Photoshop CS3 help

[JDANDO]

Hey guys;

My CS3 appears to be acting wonky. I think is now saving files in RGB color space instead of sRGB. Is sRGB the correct profile? Where do I set it to save sRGB??

Thanks in advance.

[gonzalu]

Hey guys;

My CS3 appears to be acting wonky. I think is now saving files in RGB color space instead of sRGB. Is sRGB the correct profile? Where do I set it to save sRGB??

Thanks in advance.

Jeremy, if you use the "Save for Web..." option, you have a checkbox in the resulting dialog to convert to sRGB. If you use the "Save As..." option, you will NOT have a way to [change] the color space there... so here is how I do it and how I suggest you do it.

Always try to convert to a color space rather than embedding it. Not all browsers are color profile aware so simply embedding the profile won't help you show your image correctly around the globe! So, go into the Edit > Convert to Profile ... dialog and there you can chose the color profile you would like to [convert] the image to. This will PERMANENTLY change the pixel data in the image and that way no matter what you select as a profile for embedding, the image will show up correctly on poor browsers or programs and also on color aware browsers/apps.

Color management in Photoshop is a huge subject not easily digested. There are entire books devoted to it. I suggest you do some reading on the subject before using any workflows or changing anything iinside Photoshop... it will mess things up pretty badly.

As a safe bet, always work in 16bit images while editing. This gives much larger ramps and smoother transitions [IF] you are working from RAW image data. If you are editing JPGs, it will nto be that beneficial... but suffice to say, editing in whatever color space the files are in, Photoshop will ALWAYS convert (it should anyway if it isn't now, go fix it) to your display profile from your calibration profiles for your monitor/video card. Adobe Photoshop will take the colors in the file and dynamically convert them to your monitor so they look ACCURATE to your eyes, even if the underlying data is not. After you are done editing, convert back to sRGB and to 8bit before saving the JPG for web. I usually embed the ICC profile (sRGB) but it really doesn't matter because I convert the image to sRGB anyway before saving. Always remember that embedding a profile is not the same as CONVERTING an image from one color space to another.

I can cover this in more depth if anyone is interested. But I promise unless you love color and accuracy of it, it is a boring and complicated subject