Color Profiles in Mac OXS

I would hazard a guess that your set up of colour management is way out...

Firstly, monitor profiles and colour spaces are completely independent of each other. Colour spaces are things like sRGB, Adobe RGD (1998) & ProPhoto. These are associated with (embedded) into images and tell a colour aware application how to translate the "numbers" (which represent a colour) in your image file to the monitor.

Assigning a profile requires that you know/expect that the image IS that profile. For example, if an image was really ProPhoto and you assigned sRGB it would not look good next time you opened it. Converting to a profile actually changes the number values appropriately and embeds the new profile.

The monitor (although more difficult on a notebook) needs to be "calibrated". This just means that it is at a known state that can accurately display a colour. Calibration requires a feedback system with a puck that reads colours from the monitor and allows the associated software to build a table that will ensure an accurate display of colours. Names of monitor profiles are usually whatever you want to call them as you create them. But whatever you do, DO NOT use a colour profile in its place.

Once you have all this done, if an image has a colour space embedded (regardless of what it is) then it should display the same (correctly) on your calibrated monitor. Just dont start "assigning" colour spaces without thought. However, if you have already done this, if you "fix" the image then resave with the new profile embedded it will look ok next time.

BTW, if you want to colour management enable Firefox, type "about:config" in the URL then search for gfx.color_management.enabled and set it to TRUE.

I have this exact same problem on my MacBook Pro, except that it happens in Photoshop as well. It doesn't happen in DPP. I suspect that the OP's image in Photoshop would look like the Preview/iPhoto display if he turned color management on.

My images are captured in sRGB. If I turn on color management in Photoshop CS2 with North American General Purpose 2 settings, then I get oversaturated reds. My monitor profile is the default "Color LCD" profile that ships with the machine.

If I open an sRGB file using the "Monitor Color" setting, I get a warning asking me how to handle the profile mismatch. If I choose "use embedded profile" or "convert embedded profile" I get the same problem, because this overrides the Monitor Color settings for this file. If I discard the embedded profile, I get the same color as I see in DPP.

When I open an sRGB file in Preview or iPhoto, I get the oversaturated colors no matter what I do. It makes viewing and editing images impossible outside of DPP, which I suppose is okay, since DPP is where I do most of my color-critical adjustments, and I use Photoshop for detailed retouching.

I'm stumped. I've tried calibrating the display using the built-in utility but it is impossible--no matter what I do, the display looks horribly blue. Furthermore, I see no reason to recalibrate the display profile if DPP shows the correct color. I am reluctant to purchase an expensive color calibration product when I don't even know what the problem is. I've read through numerous articles and posts online about color calibration, and none of them have helped.

My monitor profile is the default "Color LCD" profile that ships with the machine.


Just because it came with the machine doesnt mean its correct... Probability is that its not!

If I open an sRGB file using the "Monitor Color" setting, I get a warning asking me how to handle the profile mismatch. If I choose "use embedded profile" or "convert embedded profile" I get the same problem, because this overrides the Monitor Color settings for this file. If I discard the embedded profile, I get the same color as I see in DPP.


The warning to handle the mismatch has nothing to do with your monitor profile. This is a mismatch between your files embedded colour profile and the default workspace you have set in the Photoshop colour preferences.

When I open an sRGB file in Preview or iPhoto, I get the oversaturated colors no matter what I do.


How did the image become sRGB? If it wasnt originally sRGB and your merely "assigned" the profile, of course it would be wrong. ie. if it was sRGB and your default colour space in PS was set to Adobe RGB, and you allowed the mismatch to be resolved by PS converting the profile, after which you "assigned sRBG back, the colour information in the image would be wrong.

I'm stumped. I've tried calibrating the display using the built-in utility but it is impossible


Dont... you cant calibrate a monitor with just software. You need a calibration system with a monitor colorimeter that has feedback information

1) Basically, perform a hardware monitor calibration.
2) Dont "assign" profiles to an image (unless you really know why youre doing it)
3) Check what you colour space preferences are set to in PS and as well, how it is set to handle the mismatch - auto convert, ask, etc.

Just because it came with the machine doesnt mean its correct... Probability is that its not!

I understand this, I really do. But at the same time, there's nothing I have been able to do with the display that makes it look any better (and when I mean "better," I mean "more perceptually accurate") than what was set as the default. Yes, it's very likely that it isn't "perfect." But it is close, at least more close than what would be indicated by the oversaturated images in Preview.

The warning to handle the mismatch has nothing to do with your monitor profile. This is a mismatch between your files embedded colour profile and the default workspace you have set in the Photoshop colour preferences.

Again, I am aware of this. But the Monitor Color setting in Photoshop CS2 uses the display profile (in this case, Color LCD) as the working space. That I know is not the correct thing to do, but I mentioned it to illustrate what happens when I change the color settings to this option. If I use the North American General Purpose 2 settings, the working space is sRGB and the files are sRGB, and so there is no mismatch generated, but the color is still wrong, whereas if I open the same file in DPP, it is correct. Why?

