Retouching with exact profile but is desaturated

[awhitf20]

Im retouching with my photographers ICC profile on a retina display but the calibration is still off. Mine is less saturated with his profile but everything else is correct.

We dragged his profile from his Mac Tower to my 15inch Macbook Pro w/retina via a usb flash drive.

Anyone else had an issue with this?

[Shoku]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

How is your monitor calibrated?
How is your Photographer's monitor calibrated?

[awhitf20]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

Weve used a Lacie Blue Eye Pro on both monitors(his and mines) and when we noticed it still was de saturated, we dragged his ICC profile to mines and used it.

[Aladdin]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

Is it desaturated with or without his ICC.

You can't use some one else ICC even if both have same monitor. I mean the ICC that gets created as result if calibration.

Make sure that the .PSD file has no ICC or profile impeded in it.

[klev]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

Are you saying that you dragged his display profile to your machine? Without going into detail, a display profile basically sets up a depiction of the display more than anything. It would not be appropriate for a different display. I should also mention that "retina" is not a display type. It's one of Apple's pending trademarks. It just refers to high pixel density in a marketing friendly way. The display is an IPS display with no hardware or low level means of calibration. You might want to describe what you mean by saturated. If the colors looked way off, it may have been using an incorrect profile. If you had an external display connected to your macbook pro, it may have assigned the wrong thing when dragging between windows.

You do not want your display set to a profile that was written for a different display under any circumstances. Some software packages have correlation tools, but they mostly take a lowest common denominator route and are still intended for similar displays, typically of the same model.

[mistermonday]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

The problem you described is most often a result of color management. What color space are the photos tagged with (AdobeRGB, sRGB, ProPhoto). Assuming you are using PS, what color space are you working in and are your color profile mismatch warnings turned on?

[awhitf20]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

Is it desaturated with or without his ICC.

You can't use some one else ICC even if both have same monitor. I mean the ICC that gets created as result if calibration.

Make sure that the .PSD file has no ICC or profile impeded in it.

Im working off CR2's through Adobe Raw and in it, the CR2's open up with this profile:

Adobe RGB (1998); 16 bit; 5466 by 3644 (19.9MP); 300ppi

Thats the same information as the photographer's computer and Adobe Raw.

You might want to describe what you mean by saturated. If the colors looked way off, it may have been using an incorrect profile. If you had an external display connected to your macbook pro, it may have assigned the wrong thing when dragging between windows.

What I mean by saturated was actually that the blacks were very deep and rich on my computer then when we brought it up on his, they were flat or looked like i hadnt worked with them at all.

So contrasty? or a high black point?

Also yes I did drag the profile from his computer, to a public shared folder, then to my computer.

The problem you described is most often a result of color management. What color space are the photos tagged with (AdobeRGB, sRGB, ProPhoto). Assuming you are using PS, what color space are you working in and are your color profile mismatch warnings turned on?

I dont think I do. is that the menu you find via Edit>Color Settings?

[klev]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

Im working off CR2's through Adobe Raw and in it, the CR2's open up with this profile:

Adobe RGB (1998); 16 bit; 5466 by 3644 (19.9MP); 300ppi

Thats the same information as the photographer's computer and Adobe Raw.

That's pretty typical. If it's happening in photoshop, you have incorrect color settings. If it happens elsewhere there are a few programs that still don't manage color correctly. Try a few different ones. If it happens in almost everything outside of photoshop, you probably have a bad display profile, which is different from the profile embedded in your image.

In drastically (I mean drastically, don't read into this) over-simplified terms consider it this way. Your display profile establishes a coordinate basis relative to your display. Any embedded image profile is meant to allow you to assign values to your image in the form of coordinates in a way that they can be mapped between spaces in some meaningful and defined manner. It's how you get an image that appears correct on screen, and it's typically done by using what is called a profile connection space that maps the image into a larger space that is a superset of the source and destination profile, then into the destination profile.

It's an extremely rough explanation and I omitted things that would mislead you if you tried to read into it. Just make sure you have a good display profile for your display and make sure that upon opening it in photoshop it looks correct. If you are exporting something for the web, convert to sRGB first. That is basically your checklist for troubleshooting. Also note that display profiles are in fact stored in different places in your library folders. There are the user level ones, then the shared system level ones. OSX keeps them hidden by default. If you're looking for the folders try this. It's safer than renaming hidden folders via the terminal (can mess things up too easily).

[mistermonday]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

Also yes I did drag the profile from his computer, to a public shared folder, then to my computer.

