Managing Color Shift in Photoshop CS2

January 23, 2009

Filed under: Web Dev — naldope @ 2:14 am

I had thought I had fixed the color shift problem in Photoshop CS2 when I use the “Save for Web” function, but alas, there is still a color shift. I had tried a few possible solutions based on my first page of Google results.

I found a solution by Doug Avery on the Viget.com site and so I will copy-n-paste the solution from their site. (I hate when I link to some web content — only for it to go away later). NOTE: Colors still may not look the same on all monitors or machines; Apple computers may experience lighter colors by default.

The following text was taken verbatim from the Viget.com site.

Step 1: Color Profiles

Color profiles define how Photoshop interprets the raw color data in your files. That’s right: That means they change how you see the colors. This kind of precision is great for photography and print design, but it’s got to go if we’re making a website. With no images open, go to Edit / Color Settings.

We’re going to essentially turn off all this profile nonsense by changing the top drop-down to Monitor Color. Let’s uncheck “Ask When Opening” while we’re at it….from now on, when you open an image that has a color profile, Photoshop will give you a brief heads-up that we’re tossing it out.

Step 2: Proof Setup

Now, let’s go up to View / Proof Setup / Monitor RGB. This is to make sure Photoshop won’t be showing you skewed colors on your nice new profile-less images. A note, though: If you’re on a Mac/PC and want to see how an image is going to look on the other’s default gamma setting, you can come back here and test using “Windows RGB” or “Macintosh RGB.” Just remember to switch it back, or you could accidentally be designing in (shudder) PC mode.

Step 3:

After all this hard work, Photoshop still wants to sneak color profiles into your images. Most web browsers ignore them, but new Safari and Firefox builds DON’T, and IE can be set to work with them too. This can result in the weirdest cross-browser headache yet, so we need to make sure the colors we save out are sans profile.

Thankfully, it’s an easy fix: Open up any image on your machine and File / Save For Web. Next to the Preset option, there’s a sneaky little arrow…click it and uncheck “Convert to sRGB.” (Note: From what I can tell, this is only the default setting in CS3)

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