LR and Photoshop Colour Issues

[chris moody]

Hello All,

Seeing that this issue seems more colour/color management related, I have posted here as opposed to the Lightroom or Photoshop forum.

The problem is this - when opening an image from Lightroom in Photoshop for further editing there is a marked difference in appearance, not wacky different, but more than just subtle density and saturation differences. I understand that LR is using ProPhoto RGB as the editing space and given that colour handling in PS is set to preserve embedded profiles the two images should be identical no?

Monitor is calibrated with the Eye One Display 2. PS version CS4, Lightroom 2.6 on Mac OSX 10.6.2 (macbook pro), clamshell mode with external monitor, Dell Ultrasharp 20"

I have seen this happen on two different machines, both macs and can't figure out whats going on. Is it the monitor profile? Surely the images would look the same even if there was an issue with the profile. What am I missing? Thanks in advance.

[Mark D Segal]

Is Photoshop set to ProPhoto color working space and do you have profile mismatch warnings turned on? Also, what Export instructions are you using to get the image from LR to PS?

[Raw shooter]

Are you color managing both displays, or just the external LCD?
LR uses Melissa RGB (ProPhoto RGB color space with an sRGB tone curve), not really ProPhotoRGB, so the exported image is converted to the color space you selected.  
I do agree, that the image should appear the same in a color managed workflow - although some LR colors would fall outside most Photoshop color spaces.

If you have Camera Raw (late enough to have profiles for your camera), I would try the same image, but choose ProPhotoRGB before any tonal adjustments, then export as ProPhotoRGB.  That image, as a rendered image in Photoshop, should be identical to the Camera Raw view.

[chris moody]

Thanks for the responses. Though I'm still none the wiser as to what is going on. Photoshop is set to preserve embedded profiles and output space on LR is set to Prophoto RGB so the document opens in PS in that space. Both monitors have been profiled. Could this all be down to viewing angles and a not so good monitor?

[Mark D Segal]

Not clear to me that Dell monitors are the last word for critical image editing work to start with. But I'm not sure how that could be the heart of your problem here anyhow. You are viewing the same image on the same monitor as it appears at two stages of processing using two pieces of software. So that suggests to me something inconsistent is happening on conversion of the file from LR to PS. One needs to nail down exactly what to solve this problem. The fact that LR shows the image in a working space which renders in sRGB on the display is not an issue, because most of our displays don't see more than sRGB anyhow regardless of whether you view the image from LR or PS. The important point is that the file data is in ProPhoto on export. There is some setting in either LR or PS causing your problem and I can't see off hand what it would be.

If it's of any guidance, I have my Photoshop Color Settings set to Pro Photo RGB as the working space, all mismatches warnings activated, and I export from LR in Pro Photo. When I examine the images in PS on that basis, they look the same as they did in LR before I do any further adjusting in PS. This means PS is accurately picking-up the metadata of the edits in LR and the colour spaces are cosistent enough to not produce any viewing issues.

[chris moody]

Mark, I tried changing the PS working space to ProPhoto RGB (though i always understood that once "preserve embedded profiles" was ticked, that the document would open in its embedded colour space irrespective of the working space set in PS), the result is the same. Now i am almost certain the issue is simply down to viewing angles on a poor quality monitor. Thanks again for your input.

[Mark D Segal]

Chris, you are welcome, but I'm mystified. Do you change the viewing angle between looking at the image in LR versus PS? If you are looking at one version on your notebook display and the other on the external Dell, then yes, of course, your observation of the probable cause is very plausable because image appearance on a laptop display is notoriously sensitive to viewing angle, while you also need to be mindful of the profiling quality on the Dell display. Especially to make sure you don't have the parameters set with too much brightness, too much contrast and bluish whitepoint as they tend to be when they come out of the box.

[digitaldog]

What are you using to profile the display? Are you selecting the use of V4 profiles (that’s going to be problematic).

Also, you need to view both previews at 100%, in LR that would need to be in Develop.

[chris moody]

Monitor calibrated with Eye One Display 2 using Eye One Software. Not selecting V4 profiles (don't think so anyway). Viewing both images on the same monitor side by side (even at 100%) shows subtle differences.

Why am I convinced it's the viewing angle? - I duplicated an image in Photoshop and moved it to different positions on the screen and noticed a very subtle difference in contrast and density between the two images. My Dell is not high end but it's still a reasonably good monitor, I probably would not have noticed had I not seen the problem greatly exaggerated on a cheaper Dell screen.

The difference is evident on the Macbook Pro screen too, but again, quite subtle.

