Photoshop CS3 color problem

[tesher06]

Ok So I open photoshop and when I look at the colors at the right, all the greys are a brown color. I figure out that I have to uninstall my moniter drivers to make the colors grey again, so is there anyway I can fix this without me having to constintaly have to remove the drivers to have the normal greys?

 

[CptStern]

are you sure you're not in color mode like pantone or indexed color? click on little arrow at side of color palette, what is checkmarked? be default nothing should be checkmarked

 

[tesher06]

nothing is checked... except small thumbnaill.

 

[Vegeta897]

Could you show us a picture of the supposed grays that look brown to you, to see if it's really just you?

I have a feeling that if your monitor really was having a problem like that, it would be noticeable everywhere else, not just some palette in PS.

 

[Krynn72]

I vaguely remember something happening to me when I started up PS in the past when it would pop up a message as soon as it started saying that the color profile was changed and asked me if I wanted to go back to defaults or continue anyways. Maybe thats got something to do with it?

 

[tesher06]

heres the image that shows the grey is brown, and one that shows the grey(grey only works if I uninstall my monitor drivers).

 

[Krynn72]

Definitely not your monitory then, because it looks brown to me too. What does it look like if you desaturate it?

 

[Vegeta897]

Uhm, there must be some app on your computer that is adjusting the colors of your screen? Sort of like the equivalent of ATI CCC.

 

[Krynn72]

I dont think that would change the way we see it though... would it? I'm pretty sure ATI and Nvidia tools just adjust the output to one's monitor.

 

[Vegeta897]

Hmm, yeah that's probably correct.

But then you can take pictures of a video card artifacting, so... Are you really sure of where in the flow of graphics the printscreen captures or that color tweaking exists?

 

[Krynn72]

Nope.

 

[CptStern]

go to image > mode > make sure rgb or cmyk is checked

open your color palette (hit F6) on the top right there's a triangle, click that and pick "reset swatches"

play around with the color modes, see if other grey's are affected however not all color modes have greys in the swatches section

 

[CyberPitz]

I had the same problem as Krynn had once...which spawned the same problem as you.

I think Stern has the fix for ya.

 

[No Limit]

Your image mode is set to RGB. For anything that you're not printing thats good. But I would guess that the swatches you are using are CMYK. Create a new RGB swatch and see what happens.

On edit: Im not sure you can mix color modes in photoshop swatches. So that might not be your problem.

 

[Kadayi]

Unless you've a colour calibration tool like a Spyder, then try this:-

(1) Install your graphic drivers, set your monitor to its hardware default display settings.

(2) type in colour management into your system help, and bring up the dialog box.

(3) set your monitors display profile to Adobe RGB (1998), which is the RGB space recommended by most Photoshop professionals*. You might notice a shift in hue straight away, because most peoples monitors are set to shitty sRGB as default.

(4) fire up photoshop and under edit, head to colour settings and set RGB to Adobe RGB (1998) as well (the CMYK setting is fairly irrelevant). Its always worthwhile setting your colour management policies to convert any images to the working RGB as well.

Always work in RGB mode in photoshop. There is very little need to ever work in CMYK, and ultimately its an RGB emulation of CMYK anyway (as your seeing in through an RGB monitor). Your much better off to work in the RGB colour space and then use printer specific proofing as a means to preview how the image will look when printed** (plus CMYK files are 25% larger than RGB ones).

*ProPhoto RGB is better if dealing with 16 bit images such as Camera RAW as it possesses a wider gamut than Adobe RGB (1998).

** In order to proof on screen how something should print from Photoshop, goto view, proof set up, and under the devices to simulate list select your printer. It's also worth ticking simulate paper colour for further accuracy. Once you've set proofing up you can toggle it on and off using Ctrl (Apple) + Y.

Note when printing from Photoshop it is recommended to let Photoshop manage the printing, firstly you need to tell Photoshop this. When you are in the print screen, under colour handling, select Photoshop manages colours and select the printer from the profile list.

