Photoshop view of image seriously altered in jpg save

[S.Lundin]

What did I do?? The left Photoshop view is flattened and saved as jpg. The right and lower are what it looks like in Paint and Irfanview.  Not even close to what I wanted. I have redone this three times and can't figure out why the saves are so far off of the Photoshop view.  It's like they got run through a super-vibrant filter on saving. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I run on W10 Pro and have a 10bit monitor I calibrate wiht a datacolor Spider and verify it with a xrite color card.  Very discouraging.

[D Fosse]

Photoshop displays correctly (or as correctly as your monitor profile is accurate).

The other two do not support color management and do not use the monitor profile at all. They are wrong. With a wide gamut display, full color management support is an absolute requirement. You cannot use applications without color management.

[davescm]

That looks like a non colour managed view of a narrow gamut image on a wide gamut monitor. Make sure your saved jpeg has the colour profile embedded.

Then ensure you are using colour managed applications to view your image. MS Paint is not colour managed, IrfanView is colour managed but only if colour management is set up in that application (including using your monitor profile).

Dave

[Per Berntsen]

You seem to have a wide gamut monitor, on which applications without color management will display images with oversaturated colors. Paint is not color managed, and neither is IrfanView by default, you have to enable it.

But the difference between Photoshop and Paint/Irfanview seems a bit bigger than it usually looks like, there is a significant change in brightness as well.

So I wonder if your monitor profile is OK.

What model is your Spyder?

And does the image have an embedded profile?

[S.Lundin]

I'm checking the suggestions

[Per Berntsen]

How does the image display in the color managed Photos app?

[S.Lundin]

this image was opened from an NEF without any changes into Photoshop. I changed from 16bit to 8bit RGB and saved as a jpg.  Left is photoshop view and right is how all other jpg openers show it.

 

[Conrad_C]

OK, that means you are comparing two different image processing pipelines.

You said:

“opened from an NEF without any changes into Photoshop”

That means this happened:

1. Photoshop doesn’t open raw files directly, so it asks Adobe Camera Raw to handle it.

2. Adobe Camera Raw applies default raw processing settings, so if you make no changes there and have not customized the default look, what you see is the default Adobe rendering, which can be visibly different from how the camera or other raw processors render it. This is unavoidable, because NEF is raw, so it requires interpretation and rendering, and each company’s engineering team has a different opinion of how best to interpret tones and colors.

3. Photoshop receives the rendering from Camera Raw as an RGB image and shows a color-managed view of that.

4. You export from Photoshop. When exporting to JPEG, if a color profile was set to be embedded, it should look the same in any other color-managed app. If a color profile was not embedded, the appearance can vary in other apps, and could vary even more (as others have pointed out) if the display is wide gamut.

You said:

“right is how all other jpg openers show it”

That means this happened:

1. If , like Photoshop, an application doesn’t have direct support for NEF, but unlike Photoshop it has no raw converter to interpret the NEF, then all it can do is show the JPEG format preview that the camera embedded. This view may or may not be color-managed, depending on the app.

So you are comparing a Nikon raw file processed with non-Nikon software, with a camera JPEG preview. They’re going to be different. If you want to make it look the way you want (different than the JPEG preview), adjust it in a raw editor. If you want it to match how the in-camera JPEG preview looks (which is what the other apps show), then you have two options:

A. When in Adobe Camera Raw, apply a Camera Matching Profile if available. This should be close, but sometimes not exact.

or

B. Use Nikon raw conversion software, because Nikon software uses the same raw processing engine and settings that the camera uses, so the visual interpretations will match.

[S.Lundin]

I found my monitor color profile was changed to default.  Correcting that did not help. But I also used Photomatix Pro to convert an NEF to jpg and it looked good as no dark and extra vibrance. I used Lightroom to export a lightly modified NEF and it also looks great.  Photoshop was not doing this last Sat night. I worked a dozen stills before bed.  It is important to remember this was not happeining a few days ago.  I am going to remove Photoshop and reinstall.   One big difference today is yesterday my Win10 box spent 40 minutes on updates.  My Spider is an old one (Win7 era) but I want to stress the profile it makes checks with my ColorChecker card. And with my R2880 profile from a datacolor spectrometer I can make very accurate prints from screen to paper.  I believe I changed a setting unknowingly that has caused this.  My fingers are always working against me in protest over work hours I think.

