Photoshop Color

[themagpie]

I have been studying PS 7 for several months now.  I've used several books to guide me, the best of which are Adobe Classroom in a Book and Scott Kelby's PS 7 for Digital Photographers.  My problem is that my colors become much less saturated when they are printed by a commercial service.  Moreover, the tones are off.  Should I convert from rgb to cmyk or is cmyk strictly for magazines?  Also, the colors in PS differ from the colors I see when I save a photo to iPhoto.

Thanks.

Margie

[CyberPet]

The evil world of color management in Photoshop, yes. The problem is often that different outputs uses different types of RGB (example: digital camera saves their images in sRGB) and some labs where you send your digital images to uses one or the other. Some of them are professional enough to actually give you a colorsync profile (also called icc-profiles) which you can load before you save them.

If Photoshop has some type of Colorsync settings turned on, it might look different than what you see in iPhoto for instance.

This is a jungle and there's been many books written on the subject, just have no author in mind right now, but browse the web and I'm sure you'll find some good sources there on how to master this mystery of colors for online viewing, print and photo prints. I have still yet learn to master it, but I'm getting there.... well, soon.  

[themagpie]

Petra, thanks for your response.  I do have Michael Kiernan's book, "Photoshop Color Correction" (I think he is the color expert), but, frankly, the book is beyond my current  understanding of Photoshop.  I will eventually get back to it.

Margie

[tacit]

The color differs in Photoshop and other programs because Photoshop does color management and other programs don't/ To see the image in Photoshop the way you will see it in other programs, use View->Proof Setup->Monitor RGB.

How are the prints being made? CMYK is only suitable for reproduction on a four-color offset printing press. If your prints are photographic prints, then CMYK is not appropriate; photo printing devices work in RGB.

The difference in saturation probably indicates you are using the wrong color profile and/or the wrong working color space. For many applications, Adobe RGB is a better choice than sRGB.

[themagpie]

Tacit, thank you for your response.  I have been using the Adobe rgb (1998).  I've been using a very inexpensive and prompt online printing service.

http://www.digitalplusny.com.

They print 8x10 photos for $1.10 (Apple charges $3.98).  I'll ask them which profile they use.

Thanks also for advice about viewing.  It does the job.

Margie