When you then hit Print, you need to find the colour management options of the printer and turn them off, otherwise the printer will attempt to colour correct the data Photoshop is sending (You can usually save these off settings as a named profile for future use).
You should find that your prints are a lot more accurate in relation to the proof image colours on your monitor in future. You'll never get 100% perfect screen to printer colours because of the differences between the physical (CMYK) and digital (RGB) colour spaces, but by proofing and letting Photoshop manage the printing process you can reduce the differential considerably.

I may or may not spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with these sorts of things every day

Hope that helps.

 

[No Limit]

Always work in RGB mode in photoshop. There is very little need to ever work in CMYK, and ultimately its an RGB emulation of CMYK anyway (as your seeing in through an RGB monitor). Your much better off to work in the RGB colour space and then use printer specific proofing as a means to preview how the image will look when printed** (plus CMYK files are 25% larger than RGB ones).

If you are doing anything that will be heading to a 4 color printing press or even a color laser printer with CMYK capability you should always use CMYK. Especially if you are going to a printing press a lot of times you don't have the ability to get a preview before those 10,000 brochures print. It would suck to get those 10,000 brochures and find out the black didn't convert over from RGB properly and now you have a shade of gray anywhere black should be because of color shifting. Or your customers have a specific logo they want to print in spot color so the colors are exact, RGB will screw that up royaly.

In fact most presses I worked with will insist on getting CMYK files and won't print otherwise.

 

[Kadayi]

If you are doing anything that will be heading to a 4 color printing press or even a color laser printer with CMYK capability you should always use CMYK. Especially if you are going to a printing press a lot of times you don't have the ability to get a preview before those 10,000 brochures print. It would suck to get those 10,000 brochures and find out the black didn't convert over from RGB properly and now you have a shade of gray anywhere black should be because of color shifting. Or your customers have a specific logo they want to print in spot color so the colors are exact, RGB will screw that up royaly.

In fact most presses I worked with will insist on getting CMYK files and won't print otherwise.

You know you can get your outside printer to send you their print colour profiles yes? (every professional print company has them) So you can proof accordingly in your office, at your machine, but still work in RGB (with all the advantages there of, which are myriad) no? When outsourcing, then convert to CMYK at end of process.

The CMYK colour space is considerably smaller than the digital RGB colour spaces. If you head to it straight away with an image you've effectively killed off large swathes of colour richness, which will result in dull and flat imagery before you've done anything else (which is less than ideal if you've a web presence). Digitally you don't work in CMYK, you convert to CMYK *

*And unless you are doing a 10000 print run down at your local printers its probably not worth it, because your desktop printer probably converts CMYK to sRGB anyway because its designed for home printing.

 

[Kadayi]

Here are two images (purely for the purposes of uploading both are RGB), but one was initially RGB, whilst the other was converted to CMYK then back to RGB. You might think they look the same, but if you look at the CMYK version Vs the unchanged RGB you'll see that its lost a great deal of colour richness, particularly noticeable when you look at the greens of the stem & fruit, as well as the intensity of glass orbs. In any kind of digital work, esp retouching you want to retain as much colour richness as possible.

RGB


CMYK




If you head to CMYK straight away, you've instantly dulled your image and there is no coming back from it.

 

[No Limit]

It really depends on what you are working on. Photoshop does give you quite a bit of additional features when working with RGB and I totally agree with you that when doing initial retouching or editing it might be benefitial to work in the RGB color space if you need to use certain filters or make certain adjustments only available with RGB. But my point was simply that before ever going to the press you should always finalize your work in CMYK. You don't want to leave something like that to chance.

Usually I work in Illustrator or inDesign when dealing with print. But if I had to do it in photoshop I would have one main CYMK document that would be the main file which would have any CMYK vector art and have a different set of RGB files that had the various components of the main composition. That way your stock photos or whatever else is in RGB but its always converted to CMYK when you place it in your main document.

 

[Kadayi]

If the thread was Indesign CS3 colour problem or Illustrator CS3 colour problem then perhaps I'd be saying, go with the CMYK from the beginning (although you can proof for output in exactly the same way in either application as you can in Photoshop), but as its Photoshop CS3 colour problem I thought it best to tailor the advice to the application, and using RGB is the best course of action with Photoshop. This isn't just me saying this, this is every Photoshop professional I know.

