Editing advice for a newbie please

[Worst Case Scenario]

Pic looks nice but I’m on a calibrated mac system so that’s not much help.

Colour space and profiles  are a whole world of frustration until you can get your head around it.

Basically there is no fixed measure of colour that every one uses. And even if there were, there’s nothing to allow for the people who like to have their monitor so bright you need sunglasses.

Calibrating your monitor gets rid of any casts and sets your brightness and contrast correctly, effectively giving you a neutral blank canvas to work with. You then choose the colour space you want use.  Then if some one else with a calibrated monitor looks at your pic in the colour space you used, they will be seeing exactly what you see.

When you send to a printer you need to allow for the fact that they can not produce as many colours as you can see on screen, so you add a profile that was created for the printer which will convert the image. If you then use PS colour proofing you should see exactly what you’ll get back from the printers.

LR displays images in the Prophoto colour space, you then assign a colour space when you export images, or add a profile when you print from LR.

If you images look different in PS to LR that will be why, export them in Prophoto and they will match.

The best option to play safe is to shoot, work and export in sRGB. As this is the most widely used.

Think of it as the American dollar, it may not be what everyone uses. But if you send it to some one, they will know what it is and they can convert to what they want with out to much hassle. Your problem is that you are trying to force dollars onto people who are only  trading with shells and beads.

[ebi]

re: internet explorer. There is a running joke about internet explorer that goes like this:

How to hide your porn files from people without making Hidden folders

1. Go to Desktop and create a new folder

2. Name the folder Internet Explorer

3. Change the folder icon to Internet Explorer

4. Keep it in a corner of the desktop.

No one will ever open internet explorer…

that said, I find color differences from computer to computer. And i don’t care about PC’s and internet explore b/c my demographic are ALL using macs. I try not to make a big deal about it. You have no idea what your files are going to look like to someone using an old monitor with bad color to begin with. It’s futile to try to control that. However, by using sRgb color space you can eliminate a lot of headache…as everyone else has said above.

[Bill]

Very True Ebi, very true.

I have proofing available on my website, but I encourage my clients to see their images on one of my devices since I know that the color/monitor has been calibrated to a degree. I re-calibrate my 2 monitors every 4 weeks, just to be on top of it.

By doing this, I can maintain some consistency in an inconsistent world.

[JLiu]

I’m a bit fastidious with color representation, so I tend to check on 4 different mediums (main calibrated monitor, uncalibrated monitor, iPad, and laptop screen) before I even post online.

If using Photoshop (and editing for digital display and not physical print), it’s best to use the “Save for web…” option – I believe this converts the file to sRGB colorspace (not 100% sure on this…too lazy to check).

[cameraclicker]

Photoshop’s Save for Web @ Devices…, has a checkbox for converting to sRGB.  Checked, it does, unchecked it does not.

[It Makes My Eyes Burn]

re: internet explorer. There is a running joke about internet explorer that goes like this:

How to hide your porn files from people without making Hidden folders

1. Go to Desktop and create a new folder

2. Name the folder Internet Explorer

3. Change the folder icon to Internet Explorer

4. Keep it in a corner of the desktop.

No one will ever open internet explorer…

Except mom and grandma; they do not know any better :/

 

[ebi]

i believe that mom and grandma are looking for the AOL icon.

The problem with “save for web” is that if it isn’t already converted into SRGB you could end up with undesirable color shifts. I prefer to process images that will end up online with the sRGB colorspace first. Unless I need to do a lot of retouching, then i’ll process high rez into Adobe 1998, retouch and save final. Then convert to sRGB for the web version, keeping my Adobe 1998 for prints.

Lately though I’ve been getting a lot of requests for CMYK colorspaces. I think we are getting to a point that a lot of publications/agencies/etc are losing their older staff that have print production experience and are not familiar with CMYK conversions so they’d just prefer to have it done at the source so they don’t have to futz with it. It could also be that they really have no idea what they are doing to begin with and are clueless to their file specs.

[Author]

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