Photoshop Color Settings

JMAN871

I'm a news and sports photographer, and in the past, the newspaper's editors would adjust my photos for publication. I am assembling a portfolio, however, and have begun to Photoshop photos on my own. It's going well, but how do I adjust my color settings so that they accurately reflect the real world (they look fine on my monitor, but they will sometimes come out funky on other monitors or when I print them)? Is this something that I change in Photoshop, or something that I change on my entire monitor? And are there generally-accepted settings that I should use?

Thanks.

NightDragon

If the colors are changing from one platform to another, it would be a good idea to make sure your moniter is calibrated, first. (Some printers also have specific color settings you may want to check out).

Secondly, when you're saving images in Photoshop, be sure you're working with them in the proper mode (CKMY for print), and that the profile assigned is appropriate...(check for both these settings under "Image>>Mode")...I'm still learning about profiles myself, so I can't offer specific information regarding the proper profile for you, but a few minutes on google (or info from somebody else here) could probably answer that question.

supabeast

There is no way to color-correct images to look good on all monitors. Theoretically you could calibrate to a really generic SRGB standard and correct for that, but it would still be a waste of time. Monitors, even identical models, vary wildly in color representation unless they're in a room with grey walls, no windows, and carefully arranged incandescent lighting. And because monitors use projected light—as opposed to reflected, like you get in the real world—accurate representation of reality is not possible with the technology we have today (although it still does a better job than four-color printing).

Color-correcting for print needs to be done for each individual job, and is generally best left to the person printing it. If you're having promotional materials printed professionally just pay the printer to do it as part of prepress, if you're printing your own portfolio, tweak the images yourself every time you print. You could try getting a color calibration device to calibrate your monitor to your printer, but even that doesn't work particularly well.

Fortunately, most people you show your portfolio too already know all of this, and they just be looking at how good the photos are, and not worrying about perfect color.

Blue Is Beautiful

the only time you should use CMYK profiles is if the printer tells you specifically to use one (such as US coated) most labs don't use CMYK profiles anyway because most printers can take RGB information and figure out the appropriate CMYK values nowadays.

AdobeRGB has the widest color gamut, giving your more "true" color. Most professional printers use AdobeRGB to calculate CMYK values.

standard windows and web browsers use sRGB which only displays 256 colors. really shitty, so never go by those two things to determine if colors are correct. plus people's monitors are all probably uncalibrated.

if you're going to be doing this for a living, invest in one of these

http://www.pantone.com/pages/products/product.aspx?pid=108&ca=2


250 dollars is really not that much for a product that will make sure you're seeing things correctly and not wasting money at the printers tweaking colors.