Over-saturated JPG colors from LR and PS CS5

[Snarkbyte]

This problem is really getting to me.

When I process a photo in LR or CS5 and save as a JPG file, the colors in the JPG file appear over-saturated when viewed with anything other than LR or PS. If I load the JPG image in LR or CS5, the JPG colors match the DNG, TIF, or PSF image that I converted, but are over-saturated when viewed with any other software. I just use the "Export" or "Save as..." commands in LR and PS, and save at the highest image quality, with no resizing or other special treatment. Does anyone else have this problem or suggestions as to what the problem might be?

[jiro]

I'm sorry, Al. I have not encountered this problem yet. Any chance that you could post a sample image or a screen shot of the over-saturated image when viewed from another image browser?

[Colin Southern]

Best guess is it's a profile issue. Almost like the incorrect profile is being assigned rather than converted to, as one of the final steps.

Need to see an image with profile intact to be sure though.

[Snarkbyte]

Thanks, guys. I'll post some sample images tonite; no time right now....

[Shadowman]

Adobe PDF files can also alter the colors in an image. As Colin said, changing the color profile of the image makes a big difference. If you don't change the Adobe Reader profile, the default produces a red cast to all PDFs.

[nickjohnson]

Hello Al,
I also get similar problems but in a different direction. I get luminance shift and / or saturation change. Since I use LR & CS set to use the ProPhoto colour space, I've assumed that there is a colour space conversion problem - due to JPEG files using the sRGB colour space. In any event I don't understand what's going on here so will watch this thread with interest.

Regards,

Nick.

[Snarkbyte]

OK, I used a screen-grabber to capture an image of a psd file displayed in PS. Here is the image from PS:



Here is the jpg image generated by PS, from the psd image shown above:



As you can see, the colors in the jpg image are signficantly more saturated than the psd image. I really don't know what causes this, but it is annoying. Any help is greatly appreciated; I'll do my best to provide whatever information is requested, including the original DNG file (this was originally shot in RAW on a Canon 5D MkII).

[jiro]

A link on the original .dng file would be great, Al. That is really one annoying color shift anomaly. I'll see if it can happen also to my system. I'll wait for the link then. Thanks.

[Snarkbyte]

Thanks, Jiro. The original DNG file can be downloaded here

[jiro]

Thanks, Jiro. The original DNG file can be downloaded here

Al, this is a screenshot of your dng file when I opened it in Photoshop CS5 ACR. I didn't notice any over saturation nor a green cast on the image. I'll study this further and see if I can find out anything on my settings that might help you.



And this is the screenshot when I opened your .dng file on LR 3:

[jiro]

Wow, first time I've noticed that the images in LR are a little bit brighter than when opened in ACR.

I don't know if this helps but on the thing that I noticed on my monitor screen and settings, my Lightroom white balance is set to AUTO whenever I import or open a raw file. No wonder I see a change in WB and a shift in brightness. I am not so sure if it has a bearing on your case.

your .dng file has a WB as shot setting of TEMP = 3900 and a +14 tint. On auto WB in Lightroom, the WB changed to TEMP = 3550 and a +14 tint. When I compared the AUTO WB output of ACR to the AUTO WB output in Lightroom they matched the same on my system, Al.

[Snarkbyte]

Al, this is a screenshot of your dng file when I opened it in Photoshop CS5 ACR. I didn't notice any over saturation nor a green cast on the image. I'll study this further and see if I can find out anything on my settings that might help you.

Yes, this is the DNG straight out of camera. If you look at the un-altered DNG image, you can see some slight green color-cast from the graduation gown she was holding, and I was trying to get rid of that in PP. The psd image I posted previously had some cropping and other adjustments prior to conversion to JPG. The over-saturation only appears in the JPG generated by LR or PS.

[jiro]

This is a side by side comparison of the original dng and the image of the dng file converted to jpeg:



Looks similar to me here.

[Snarkbyte]

I think I may have found the problem, and it's not in PS or LR. I have been using Canon's DPP application as my default JPG viewer, so I decided to look at the JPG file using the Windows Media Player. When viewed with the Windows application, the JPG shows no additional color saturation... it appears identical to the PS DNG image. Apparently, DPP is applying some adjustments to the JPG, which is causing all the confusion. I think I'll just set my default JPG image viewer to the Windows Media Player, and perhaps the problem will go away. Stay tuned for any additional developments....

[Colin Southern]

I think I may have found the problem, and it's not in PS or LR. I have been using Canon's DPP application as my default JPG viewer, so I decided to look at the JPG file using the Windows Media Player. When viewed with the Windows application, the JPG shows no additional color saturation... it appears identical to the PS DNG image. Apparently, DPP is applying some adjustments to the JPG, which is causing all the confusion. I think I'll just set my default JPG image viewer to the Windows Media Player, and perhaps the problem will go away. Stay tuned for any additional developments....

