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Photoshop: proof colors
Here’s a quickie tutorial. Well, tutorial is really a big word for this one. Jut giving you a tip for a tool (sounds like a low-budget tv show), in case you didn’t know about this feature yet.
If you work with photoshop you probably noticed that the colors (and even the light), tend to look very different in photoshop than they do on the web. Photoshop seems to make everything look fresher, more colorful and even brighter. It’s irritating at best to see the photo you’ve edited that looked so awesome on your desktop, looking bland and desaturated as soon as you’ve uploaded it to the web. Highly annoying, I know, but the good news is; there’s a built-in tool to help you with that.
Why & How?
What makes your photos look different outside of photoshop is something called a color profile. Think of color profiles as files that contain all the information about the color range (gamut) of a device such as your camera, monitor, scanner, printer etc. Each device needs its own color profile and as you can tell, they don’t always match. Now there are many tutorials on changing your color profile for the web, but there’s also a built-in feature that’s often overlooked and ignored. It’s called Proof Colors. Before making any drastic changes to your color profile, give this one a try, and let me know if it works for you, okay?
Proof Colors:
Open an image and in your top menu bar choose View >> Proof Setup. It’s probably set to Windows RGB now and I want you to change that to Monitor RGB.
Right below there is this magic trick called Proof Colors. You can use the top bar menu to get there, but just pressing Ctrl+Y is obviously easier. It will give you a proof simulation of what your photo will look like on the web. Pressing Ctrl+Y again will toggle between the proof and photoshop view.
You’ll immediately see a big change in your photo. It’s probably a little darker and slightly more desaturated. Now edit it as you normally would and the outcome will be pretty close to what you see as soon as you’ve uploaded the photo.
Note: keep in mind that the Proof Colors feature is not switched on by deafult, so you’ll have to turn it on every time you openup a new photo. I’ve embedded the proof colors in my basic workflow actions so I don’t even have to think about it. This is a quick and easy way to edit a photo and see it (almost) exactly what it looks like online.
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I have to admit that in all my 15+ years of working with Photoshop, I NEVER knew about this. This is such great information! Thanks, Kay!
Hi Kay,
What a cool tidbit to know! Altho, I am using Photoshop Elements 4.0 and, hence, I don’t have this handy dandy little option. Under Image, I have ‘Convert Color Profile’. Under that, I have 3 options: ‘Remove Profile’, ‘apply sRGB Profile’ (which is grayed out) & ‘apply Adobe RGB Profile’. Any ideas on how to accomplish what you were able to?
Thanks so much for the info and any assistance you can give on my ‘dilemna’.
@coleen:
Afraid I can’t help you out, I don’t have elements or even access to it, so for the life of me, I have no idea how it works for that program.
I did find this online:
http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/elements-color-management.html
Thank you for the site. I will check it out!
I have been bugged by this FOREVER, and I’m SO glad you addressed it! I thought I was going crazy. Thank you so much!
Am I correct that Elements doesn’t have this full function? I think the only color option in Elements is to select Edit>Color Settings and then select the second radio button which says “Limited Color Management is optimized for the Web. It uses sRGB for the working space”. Then when you Save As you need to make sure the box is checked below that says Color – ICC Profile: sRGB. Is this the closest I could get to what you’re suggesting using Elements? Thanks as always for the VERY helpful photo guidance!
Thank you that is really informative.
Question:
When printing photos or converting them to a printable medium do you just use the original edited version of the picture?
@Vicki:
Yes, I do. I´ll edit the large 300dpi photos before printing them. I send my professional work to a lab for printing and print the snapshots etc at home.
Kay I’m curious which lab you print at here in NL.. I often order from USA and have shipped here which is annoying!
@Laura K.:
I have most of my work printed at http://www.profotonet.nl. High quality. They are pretty expensive, though.
Thanks! I took a photo class in the spring and our instructor had shown us that tool to use before we print… after setting up our printer profies, etc.! But he never did explain about monitor RGB vs. Windows RGB…. I had noticed the difference between PS and what they looked like on the web but I never connected the two! THANKS!!!!!!!!
Thank you Kay!