I don't think I do. is that the menu you find via Edit>Color Settings?

Exactly what was the "profile" name that you dragged to your computer and where did you place? An ICC calibration file for someone else's PC and Monitor is embedded deep inside the Windows System folder. It will not work the same on another computer / monitor.

If you are referring to the color profile which was embedded in the file you got from the photographer that is a whole other thing. If you received RAW CR2 files, and they were not edited by the photog, then they actually are RAW and do not contain a color space profile which is only applied after you open and edit a RAW file. If the photog has already done some editing and has sent you RAW files, the RAW pixel data in that CR2 file is never changed. Any adjustments made by the photo are saved as a log of settings in Adobe Camera RAW and that log is either saved as sidecar file with the file type .xmp or that information is embedded in the metadata portion of the RAW file.

Yes, Edit>Color Settings has some key settings and is very possibly where your main problem lies. Please see the attachment below.
Ideally you should set your working RGB color space to whatever the photog wants you to return the edited files in. The most common ones are AdobeRGB and sRGB.
In the section called Color Management Policies, I recommend you set them to "Preserve Embedded Profiles" Since you are not very experienced working with Color Management, I suggest that you check all 3 boxes for Profile Mismatches and Missing Profiles. That way if you open a file with a color profile that does not match the space you are working in, you will see a dialog box informing you and offering some choices on how to handle the file and its ICC profile.

Cheers, Murray

[Flashtones]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

You want to calibrate both displays to the same standard (D65 as an example) but in no way do you want to use the same profile for two different displays.

But all that aside, a Macbook Pro is not a good screen to retouch on. The contrast and dynamic range are too dependent on viewing angles and screen tilt, etc, and simply doesn't carry the full gamut that a wide gamut monitor will. No amount of color management can make an sRGB gamut monitor as saturated as an aRGB monitor.

If you plan on doing a lot of retouching you might look into a wide gamut IPS external monitor.

[klev]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

If you plan on doing a lot of retouching you might look into a wide gamut IPS external monitor.

I know I'm nitpicky. The wider gamut helps somewhat, but I wouldn't suggest that should be the entire motivation. The companies that produce professional quality displays implement extra panel blocking features to improve uniformity. They engineer methods to compensate for the effects of drift, and they have implemented systems of internal LUTs that are an improvement over the use of display profile defined mappings. The wide gamut portion is really a small part of the benefit. In my own (anecdotal) experience with them, the wide gamut NEC and Eizo displays do make it easier to spot overly saturated primary colors that may introduce cmyk clipping problems. Anytime you make a conversion in photoshop, it will clip anything out of bounds even if you set it to perceptual, as perceptual was ambiguous with the ICC v2 specification and not well implemented. I don't think they really implemented v4 entirely.

[Aladdin]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

Are you displaying the image using same software program on both machines? Like, using Photoshop on both machines?

Are you viewing the image within Photoshop while your friend viewing through some viewer?

How did you export the picture out of Photoshop?

[awhitf20]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

Are you displaying the image using same software program on both machines? Like, using Photoshop on both machines?

Are you viewing the image within Photoshop while your friend viewing through some viewer?

How did you export the picture out of Photoshop?

Were both viewing them in PS CC on our individual computers. The photographer is using a Mac Tower and a Lacie Display that has been calibrated.

You want to calibrate both displays to the same standard (D65 as an example) but in no way do you want to use the same profile for two different displays.

But all that aside, a Macbook Pro is not a good screen to retouch on. The contrast and dynamic range are too dependent on viewing angles and screen tilt, etc, and simply doesn't carry the full gamut that a wide gamut monitor will. No amount of color management can make an sRGB gamut monitor as saturated as an aRGB monitor.

If you plan on doing a lot of retouching you might look into a wide gamut IPS external monitor.

Where would i go about finding what standard he is in or I should use. I have never heard of these before.

Exactly what was the "profile" name that you dragged to your computer and where did you place? An ICC calibration file for someone else's PC and Monitor is embedded deep inside the Windows System folder. It will not work the same on another computer / monitor.

If you are referring to the color profile which was embedded in the file you got from the photographer that is a whole other thing. If you received RAW CR2 files, and they were not edited by the photog, then they actually are RAW and do not contain a color space profile which is only applied after you open and edit a RAW file. If the photog has already done some editing and has sent you RAW files, the RAW pixel data in that CR2 file is never changed. Any adjustments made by the photo are saved as a log of settings in Adobe Camera RAW and that log is either saved as sidecar file with the file type .xmp or that information is embedded in the metadata portion of the RAW file.

