Color Management Help?

[vinnyrzz]

Hi! Using Adobe Photoshop CC 2015. I like to draw digitally on photoshop as a hobby, and have been having a problem for a while now, which seems to be something involving color management. I've tried googling and reading up on my problem for bit of time, but nothing seems to help me.

My main issue is that whenever I save an image from photoshop and upload it, the version that gets uploaded is different. Several threads that I've read have mentioned "color management", so I looked it up and set my settings to what they recommend, but the problem persists. Even if I assign the color profile through the edit function, the colors still appear different. I also tried saving through different methods (export, save for web, save as), but that didn't seem to have worked either. I have ICC Profile selected when applicable, still doesn't work.

The issue occurs only when the image is uploaded online, it looks fine viewing it in my computer's image viewer. People say that google chrome doesn't have a standard color management which is why the image looks different than it does in IE or FF (the image I uploaded looked perfect in IE), but many other artists that post their art online seem to have no problem with that. (ex. this image looks the same in both IE and Chrome).

Extra info, just in case it's needed:

Before I upgraded to CC 2015, I was using CS6, and never had the problem back then.

I draw normally in RGB, but I have tested out CYMK but no difference.

Using Windows 10. Adobe Photoshop Version: 2015.0.0 20150529.r.88 2015/05/29:23:59:59 CL 1024429  x64

Does anyone have any idea how I can fix this? Any help is appreciated, thank you.

[gener7]

For one 2015.0.0 has been updated to 2015.1.2  You are running a base unpatched version. That alone tells me something is not right.

And if you have Windows 10, you are able to update to CC 2018. Your problems are likely related to CC 2015 not being updated especially if CS6 works.

You need to take care of that first.

[D Fosse]

First of all, some applications are color managed, most are not. Web browsers may or may not be.

A color managed display path means that the document profile is converted into your monitor profile, on the fly, and these corrected RGB numbers are sent to your display.

An application without color management doesn't do that; it just sends the original numbers straight through, uncorrected.

Without color management, it's all down to the monitor how the numbers display. If the file is created in a color space that is fairly close to your monitor's native color space, then it will look roughly acceptable. Most monitors are pretty close to sRGB natively, so an sRGB file should in most cases look OK even without color management. Adobe RGB or ProPhoto will look very wrong.

To use Adobe RGB or ProPhoto, you must have a full end-to-end color management chain operating. That means you can not use applications without full color management.

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For color management to work as intended, you also need to have a valid monitor profile. This is set up at system level. The color managed application loads that profile and uses it to display your image, under the covers. This is why people buy and use calibrators (Spyder, i1 Display, ColorMunki etc.) - it's the only way to have full control over this vital link in the chain.

Manufacturer-supplied monitor profiles are surprisingly often defective in many ways. With a bad profile, the whole chain breaks down and what you see on screen is incorrect. In that case, as a temporary measure, you can use sRGB IEC61966-2.1. It won't be entirely right, but better than a corrupt profile.

[D Fosse]

Oh, and don't assign profiles! Always convert! Assign is what you do if there is no profile, and then you need to assign the correct one. You can't "experiment" with this.

[Test Screen Name]

Also, what are your colour settings? What specific RGB profile do you use? (Do not use CMYK, ever, if the file is for the web).

[Dynamic Office]

Also, just completely ignore CMYK unless you’re intending to print the image,

CMYK is a colour profile intended for print, it’s the mixture of inks (C=cyan, M=Magenta, Y=Yellow, K=Key/Black)

If you started an image as RGB, then converted to CMYK, then converted it back to RGB this could be the problem with why the colours are looking off.

RGB has 16 million colours within it gamut, CMYK doesn’t have nearly this many colours (Realistically, it would be impractical for a printer to house 16 million different inks)

So when you convert it from RGB > CMYK Photoshop will adjust the colours that are not within the CMYK colour gamut but once that process has happened there is no way of ‘retrieving’ that information back.

1. E.G once you go CMYK you can’t then go back to RGB as the colour is lost.

Well, you can go back to RGB of course but the colour is still lost.

Also if it’s intended for the web, I would always recommend saving a PNG, as JPEG images compress some of the files information (without getting technical), so every time you save a JPEG, edit it, save JPEG, edit it and so on… you actually lose information and the image get worse and worse in quality. (I don’t suspect you’re doing this, just some advice to note)

[josephlavine]

Please  share your Color Settings (shift+command+k). 

As others have mentioned, unless you are having your work published via a color press, such as a magazine, newspaper, brochure...) there is no reason to work in CMYK.  I prefer to work in a large color space, such as ProPhoto RGB, and then convert to smaller spaces depending on my needs, such as a website where sRGB is preferred.

The following works well for me:

ProPhoto RGB:  16 bit images from RAW captures / these are my layered PSD working files

Adobe RGB:  8 bit flattened images that I use for print

sRGB:  8 bit jpegs for web use

I hope that helps.