Here's Corey Barker on the very subject:-

We’ve been asked the question of whether to correct in CMYK or RGB a hundred times. As a general rule, we try to do as much color correction as possible in RGB mode, and if we’re going to use the image on press, we only convert to CMYK at the end of the correction process. The main reason is that CMYK mode throws away data—a lot of data—and why would you want to correct an image with significantly less data than your scanner can capture? We want as much data as possible while correcting images, and when we’re done, then we’ll convert to CMYK (under Image, choose Mode) and toss the data that won’t be used on press.

http://www.planetphotoshop.com/correct-in-cmyk-or-rgb.html

To reiterate, you don't work in CMYK, you convert to CMYK (and only if there is a point in doing so).

 

[No Limit]

The article you quoted says exactly what I just said. When working with raster images if you are doing adjustments it is a good idea to use RGB, my reasoning for doing so is not the loss of data as the article says (I never knew this, will have to look deeper) but because photoshop is much more limited under CMYK. If I was making a composition for print in PS that will have a mix of vector and raster images I would have the main document with all these vector images in CMYK and any other raster RGB elements can be outside this document in RGB for adjustments then placed back in the main CMYK document. This way you aren't converting vector or even raster CMYK art to RGB then back to CMYK again.

My point about illustrator or indesign was a passing one about how those programs should really be used for most print applications, not sure why you felt the need to put that in bold. I wasn't nor am I trying to argue with you, I just don't think it's correct to tell someone that they should always work in RGB mode in photoshop, that's not true in quite a few very important cases.

 

[StardogChampion]

Just go to Edit > Color Settings in PS and choose random ones then hit OK until it looks OK, OK?

Don't mess with your monitor.

 

[Kadayi]

My point about illustrator or indesign was a passing one about how those programs should really be used for most print applications, not sure why you felt the need to put that in bold. I wasn't nor am I trying to argue with you, I just don't think it's correct to tell someone that they should always work in RGB mode in photoshop, that's not true in quite a few very important cases.

Those important cases being, where you need to outsource to a postscript capable printer (IE a professional one) to print 10000 copies for publication yes? The sort of thing the average Halflife2.net user is doing every day? Rather than say probably PSing tits onto Obamas head to post at www.b3ta.com or colour correcting a photo they are going to upload to flickr or facebook yes?

What I've given is real world practical advice, that comfortably fits 99% of most PS users needs. Muddying the waters (simply to be contrary rather than practical) with one legged indians about CMYK, that really aren't applicable for the vast majority of people and might encourage them to adopt bad working practices by using the worst digital colour space from the off isn't remotely good advice. Proofing (a long standing concept that seems to escape you) will allow you to see how things will print to devices, without the necessity to constrain your colour space when you are working on them.

Just go to Edit > Color Settings in PS and choose random ones then hit OK until it looks OK, OK?

Don't mess with your monitor.

Definitely ignore this retard.

 

[No Limit]

Those important cases being when working with print on a press, so it is not correct to say always use RGB. I am fully aware of what proofing is, Im not new to this. I also understand it's limitations. None of this matters to the issue at hand which is that any time you go to the press you need to do it in CMYK; most print shops will demand it. So saying always use RGB is incorrect, I just wanted to correct it. You don't know what this user or anyone else readin your comment does in photoshop. There are many "professional grade" programmers here just as Im sure there are many "professional grade" graphic designers; you dont know what any of them are trying to do. I really didn't think my comment would get you this agitated, forget it.

 

[Kadayi]

Those important cases being when working with print on a press, so it is not correct to say always use RGB. I am fully aware of what proofing is, Im not new to this. I also understand it's limitations. None of this matters to the issue at hand which is that any time you go to the press you need to do it in CMYK; most print shops will demand it. So saying always use RGB is incorrect, I just wanted to correct it. You don't know what this user or anyone else readin your comment does in photoshop. There are many "professional grade" programmers here just as Im sure there are many "professional grade" graphic designers; you dont know what any of them are trying to do. I really didn't think my comment would get you this agitated, forget it.