How did the image become sRGB? If it wasnt originally sRGB and your merely "assigned" the profile, of course it would be wrong.

Yes, I know this already too. The images are directly from my camera which has set the profile as sRGB. If I shoot in JPEG+RAW mode, Canon's DPP software renders both nearly identically in color (there may be minor differences due to rendering intent for RAW). But then I open the JPEG in Photoshop or Preview and the colors are oversaturated in exactly the same way as the OP described.

1) Basically, perform a hardware monitor calibration.
2) Dont "assign" profiles to an image (unless you really know why youre doing it)
3) Check what you colour space preferences are set to in PS and as well, how it is set to handle the mismatch - auto convert, ask, etc.

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but while your suggestions may be appropriate, they don't address the critical question, which is: Why does the display of the exact same file differ in Canon's DPP software versus Preview/Photoshop? It makes no sense whatsoever. Your recommendation to do a hardware monitor calibration--an expensive proposition--would not resolve this question. To make things even more interesting, Firefox 3.5's default settings also display the same file correctly. I have not assigned profiles manually to any of the affected images--all profiles were assigned by the hardware that captured the image. The preferences in Photoshop should not matter if the working space is the same as the image's profile.

Hey, thanks to everyone for these quick and highly detailed responses. I certainly have more to learn about color profiling. However, I have to agree that I still have the same difficulty as Peter Wang, and this is not solveable by calibrating the monitor, with or without a hardware calibrator. The thing is (and I also apologize for sounding like a broken record), my monitor already displays colors correctly. I don't want to change my monitor. In all third party software and all web browsers, my images look exactly right. Why do they look different in native OSX apps? This is what I want to change, how OSX native apps are displaying the color. We're talking about the same file looking different in different applications, so calibrating the monitor won't change how those individual apps read the color profile of the image. The image might look better, but the same amount of difference will still exist in the way different applications display it.

To put it more directly : I need to change the way OSX handles color profiles, not the way my monitor displays color/gamma/etc.

In the image I embedded above, I have not changed anything about the color profiles. I just learned that I could change the profiles in Preview, so I haven't been running around willy-nilly changing settings on anything. That is the exact same file displayed in four programs. Preview gets it wrong. Why is this? How can I change it? Calibrating the monitor will change how the Preview image looks, but it will make similar changes to the way the Safari/Firefox/Photoshop image looks, so they still won't match.

If someone could tell me how to make Preview match Safari/Photoshop/Firefox, I would be grateful.

Thanks again!
Patrick

To put it another way:
It used to be the case for me that Safari/Firefox displayed the images correctly, but both Preview and Photoshop were over-saturating. I changed the Color Settings in Photoshop to "Monitor RGB - Color LCD Calibrated," and poof , it instantly displayed images with the same color as Safari/Firefox. How can I create a similar "poof" in OSX so it displays that same color?

To put it another way:
It used to be the case for me that Safari/Firefox displayed the images correctly, but both Preview and Photoshop were over-saturating. I changed the Color Settings in Photoshop to "Monitor RGB - Color LCD Calibrated," and poof , it instantly displayed images with the same color as Safari/Firefox. How can I create a similar "poof" in OSX so it displays that same color?

I *knew* it. I suspected that you did exactly that, per my earlier post:

I suspect that the OP's image in Photoshop would look like the Preview/iPhoto display if he turned color management on.

When you changed your color settings in Phtoshop to Monitor RGB - Color LCD Calibrated, you have basically told Photoshop you want to make your working space your display space, which is apparently not a good thing, because your display space is not capable of showing the wider gamut that the image was recorded in. That's why it matches in PS now, but I don't think that's what you should be doing in the event that you want to print those images opened, edited, and then saved in PS.

Hmmmm....you may be correct, as I have always thought that my printed images came out too dark and over-saturated already, even before I changed anything about the color handling in PS, so if PS is now showing me even lighter, less-saturated images, it seems I've changed it in the wrong direction. So if Preview/iPhoto/etc are displaying "correct" color, why are Firefox and Safari so far off? The reason I originally changed my PS setting was because images posted to any website looked completely bleached of color compared to both the original and what I had generated in PS.

But there is also the problem that the colors seem "correct" in the web, rather than is OSX. For instance, in the image I posted above, it looks dead-on in both Safari and Firefox, perfect/reaistic skin tones, but if I grab that image and drag it to my desktop, the skin suddenly looks sunburned.

ach.

I suppose it's possible I will have to adjust the settings depending on whether I want to output for print or for web. As it is now, PS matches what I will see on the web, but it will probably look terrible printed. I'm okay with going back and forth, I just want to be able to see consistency in all applications.

EDIT: yes, I definitely want to use the "display space" color across all applications, as 98% of my images are shared/viewed either online or on my monitor, so I want those two spaces to match each other. For the 2-3% of images that I print, I can save a different setting within Photoshop or keep a proof print around to match the printed colors. So this takes me back to the original problem: now that I've gotten PS to display correctly, how do I change OSX/Preview. I suspect it has something to do with the "Colorsync Utility," but I'm hesitant to go mucking around in there...

Suggestions?