[NB, colourmanagement net]

I am hoping that your screen is correctly calibrated and profiled.

As others have suggested.

- always embed an icc profile when saving an image file in Photoshop,

- always view such images in an application that supports colourmanagement.

When you do that, the appearance on your screen will be consistent with what you see in Photoshop. 

What others who view your images see may differ because their screens may not be correctly calibrated and profiled and - perhaps even worse, they may not use a colour managed application to view.

All this becomes far more problematic when working with wide gamut / large gamut displays. It seems to Have one of those.

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net - adobe forum volunteer - co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
Help others by clicking "Correct Answer" if the question is answered.
Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

[S.Lundin]

I recalibrated my monitor yesterday. Photoshop still saving all jpg as dark and vibrant.

I connected my old 8 bit monitor and Photoshop jpg's still ugly.

I used the AdobeCreativeCloudCleanerTool to remove Photoshop then installed it. Still ugly jpg's.

I have tried files with and without ICC data.  No difference in files from Photoshop.

I precessed the name NEF file in Lightroom, Photomatix, and Luminar. They all worked.

At this point I don't know what to do so will call Adobe support. 

Lightroom will do 99% of what I need this week.

[Per Berntsen]

So are you saying that jpgs exported from Lightroom are OK, but jpgs exported from Photoshop are wrong?

How are you viewing the jpgs?

Don't use Paint, or Irfanview without color management, this will result in wrong colors.

You seem to have a wide gamut monitor, so it's crucial to only use color managed software, like the Windows Photos app.

If you are importing exported jpgs back into Lightroom, they will display the same as the original.

[S.Lundin]

Well, Adobe support took control of my computer. The support agent showed me that File/Export works and I can Save As a jpg2000.  But it seems there is nothing broken in Photoshop. It was suggested that Irfanview and Paint are using the ICC incorrectly.  They only misuse the profiles from Photoshop but not from Lightroom. The support agent said the Export process will save higher quality images.  I still wonder why Save As worked up to Tu or We of this week? I think I'll go listen to some Jazz.

[davescm]

As you were told earlier in this thread, MS Paint does not use the ICC profile at all, it is not a colour managed application. Irfanview can be set to colour manage the images, I.e. use the document profile and the monitor profile and thereby display correctly, but it needs to be set up specifically to do that, as shown by Per in his response.

Dave

[S.Lundin · Accepted solution]

Thank you all,  I was reading about the color settings in Photoshop at the Adobe site. I got a call from Adobe support. The fellow there got right to what was wrong in my Photoshop settings. He directed me to:

Edit / Preferences / Camera Raw / Workflow  

I had forgotten about that dialog.  The color space that was selected was *wscRGB.  I have no memory of choosing that.  Setting the color space to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 resoved the issue.  I am guessing I fumble finger bumped a setting that caused the change.  I'll give Adobe support an A+ for the call to me.  The Chat agent called me and left a message to call support for better help.

[S.Lundin]

I will put Nikon NX in my process to handle NEF when going to print.  Adobe recommends AdobeRGB for printing as it has a larger gamut.  I need to revisit color management in both pictures and videos.  It's been 10 years since I studied it.  I appologize if I was short. I'm in the middle of my towns Jazz Festival and needed to process hundreds of images a night and dozens of video clips. And was feeling really stuck.

Thank all again.

[Conrad_C]

Thanks for posting that the Color Space setting in Camera Raw was the cause, it’s a good reminder for us to check that. It’s very understandable and easy to forget about having changed the Camera Raw output color space, even though Adobe makes the setting visible at the bottom of the Camera Raw window. I have certainly made that mistake when I set the color space a different way for just one thing, and forget to change it back later.