
Wide gamut screen grab with no profile assigned (therefore assumed to be sRGB)
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Yammer P wrote:
I just did a bit of research, and the available information is scant, but it seems that although the Apple 30" Cinema display is quoted to be "wide gamut", it is said to be about 70-75% of AdobeRGB, which isn't actually very wide. It may be "wide gamut" in the same sense that cassette tapes were often described as "low noise" (i.e. marketing speak). One source actually said they were sRGB, and not wide at all.
If that is correct, it will be difficult to see the difference between images containing colours outside the sRGB gamut, even in colour-managed applications, as the wide gamut images will be restricted to the display profile, which will be quite close to sRGB.
Yammer, thanks for looking into that - beat me to the punch. And that would explain it. If the monitor is not wide gamut, there won't be any perceptible difference - plain and simple.
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And that would explain it. If the monitor is not wide gamut, there won't be any perceptible difference - plain and simple.
Since I recently bought a new 1Dx, a new 24-70mm and a new Mac Pro I first have to earn a little more money beforeI can invest in a new monitor to confirm this definitively….
Until now my thoughts about a new monitor are down to two brands, Eizo and Quato, but I want a large screen and they don't come cheap
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Omke Oudeman wrote:
Since I recently bought a new 1Dx, a new 24-70mm and a new Mac Pro I first have to earn a little more money beforeI can invest in a new monitor to confirm this definitively….
Until now my thoughts about a new monitor are down to two brands, Eizo and Quato, but I want a large screen and they don't come cheap
That's a pretty awesome kit, so I don't blame you. Don't know about 30 inchers, but on the 24-26" end there are some pretty impressive monitors for a lot less than they used to be.
Good luck!
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Don't know about 30 inchers, but on the 24-26" end there are some pretty impressive monitors for a lot less than they used to be.
I have to confess that I'm pretty spoiled with that 30" and 24" certainly is no option anymore. For some odd reason I also can't get used to a two monitor set up so either it will be again a 30" or minimum a 27".
Since the price difference for the extra 3" is huge I think I have to go for a 27"…
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Nrbelex wrote:
Yammer P,
Would you elaborate on this a bit?
I think what happens is that Bridge initially displays thumbnails with an sRGB display profile, and when it's finished generating thumbnails, it switches them to the monitor profile. This would be more apparent with a wide-gamut display.
If that's true, then (barring a bug) shouldn't the opposite happen? Shouldn't they initially appear desaturated, then it should switch to the wide-gamut monitor profile and appear properly?
I know, it sounds weird, but that's the way it would happen. If you display an image using an sRGB display profile on a wide gamut monitor, you will see over-saturated colours. Think Internet Explorer for Windows: it only does half the job, and it always uses the sRGB display profile, meaning that photos look awful on my system—same with photo attachments in MS Office (not colour-managed).
If you remember that a profile is just a matrix of RGB numbers from 0-255, and that a wide-gamut monitor translates these numbers to more vivid colours than sRGB, you will see that a preview with an sRGB display profile will be over-saturated, until this is corrected.
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Yammer, thanks - I realized this was right a little bit later - see the end of post 22. And yes, by never accurate, I meant never 100% accurate (i.e. clipped) for images with color outside the gamut.
Omke, I'm using just PS6, nothing else in the Suite. Bridge has no proof color setting - it should be displaying images exactly as Photoshop does. If Yammer is right, this is in fact normal behavior, since the images I am demonstrating with contain colors outside the sRGB gamut. You can try it for yourself with the samples I provided.
Thanks!
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Nrbelex wrote:
YammerP,
Bridge previews all images in sRGB regardless of the workspace. This is because Bridge generates previews in 8-bit sRGB (relative colormetric intent) and stores them in a cache as JPEGs.
If this is true, it's pretty shocking. If Bridge only generates sRGB previews and thumbnails, then all people who use any gamut outside of sRGB will never see an accurate representation of the colors of their images in Bridge. Really!?
Why never accurate? All it means is that any colours outside the sRGB gamut will be clipped; all colours within will be rendered exactly the same.