Hello digital artists,

I am a new photographer and I am have trouble with colour and also contrast on BW digital photos.

I try and keep my photos true to form from the photo with minimal editing as I am trying to perfect my craft of shooting a good photo. However, when I upload photos to MM they come out a different shade/colour/contrast to when I view them photoshop.

I have tried to alter the colours/contrast comparing them side by side on my screen from the photoshop image and the uploaded image however I can't get it right.

E.g. see below. The reds came out washed really washed out on the uploads so I compensate by making the reds brighter in photoshop (which makes the colours look really uneven in the photoshop version) and then reuploaded it. I have done this a few times and this is the closest colour I can come to to the original photo that came off my camera, but its still slightly off. Because I "uped" the red, now his make-up looks like it starkly stops off at his neck.



What am I doing wrong? I feel like the colours in some of the photos in my online portfolio are a bit weird looking compared to the originals.

I can't really afford to pay for photos to be re-touched by a pro at this stage of my development.

Help!

Rathana

Are you resizing the photos before you upload them?  MM fully admits if they do it you'll lose quality.

Is your colour profile set up correctly in Photoshop and are you converting the images to sRGB before you upload them?

Hello all,

Yeah I am resizing it myself so I haven't lost too much of the sharpness, except in one of the black and whites (again, not sure why).

What is sRGB is that like "Standard RGB"? I think I have been saving mine as "Optimized" when it asked me something about "baseline" something. Maybe that's where the problem is? I'll try again using "Standard" when I save.



I really like MM. Everyone is so helpful!

Many thanks,

Rathana

sRGB is a colour space and it doesn't have anything to do with the Baseline setting when you go to save a files as a JPEG.

The (usual) reason images change colour when they are uploaded to the internet is because the image is not in an sRGB colour space, it's in AdobeRGB or what ever other format your camera was using at the time, and the browser doesn't convert it, it just displays it incorrectly.

Colour space theory is not an easy thing to explain or understand but there is a lot of information on the internet (and in Photoshop help) about it and you should start learning about it and trying to understand it sooner than later.

To convert your image to sRGB, select Edit/Convert to Profile - in the destination space choose sRGB IEC61966-2.1 and in the conversion options choose Adobe and either perceptual or Relative (either should provide a good conversion but it depends on what's in the image and your taste). Usually checking Black Point Compensation and Dither are safe bets. Do not save over your original file unless you know that you will never ever ever ever be using the image for anything other than the web.

It isn't necessary to completely understand colour space theory to produce good images sort of in the same way you don't need to completely understand Photoshop to produce good edits from it... but the more you understand it, the better off you'll be.

One other thing you should remember is that no 2 monitors are calibrated the same so what I see on my monitor and what you see on yours are two different things... but that doesn't have anything to do with the colour space of the image and that's a topic for another time.

I just had a look at the info in your image and it shows you are using an AdobeRGB profile so theoretically all you need to do is convert it to sRGB and you should get better results.

Sounds like as others have said, you are shooting/processing photos in the Adobe 1998 RGB colour space, which is good since it has a wider colour range than sRGB.

However when you upload the MM and view through a browser, the browser is assuming the image is in the sRGB colourspace and so the photo looks subtly different. Simply save your web-res version in the sRGB colour space but leave your original in Abobe1998!

If you use firefox web browser, it now has a plugin that respects the colour profile of the image, so Adobe 1998 images look correct.

That obviously helps those with the plugin, but not the rest of the viewing world!
Simon

This is why everyone needs to use a mac and safari Screen colour is an art that still alludes me. I need to get it right though :-s

Not saying that at all, just stating it's the best browser to use to view images online.

Hi everyone.

Thanks for the replies! I have learnt a lot.

one more thing I have learnt is that although Firefox (which is what I use) seems to wash out the colour, Safari seems to amp up the colour i.e. the redness is really clear when I use a firefox browser.

I assume people use firefox more?

Eitherway I will fix it later as I think I have messed around with it more than enough for one evening.

Many thanks for the insight!!!! I am very appreciative!



Rathana