Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: gfabbri on December 07, 2007, 12:41:22 pm

Title: Washed-out Jpegs - help please!
Post by: gfabbri on December 07, 2007, 12:41:22 pm
I am really having trouble with exporting jpegs for web or e-mail use that come close to the look of my shots in LR 1.3 -- and I would really appreciate any suggestions!

In short, I am finding that the jpeg conversion engine seems to be producing washed out images with dull colors in sRBG.  Printing from LR works fine and printing aRGB Tiffs from Qimage works fine -- it's just those darn sRGB Jpegs that just aren't up to snuff.

Any ideas?  

It seems like it could be a function of the sRGB space, although there are many vibrant colors still within the gamut, or more likely something in the LR--> sRGB translation.

I love LR, but I routinely have to crank up the Vibrance and/or Saturation to get my sRGB Jpeg output to match what is displayed in LR.

Thanks for any ideas / help / thoughts!

-Gian

flickr.com/photos/gfabbri

P.S.  My monitor is profiled regularly and my CS2-derived sRGB Jpegs (from aRGB originals) look great.
Title: Washed-out Jpegs - help please!
Post by: Mort54 on December 07, 2007, 12:59:59 pm
Quote
P.S.  My monitor is profiled regularly and my CS2-derived sRGB Jpegs (from aRGB originals) look great.
Seems odd. My sRGB exports from LR look identical to the look within LR. How do your exported JPEGs look in PS. They should also look identical to how they look in LR, obviously.
Title: Washed-out Jpegs - help please!
Post by: Giedo on December 08, 2007, 01:40:53 pm
Quote
I am really having trouble with exporting jpegs for web or e-mail use that come close to the look of my shots in LR 1.3 -- and I would really appreciate any suggestions!

In short, I am finding that the jpeg conversion engine seems to be producing washed out images with dull colors in sRBG.  Printing from LR works fine and printing aRGB Tiffs from Qimage works fine -- it's just those darn sRGB Jpegs that just aren't up to snuff.

Any ideas? 

It seems like it could be a function of the sRGB space, although there are many vibrant colors still within the gamut, or more likely something in the LR--> sRGB translation.

I love LR, but I routinely have to crank up the Vibrance and/or Saturation to get my sRGB Jpeg output to match what is displayed in LR.

Thanks for any ideas / help / thoughts!

-Gian

flickr.com/photos/gfabbri

P.S.  My monitor is profiled regularly and my CS2-derived sRGB Jpegs (from aRGB originals) look great.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=158985\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Gian,
I had the same thing, but I think I forgot to change Adobe RGB to sRGB when exporting. These files really looked washed out. Since I check I do not make this mistake again, my exported jpegs look much better.
Title: Washed-out Jpegs - help please!
Post by: nik on December 09, 2007, 10:16:27 am
I had this problem a while back. I will assume you are using a non ICC aware browser like Firefox or explorer. This is problem #1.
Look at your images in Safari on a calibrated monitor, they should look much better.
Secondly, use the Prophoto colorspace as your working space across all adobe apps. Not aRGB.
But, I you really want to control what your images look like in a non ICC browser you should
export to photoshop as tiff or psd (in Prophoto rgb - Lightroom's colorspace) then convert to the sRGB colorspace (Edit > Convert to Profile...), do your tweaks (saturation/vibrance) and export to JPG via the 'Save for Web and Devices' file menu, here you can also select if you want to include the sRGB profile or not. I don't. You can also preview what your images will look like in your browser from the drop list at the bottom of the window. If you're on Mac you can use automator to do a lot of this for you.


-Nik

Quote
I am really having trouble with exporting jpegs for web or e-mail use that come close to the look of my shots in LR 1.3 -- and I would really appreciate any suggestions!

In short, I am finding that the jpeg conversion engine seems to be producing washed out images with dull colors in sRBG.  Printing from LR works fine and printing aRGB Tiffs from Qimage works fine -- it's just those darn sRGB Jpegs that just aren't up to snuff.

Any ideas? 

It seems like it could be a function of the sRGB space, although there are many vibrant colors still within the gamut, or more likely something in the LR--> sRGB translation.

I love LR, but I routinely have to crank up the Vibrance and/or Saturation to get my sRGB Jpeg output to match what is displayed in LR.

Thanks for any ideas / help / thoughts!

-Gian

flickr.com/photos/gfabbri

P.S.  My monitor is profiled regularly and my CS2-derived sRGB Jpegs (from aRGB originals) look great.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=158985\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Title: Washed-out Jpegs - help please!
Post by: ariaaudio on December 09, 2007, 10:38:04 pm
I have the same problem. I've been using Capture One Pro for over a year but have decided to give Lightroom a try. In Capture One, my exported sRGB images look fine in Windows Explorer (not color managed, but they look as expected), and in Picasa and Firefox (also not color managed, but again, they look darn close to Capture One's display). Of course they all look fine in Photoshop, which is color managed.

Exported sRGB images from Lightroom, though, look washed out in Explorer, Picasa, and Firefox, though they do look as expected in PS.
Title: Washed-out Jpegs - help please!
Post by: skysi on December 18, 2007, 10:52:56 pm
Folks,

Why don't you work in sRGB in the first place, so you don't have to endlessly convert from space to space. You would have saved yourself much headache that way.
Title: Washed-out Jpegs - help please!
Post by: CatOne on December 25, 2007, 02:22:02 pm
Quote
Folks,

Why don't you work in sRGB in the first place, so you don't have to endlessly convert from space to space. You would have saved yourself much headache that way.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=161641\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Because the sRGB color space is very small and you could encounter significant clipping and possible posterization from working in the space.

The original problem is probably from assigning the sRGB profile, rather than converting to the sRGB profile.  That's the wrong thing to do.
Title: Washed-out Jpegs - help please!
Post by: ariaaudio on December 25, 2007, 10:33:08 pm
Quote
Because the sRGB color space is very small and you could encounter significant clipping and possible posterization from working in the space.
Thank you. This thread didn't seem the place to re-explain the advantages of larger color spaces so I didn't want to go there.
Quote
The original problem is probably from assigning the sRGB profile, rather than converting to the sRGB profile.  That's the wrong thing to do.
So ... when using LR's Export function, when I select Image Settings > Color Space and set to sRGB, is LR assigning the sRGB profile, or converting to sRGB when exporting? I was under the impression that my exported images were converted. If that's incorrect, then no wonder the images look washed out. If it's not incorrect, then the question remains as to why the images look washed out.
Title: Washed-out Jpegs - help please!
Post by: Roy on December 25, 2007, 11:28:03 pm
Quote
So ... when using LR's Export function, when I select Image Settings > Color Space and set to sRGB, is LR assigning the sRGB profile, or converting to sRGB when exporting? I was under the impression that my exported images were converted. If that's incorrect, then no wonder the images look washed out. If it's not incorrect, then the question remains as to why the images look washed out.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=163131\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Lightroom "Converts the photos to sRGB, AdobeRGB, or ProPhoto RGB color space and tags the photos with the color profile." That is clearly stated in the Lightroom documentation.
Title: Washed-out Jpegs - help please!
Post by: Goldwork on January 11, 2008, 10:28:32 pm
I have had the "washout" problem with all my photos coming out of PhotoShop CS2 since I got the software.  It has nothing to do with screen profiling,color space, video card, or file type.  Jpeg, Tif, Bmp, etc: all the same problem.

I can move a photo out of PS directly to GIMP or PhotoImpact, reduce the two windows so I can view the images in the two programs side by side and the GIMP and PhotoImpact versions are a notch or two lighter, less saturated, and less contrasty.   And of course when I email anything right out of PS to the relatives I get complaints as to how washed out the photos are.

I've tried converting and/or assigning color spaces all to no avail.  As far as I can tell PS just handles images differently than other programs.  Since I only print B&W and matched my printer to my screen image it's not a problem there.  Emailing out, however, is.

So I hope Adobe is reading this as they're the only source of a solution I think.
Title: Washed-out Jpegs - help please!
Post by: Goldwork on January 12, 2008, 11:48:00 am
I believe I have solved the problem but would appreciate confirmation.  It does, however, make the the same image appear the same across all of my software and in emails to other computers (screen variances aside).

I'm uploading how I configured my settings page.  I discovered that changes on this page do not take effect unless you close PS and reopen.

What this means for those working in other color spaces but needing to work with images across several applications I don't know.
Title: Washed-out Jpegs - help please!
Post by: jjj on January 12, 2008, 04:10:35 pm
Quote
I believe I have solved the problem but would appreciate confirmation.  It does, however, make the the same image appear the same across all of my software and in emails to other computers (screen variances aside).

I'm uploading how I configured my settings page.  I discovered that changes on this page do not take effect unless you close PS and reopen.

What this means for those working in other color spaces but needing to work with images across several applications I don't know.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=166732\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Bad, bad way to work. Unless you only ever intend showing your images on a computer monitor and do not care about high end quality/colour clipping. Not to mention that it's irrelevent for the problem OP encountered in LR.

 
 Though for when one is in fact working in PS, set the working colour space [CMD/Cntrl+Shift+K gives you Colour Setup Preferences]to a larger gamut like Adobe RGB or better yet ProPhoto, esp if working with LR. Then when saving images for the web/email, simply convert to sRGB before saving as JPEGs. Better yet use Save for Web [a very powerful tool] and it will do this for you - in CS3 anyway.
In Colour Management policies, you should have 'preserve embedded profiles' unless you want images to convert to a colour space for some specific reason and also tick all 3 mismatch boxes. You may get nag screens for when there are problems/conflicts which are not in fact annoying, but very useful by simply keeping you informed about the images colour space and will help stop your colours from being messed up.
There's a lot more too it than that, but I haven't got time to go into it now. Read the help files as suggested at top of box will be a good start to understanding the issues.