Why would it agitate me? Because its extremely bad advice for the vast majority of the time. 95% or more of digital images doing the rounds will probably never be printed, they exist purely on HD, and servers and are viewed via screens, and of those that are printed professionally a fair few will probably have some digital (RGB) relationship as well (supporting website to poster advertising campaign). At best you'd make a CMYK copy of the image/illustration you've worked on, but retain a working RGB colour rich version for digital distribution. Even with illustrator its best to work RGB and only proof CMYK, so you have the best colour range at your disposal throughout the process.

Consider these 2 captures (from the excellent http://www.scarygirl.com/ site)

Left is RGB, right is CMYK. Which ones the one that's colour rich and vibrant? You think Nathan J uses CMYK as his starting point?

 

[Kadayi]

Don't mess with your monitor.

Monitor colour drifts over time so regular calibration is recommended, especially if you are using applications like Photoshop/Illustrator/Corel Painter day in day out and require on screen colour accuracy.

http://spyder.datacolor.com/product-mc.php

http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/pantone.aspx?ca=2

the Spyder2express or the Pantone Huey are ideal calibrators for home users which won't break the bank (unlike their more expensive cousins).

Layers TV did quite a nice little podcast about monitor colour calibration here:-

http://www.layersmagazine.com/layers-tv-episode-97.html

If your remotely serious about creating digital imagery its worth getting one.

 

[No Limit]

Just because something is or isn't vibrant on your monitor doesnt mean it will or won't be vibrant when you print it on a press (as Im sure you know). In fact you posting that picture just proves what I keep saying, the reason the colors look faded is because of the color shifting that takes place when you convert from RGB to CMYK (or vice versa). But for whatever crazy reason you are trying to minimize the role printing plays in graphic design because you can't admit that saying you should always use RGB is incorrect. I'll leave it at that, anyone reading this should now know when to use CMYK or RGB so no point in continuing this pissing match.

 

[Kadayi]

Just because something is or isn't vibrant on your monitor doesnt mean it will or won't be vibrant when you print it on a press (as Im sure you know). In fact you posting that picture just proves what I keep saying, the reason the colors look faded is because of the color shifting that takes place when you convert from RGB to CMYK (or vice versa). But for whatever crazy reason you are trying to minimize the role printing plays in graphic design because you can't admit that saying you should always use RGB is incorrect. I'll leave it at that, anyone reading this should now know when to use CMYK or RGB so no point in continuing this pissing match.

The only time to ever use CMYK outside of proofing is if you need to save off a copy for outside printing. I've said this a couple of times now. You convert to CMYK, you don't work in CMYK (there is no denial). Using the method I described for printing to a localised printer by allowing Photoshop to manage the printing process, and in conjunction with proofing you can produce colour accurate prints without having to compromise your images colour space in any way shape or form. Once you save an image as CMYK you've thrown out a vast amount of colour information that you can never get back (the scary girl image demonstrates this).

Fact of the matter is, if you work CMYK throughout your images will look dull compared to others within the digital space. The point of showing the captures from scary girl was to illustrate how detrimental using CMYK as a starting point would be. CMYK is by far the worst colour space for digital images (even more so that sRGB).

Sorry you find that offensive, but whomever taught you otherwise needs their balls chopped off tbh.

Here's Dr Russell Brown (one of the guys who makes Photoshop) on printing:-

http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/3800PrintingSM.mov

RGB, Photoshop manages the colours, he selects the printer & paper (Epsom have colour profiles for their paper) and turns off the printer colour management. No recourse to CMYK required at all.

Even if you don't believe me, I'd say you should believe him.

Also why CMYK is a waste of time with non postscript printers:-

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps10_print/ps10_print_1.htm

 

[No Limit]

The reason there is no recourse to CMYK is because he is using the printer's profile. He takes the desitnation sRGB profile from the image and the driver converts it to the CMYK profile of the printer to get you the best color reproduction. Any time you convert from RGB to CMYK you can lost around 90-95% of the colors; as the example you showed proved. Therefore before you do any converstion, wether you do it yourself in photoshop or you use a printer profile color information will get lost. The problem is a lot of times when you are dealing with a professional press you can't get their printer profile so you have no way to know how you will deal with that conversion. If you want to deal with RGB and then convert to CMYK fine, I already told you how I would do it and I agreed with the advantages of doing so.

