Help needed for display color problem

[colorflow]

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I was doing some printing last night with Lightroom, but kept getting some very drab colors. So I played a little with Color Management in Control Panel, but did not improve things any. Not surprising since I am a complete novice with CM. But all of a sudden I am getting the same drab color display on the screen within LR for all previously processed photos and even with Windows Photo Gallery displaying jpegs. However, other Windows colors and background displays are unchanged. I am using Windows Vista and LR 1.4.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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[adan]

Off the bat, it sounds like you may have changed your default color space in LR and/or monitor profile in Windows while trying to fix the printing.

 

An image previously processed in a big color space like Adobe 1998, for example will look dull if the computer now thinks it is looking at an sRGB image. A 240,25,25, "red" in sRGB is a duller red than a 240,25,25 "red" in Adobe 1998, for example.

 

Generally, the colors of computer interfaces - blue control bars, red "X" boxes, gray backgrounds, etc. - are NOT processed through the color management system, which is why they didn't seem to change, much. Grays may pick up some blue/yellow tint from the monitor profile white point - but unless viewed side by side with a different screen, the eye tends to compensate. In fact, most non-imaging programs are also not color-managed, so you won't see a change in, say, the tint and hue of blue words in a Word document or email - even if you have drastically changed the CM in LR somehow.

 

I don't use LR, but there should be preferences somewhere to pick the "working color space" (which should be Adobe 1998 unless one has a compelling reason to use something else). As to monitor profiles under Windows, I'll leave that to Windows experts.

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One other possibility - do you somehow have "proof colors" turned on in LR? If you do, LR is using your printer profile to filter the screen image to show how your print will look (which may explain why your images suddenly look as dull as the prints). Photoshop has this capability, and I'd assume LR has it too, since both are from Adobe engineers.

[colorflow]

Thanks Andy for your suggestions/explanation. Current status is LR is back to normal after I imported some new photos. Somehow it has reset the colors for all my previously imported photos as well.

 

But Windows Photo Gallery is still bad. Been looking over all the settings but haven't been able to find anything yet. I also suspected it was the "preview" button, but it has been un-set.

[ptarmigan]

Alan

 

If you are keen to get colours both right and stable across all of your devices, you should really start with a proper colour calibration/set-up of your monitor. Check out what is typically available here. Using Windows (or Adobe Gamma) or even the Mac inbuilt colour profile setup are not suitable for photography or any other colour critical calibration.

 

Obviously some monitors represent better colour and have wider gamut displays than do others. You have loads of choice with calibration software. I personally use an Eve One 2 with ColorEye Display Pro software.

 

Then you need to select a colour working space for your computer photo package (LR or PS). If you shoot jpeg then you'll be stuck with sRGB but if you shoot RAW then you'd be better going for Adobe RGB 1998 or ProPhoto RGB when you perform your raw conversion as both give wider gamuts that sRGB. Also opt for 16bit rather that 8bit conversion.

 

So work 'on computer' in Adobe RGB 1998 or Pro Photo RGB and then convert to sRGB and embed the profile for web images.

[colorflow]

Ian, thanks for the reply. Yes, I will have to do as you suggested. I always shoot raw and use LR for post. But have not gotten into printing much. Will be soon converting to Mac from PC, and that's when I plan to get more serious with color.

[adan]

"If you shoot jpeg then you'll be stuck with sRGB"

 

A minor point, but actually quite a few cameras allow one to shoot jpegs directly into Adobe RGB 1998 - the M9 among them, also my Panny GH-1.