[BradSmith]

I'm having the same problem.  When I "edit in" Photoshop, I "Edit a Copy Using Lightroom Adjustments" and they come across per my Lghtrm Prefs as 16 bit ProPhoto (it is showing that in Photoshop).   Yet images in Photoshop are darker than in Lightroom by a noticeable amount.   For example, in a commercially produced tif file of the ColorChecker that I use for this sort of thing,  I import it into Lightroom, Zeroed Presets.  Edit in Photoshop.  I measure both images side by side on my NEC 2690 calibrated monitor using the Digital Color Meter that comes with the Apple OS.   Here are the RGB readings for one of the colors:

Lightroom   198  152  128
Photoshop   183  132  109

The amount of variance is not constant from color to color, but in all cases is at least 10 points darker (usually 15-20) in R,G and B for every color on the ColorChecker.    The middle two gray scale patches, are respectively 17 and 19 points darker in Photoshop.

This is weird.

[benoit@benoitmalphettes.com]

I am experiencing the very same problem. Carefully went over all the settings in LR (LR 3 beta 2) and PS (CS4) and recalibrated a few times and cannot find a solution.

[benoit@benoitmalphettes.com]

I worked on this issue yesterday.
After re-recalibrating, using Matrix, LUT, V2, V4 , disconnecting my second monitor, all to no avail, I recalled turning off some prompt re Camera Raw in LR awhile back.
And it gave me a solution:
Lightroom > Preferences > General > Prompts > Reset all warning dialogs  and when editing in PS three options are given (see attached)  : click on "Render Using Lightroom " and the file opens matching the one in LR. Btw, the file opens in PS as a TIF not as a DNG.
[attachment=21288:Screen_s...41.45_AM.jpg]

[chris moody]

I worked on this issue yesterday.
After re-recalibrating, using Matrix, LUT, V2, V4 , disconnecting my second monitor, all to no avail, I recalled turning off some prompt re Camera Raw in LR awhile back.
And it gave me a solution:
Lightroom > Preferences > General > Prompts > Reset all warning dialogs  and when editing in PS three options are given (see attached)  : click on "Render Using Lightroom " and the file opens matching the one in LR. Btw, the file opens in PS as a TIF not as a DNG.
[attachment=21288:Screen_s...41.45_AM.jpg]

Tried that, don't get the warning. Thanks anyway.

[benoit@benoitmalphettes.com]

[quote name='chris moody' date='Apr 5 2010, 10:27 AM' post='358296']
Tried that, don't get the warning. Thanks anyway.


to clarify my prior posting: I was working on LR 3 Beta 2

[Tim Lookingbill]

Waited to see if anyone provided a solution just in case what I'm about to say might be wrong.

I'm getting subtle color differences between a 2004 G5 iMac connected to an external 2009 Dell 2209WA both calibrated with the original i1Display (not 2) using i1Match 3.6.2 and both having an "sRGB-ish" color gamut.

I've been investigating this for several weeks and I've come to the conclusion that RGB colormeter pucks aren't the most consistent when it comes to getting exact color matches between two displays.


This Colorsync Mailing List discussion pretty much confirms this:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/colorsync-...b/msg00062.html

The black point on the iMac is far more dense and rich looking compared to the Dell's. However there's no correction in the final i1Match LUT calibration RGB curve correction graph to show a compensation in the shadow roll off to correct for this mismatch even though both have identical Black Density and overall Luminance targets, color temp and gamma readouts. PDI color target skintones will have a bit more yellow on the Dell compared to the iMac but the image still looks great overall.

Also I've found that color temp white point color cast appearance with regards to perceived amounts of blue/yellow calibrating between 6000K-(iMac native) to 6500K can vary but not be noticeable to the eye until conducting long edits on the iMac and switching back to view the image on the Dell where I suddenly notice a slight dull yellowish warm cast due to the eye's adaptive nature. I have to crank up the blue channel on the Dell's WP to get rid of this dull yellowish tinge but now my white point clearly doesn't match my iMac's but the skintones match.

I kept bangin' away adjusting the Dell's color temp and contrast appearance through its OSD menu to get it to visually match as exact as possible to the iMac and then recalibrate, but I still was always slightly off either on the green or red side afterward so I just gave up and accepted this slight and subtle mismatch.

[SeptimusFry]

I don't have this problem, but I had pretty much the same problem some time back. I received a warning on going from LR to PS, regarding Camera Raw. Having looked up the changes from my version of CR, I thought I did not need to do that and I took one of the other alternatives and the problem started (though I did not realise it at the time). I didn't get that warning again so didn't pursue that as a solution. Finally however, I DID force a CR upgrade, and the problem just disappeared.  There was something saying something like "lightroom adjustments will not appear in photoshop" early on in all of this.

FYI I now have CR 5.7.0.212

Probably totally irrelevant, but....

[benoit@benoitmalphettes.com]

Thanks for your post SeptimusFry, I did not know that CR 5.7 was now available. I just downloaded it and it resolved the problem of non matching viewing between LR & PS