But the extremely simple fact remains that it is incorrect to say that you should always work with RGB. And you are right, after I pointed this out originally you agreed that before going to a outside press you should do CMYK. But for some reason you also seemed to get your feelings hurt and this turned in to an essay writing contest eventhough we agree.

 

[Kadayi]

*shakes head

In all seriousness I've cited 3 fairly legitimate sources that firmly back up my position with regard to this, and so far you've provided nothing to support yours. Personally if your fool enough to kill your photos or illustrations by converting them to CMYK or even start them in CMYK, that's your choice, knock yourself out (I honestly give a shit how bad your design habits are). Fact of the matter is though (and for the umpteenth time) by and large except where print control is wholly out of your hands there is never any necessity to use CMYK over RGB, and even then only as a saved copy rather than a working file. The vast majority of desktop printers are not postscript printers, they might use CMYK cartridges but don't readily read CMYK images. Converting your RGB images to CMYK and then sending them to a desktop printer confers no appreciable advantage, as the printer will convert the CMYK image into sRGB internally. Better to use the richer Adobe RGB (1998) colour space from the off and allow Photoshop to manage the print process throughout.

People come here for advice, and as someone who deals with this sort of thing day in and day out as a visualiser, I'm giving them the best advice I can based on my expertise and experience as a working professional. If you want to carry on arguing the toss I suggest you come up with something better than 'I disagree'. No it is not incorrect to say 'always work in RGB Vs CMYK' because CMYK is not a digital colour space. Yes it has a role to play when it comes to printing as a save option in certain circumstances (as previously discussed), but it an inadequate colour space to operate in when carrying out adjustments in the application. Advising someone to do that would be doing them a ****ing disservice. :dozey:

As regards printer profiles. If you do have to go to an outside printer, if they are worth a damn they will be able to supply their printer profiles. However if they aren't (why are you using them?), Proofing using the standard CMYK profile is a good alternative. Unlike RGB there aren't the large fluctuations in colour between the CMYK colour profiles. So again perfectly acceptable to work in colour rich RGB, proof using default CMYK and then save out a copy in CMYK. No need to convert the working file to CMYK at all. :dozey:

 

[Asknoone]

Enough. Neither one of you are to post in this thread again.

 

[tesher06]

It's the color profile I believe. I'm not 100% if I fixed it. I went into computer, windows, windows 32, pools, drivers, color, and deleted all the profiles. The problem seems fixed.

 

[Kadayi]

 

[Krynn72]

Hah, suck it Kadayi. You and all your knowledge didnt help shit, and me with my vague memory and bad description was the solution! GLORIOUS VICTORY.

 

[Kadayi]

Hah, suck it Kadayi. You and all your knowledge didnt help shit, and me with my vague memory and bad description was the solution! GLORIOUS VICTORY.

I'm not face palming because he didn't listen. I'm face palming at what he did. :dozey:

 

[tesher06]

Why? Whats so bad about what I did? I read that solution on a forum....

 

[Kadayi]

One way to address an ingrowing toe nail is to cut off your leg, but its a bit of problem when you then next attempt to try walking. The problem was almost certainly with your monitor display and or your photoshop setup (CMYK Vs RGB). If your machines colour profiles were borked you'd have noticed a lot more differences than greys being brownish in Photoshop. Plus you could change your colour profile display type and if one was buggered then toggling between them would demonstrate this. :dozey:

 

[tesher06]

Uh... what? Would be great if you could explain that without comparing it to a real situation.

 

[Kadayi]

Given that it seems abundantly clear you didn't even remotely consider any of the advice given previously in the thread, I see little reason in explaining at length why deleting your systems colour profiles probably isn't the solution (even though on the face if it it seems to have 'cured' the problem) . The ability to establish what is causing a problem though careful analysis of the facts and applied stimuli seems to escapes you.

Given the colour profiles were there before you installed the graphic drivers, and the colour shift occurred after you installed the drivers, why would it make sense to delete the colour profiles to solve the problem? Your graphics drivers aren't changing the files. At most the drivers are setting your monitors colour profile to a different one than you might normally use under the system preferences.

I did say to look at changing the preferences. Quite clearly you didn't bother listening. :dozey: