desatured colors converting to JPG?

[frozenintime]

i recently switched from photoshop 7 to cs 2 (mac) and have been loving it so far.
i have come across a strange issue, though, when outputting JPGs for something simple like uploading to flickr - the minute i enter the 'save for web' screen, the image appears greatly desaturated (both in the 'original' and 2up/4up windows).

confusingly, after saving the file, it opens in photoshop looking normally saturated.  it looks the same in apple's 'preview' program as well.  but after posting it at flickr, its back to its desaturated-ness.

i've tried 'save as' instead of 'save for web' and had the same outcome.  this was never a problem with photoshop 7...

i've been switching a bit between color spaces, and i'm still trying to get my head around them.  but i've been using adobe 98 for this stuff, which seems to be as innocuous a space as they come...


any ideas?
please excuse my neophyte-status!

thanks
ben

[jani]

Well, the problem with "save for web" is easily explained; you are working in Adobe RGB, while "save for web" will by default strip the ICC profile. This leads to not only desaturation, but other colour anomalies as well.

Also keep in mind that web browsers aren't ICC aware, so you should at least convert your Adobe RGB images to sRGB before saving for web use (whether you use "save as" or "save for web").

[Henrik Paul]

To comment on Jani's reply, I have actually made an action that converts the current document from 16-bit to 8-bit and also converts it to sRGB. I have assigned this action to the key F2 - now, every time I want a photo to be shown for the web, I just press F2 and then save for web, and I'm good to go.

[jjj]

To alter image colour space on the fly go to Edit/Convert to profile.
Not sure why that's in Edit rather than image menu!? Same for Transform!

[frozenintime]

do you all end up processing your images differently for sRGB than the more robust color spaces?

sRGB really takes the piss out of photographs!