Possibly DPP is still applying picture style tags, whis everything else ignores?

[Colin Southern]

Hello Al,
I also get similar problems but in a different direction. I get luminance shift and / or saturation change. Since I use LR & CS set to use the ProPhoto colour space, I've assumed that there is a colour space conversion problem - due to JPEG files using the sRGB colour space. In any event I don't understand what's going on here so will watch this thread with interest.

Regards,

Nick.

Hi Nick,

It's a common problem. JPEGs doesn't "use" sRGB colourspace (or any other for that matter) per sec. - the problem is that most viewing apps aren't colour managed and ASSUME RGB, when in fact it's still Adobe RGB or Prophoto. Not sure what the procedure is in LR, but in Ps, you need to choose "Edit -> CONVERT to profile" (and ensure the target profile is sRGB).

Basically, monitors are pretty much sRGB gamut devices - printers require Adobe RGB to print the entire range, and nothing really uses Prophoto RGB gamut. If you're only prepping for the web, you may just as well open them in the sRBG colourspace to begin with - the purists will throw up their arms in horrow, but in the real world you'll get better results (even when using a Prophoto RGB profile you still won't see anymore colours on your screen because sRGB is pretty much all the monitor is physically capable of reproducing).

[Snarkbyte]

Possibly DPP is still applying picture style tags, whis everything else ignores?

Possibly, but JPGs don't have picture style tags (or if they do, it's news to me). Perhaps DPP is applying some default tags? Or maybe I set up DPP to apply some settings and have since forgotten all about them... I stopped using DPP for post-processing after I got PS. I'm going to poke around a bit more, but I'm fairly convinced that the problem doesn't originate in PS or LR.

What bugs me here is that the JPG image in the original post of this thread isn't being viewed in DPP, so why is the color saturation visible in that image?

[Colin Southern]

Possibly, but JPGs don't have picture style tags (or if they do, it's news to me). Perhaps DPP is applying some default tags? Or maybe I set up DPP to apply some settings and have since forgotten all about them...

All good questions. JPEGs support metadata - and picture style tags ar in metadata, so technically it's possible, although thinking about it, I agree it seems less likely.

It might be intereting to see if there's any corelation between the changes you're seeing and the picture style selected in the camera

[nickjohnson]

Hi Nick,

It's a common problem. JPEGs doesn't "use" sRGB colourspace (or any other for that matter) per sec. - the problem is that most viewing apps aren't colour managed and ASSUME RGB, when in fact it's still Adobe RGB or Prophoto. Not sure what the procedure is in LR, but in Ps, you need to choose "Edit -> CONVERT to profile" (and ensure the target profile is sRGB).

Basically, monitors are pretty much sRGB gamut devices - printers require Adobe RGB to print the entire range, and nothing really uses Prophoto RGB gamut. If you're only prepping for the web, you may just as well open them in the sRBG colourspace to begin with - the purists will throw up their arms in horrow, but in the real world you'll get better results (even when using a Prophoto RGB profile you still won't see anymore colours on your screen because sRGB is pretty much all the monitor is physically capable of reproducing).

Colin,
Thanks for the reply. You confirm much of what I have recently discovered (well OK – bumped into and stumbled over!). So when I save for the Web I now do a separate file with a conversion of colour space from ProPhoto to sRGB. As soon as I do that I get the shift in luminance / saturation. I now have a standard way of correcting the shift. I move the centre level -10 (e.g. 104 goes to 94), and boost the saturation by +5. After that I resize and then save as jpeg.
Incidentally, it's no surprise to me that we get so many different outcomes when saving jpegs – have you seen all the different save options that various applications offer? Frankly, I'm amazed that they look as good as they do!

Regards,

Nick.

[Colin Southern]

Colin,
Thanks for the reply. You confirm much of what I have recently discovered (well OK – bumped into and stumbled over!). So when I save for the Web I now do a separate file with a conversion of colour space from ProPhoto to sRGB. As soon as I do that I get the shift in luminance / saturation.

Hi Nick,

No worries

I don't use save for web, but essentially, I have an action button setup so it changes the image to 8 bit and converts to sRGB with one click.

You definitely should not be getting any visible changes when you go from ProPhoto to sRGB, so something very wrong there. The usual cultrit there is selecting Edit -> ASSIGN profile instead of Edit -> CONVERT to profile. Unless you're printing your own shots, you may just as well set the converter to spit them out in sRGB in the first place. Many worry about "missing out on colours" (which is technically a possibility), but they're colours you can't see on a typical monitor, nor ones you can print on printers most shops use (they're both sRGB devices).