Yes, Edit>Color Settings has some key settings and is very possibly where your main problem lies. Please see the attachment below.
Ideally you should set your working RGB color space to whatever the photog wants you to return the edited files in. The most common ones are AdobeRGB and sRGB.
In the section called Color Management Policies, I recommend you set them to "Preserve Embedded Profiles" Since you are not very experienced working with Color Management, I suggest that you check all 3 boxes for Profile Mismatches and Missing Profiles. That way if you open a file with a color profile that does not match the space you are working in, you will see a dialog box informing you and offering some choices on how to handle the file and its ICC profile.

Cheers, Murray

I did this last night and delivered some edited files that I got warnings for. When the warnings popped up, I clicked the option to let me change the profile to my calibration. Should I tell the photographer to do something after he opens them?

Also, What would have been the most correct way of calibrating from the "get go". Should I have calibrated my monitor, then turned on those warnings and kept my profile to his calibration or change everything to mines then he change them back to his when he gets them?

ALSO THANK YOU TO EVERYONE FOR THEIR HELP SO FAR!

[Shoku]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

Also, What would have been the most correct way of calibrating from the "get go". Should I have calibrated my monitor, then turned on those warnings and kept my profile to his calibration or change everything to mines then he change them back to his when he gets them?

The ideal workflow is to receive a file with an embedded profile, that way you will be seeing the file in the same color space used by the creator. You may not see it the same, but that has to do with the differences in monitors.

RAW files should always be passed to another user with the XMP file that is generated when adjustments are done.

Your monitor should be calibrated for your viewing conditions, not based on settings used by someone else.

Calibration isn't perfect, so you should get used to how accurate printed results compare to your screen if that's possible.

If there is a vast difference between what you see and what your client sees it usually comes down to the monitor as long as the files have not changed color spaces.

See attached jpeg for the color settings I use. Note the Color Managment Policies. I assume SWOP CMYK or sRGB when the files are untagged, but do a visual review if that needs to change.

[mistermonday]

Re: Retouching with exact profile but is desaturat

Were both viewing them in PS CC on our individual computers. The photographer is using a Mac Tower and a Lacie Display that has been calibrated.



Where would i go about finding what standard he is in or I should use. I have never heard of these before.




I did this last night and delivered some edited files that I got warnings for. When the warnings popped up, I clicked the option to let me change the profile to my calibration. Should I tell the photographer to do something after he opens them?

Also, What would have been the most correct way of calibrating from the "get go". Should I have calibrated my monitor, then turned on those warnings and kept my profile to his calibration or change everything to mines then he change them back to his when he gets them?

ALSO THANK YOU TO EVERYONE FOR THEIR HELP SO FAR!

OK, let me do a reset here in which I will try to separate the concepts of monitor calibration and color management in your photo editing workflow. Let me give you an analogy.
Let's imagine that you are near-sighted and require corrective lenses (eyeglasses) in order to correct your vision so that the objects you view at a distance will not appear blurred to you. Let's also say that your near-sightedness is not too drastic and you only require a weak prescription of -1.5 diopters. Your photographer's vision is worse than yours. He is also near-sighted but requires a prescription of -4.0 diopters in order to correct his vision. You now have perfect vision with your eyeglasses and your photographer has perfect vision with his eyeglasses. If you exchange glasses with him, neither of you will see anything and you will get an instant headache trying to see with a prescription that is way off. Monitor calibration is something both you and your photographer and everyone else who does photo editing does to ensure each person's monitor displays colors correctly, allows each person to display blacks as black, whites as white, and allows users to see the both objects that are close to each other in darkness or brightness. Monitor calibration files are embedded inside the operating system. You do not use them in your work flow or apply them to an image.
Now switch to color profiles in image editing. There are established industry standard color spaces such as sRGB, AdobeRGB, Prophoto. These are well defined standards designed for transportability. So if you edit a photo in AdobeRGB color and you let people know that the image has been edited in AdobeRGB by embedding that profile in the file's metadata header (this is done by PS when you save the file providing you have check the correct box), then the person to whom you send the file will be know that the file has been edited in AdobeRGB and it will look to him the same as it looks to you assuming both of you have accurate working monitors.
When you converted the file that you sent the photographer to your monitor profile was equivalent to doing a nice editing job, then distorting the file optically by 2.5 diopters so he could see it. And it should look to him like crap just as it would if you sent him you eyeglasses along with a the file. You are mixing apples and oranges.
It's not the greatest analogy but I hope it conveys the concepts a little better.
Cheers, Murray