I finally figured out how to get my images exporting from Lightroom without a colour shift by setting up a monitor profile, but somehow in the process I've made it so I can no longer export images from Lightroom to Photoshop without getting a colour shift, I'm really at a total loss and the info I'm reading online is confusing me further, can anyone help a fella out?
Lightroom to CS5 colour shift
- Thread starter Auraomega
- Start date
Sorry I didn't explain myself very well there. I downloaded the colour profile for this monitor, installed it and then changed the export profile so it now exports all my photos with the correct colours (I.E. the colours I see in Lightroom rather than shifting like it used to). When I choose to edit in Photoshop is when I get all the problems, no matter what profile I select I get different colours in Photoshop than what I see in Lightroom.
I've uploaded an image here, the one on the right is the correct image, exported from Lightroom and then drag and dropped into Photoshop followed by selecting "Discard the embedded profile (don't color manage)". The image to the left is what I've got when choosing to edit from Lightroom.
To be completely honest I don't think I've actually understood what the image profiles thing is all about...
I've uploaded an image here, the one on the right is the correct image, exported from Lightroom and then drag and dropped into Photoshop followed by selecting "Discard the embedded profile (don't color manage)". The image to the left is what I've got when choosing to edit from Lightroom.
To be completely honest I don't think I've actually understood what the image profiles thing is all about...
Hold on, you mean you're converting the image colour profile to a profile you downloaded for your monitor? First of all, stop that right now
Your image should only ever be one of two types of profile. A working space profile, ProPhoto, Adobe RGB, sRGB. Or, a print profile, for when you know exactly what you're outputting the image too, these should be custom to the printer or sometimes something more general like CMYK Fogra39. RAW files don't have colour profiles so don't worry about those (it doesn't matter what you set your camera too in the menu, it doesn't apply to RAW).
Secondly, a profile you downloaded for your monitor is potentially useless. Every monitor is different, and someone elses settings won't necessarily work for your monitor. You should always use a colorimeter to create a custom profile for your graphics card LUT and monitor (Or if you're using a monitor with it's own LUT, a profile for that rather than the graphics card).
Could you describe your workflow from camera to Photoshop? Do you shoot RAW? What are your output settings in Lightroom? What are your colour settings in Photoshop?
Bare in mind that I'm new to all of this
It all started for me when I was exporting photos and uploading them online only to find out they didn't appear online how they did in Lightroom, I found in the Acer download section the profile for my monitor, installed it and configured the export settings to use that profile, since then all my images have come out looking how they do in Lightroom, where as before they used to come out different colours.
I shoot in RAW, import to Lightroom, change white balance where required, change tone where required and then import into Photoshop to dodge and burn.
When I export an image to JPG my settings are all default except 'Color Space' which I've set to the profile downloaded from Acer. When I edit in Photoshop it's set to ProPhoto RGB 16bit.
'Color Settings' in Photoshop say 'Monitor Color'. Assuming I'm looking at the correct screen.
It all started for me when I was exporting photos and uploading them online only to find out they didn't appear online how they did in Lightroom, I found in the Acer download section the profile for my monitor, installed it and configured the export settings to use that profile, since then all my images have come out looking how they do in Lightroom, where as before they used to come out different colours.
I shoot in RAW, import to Lightroom, change white balance where required, change tone where required and then import into Photoshop to dodge and burn.
When I export an image to JPG my settings are all default except 'Color Space' which I've set to the profile downloaded from Acer. When I edit in Photoshop it's set to ProPhoto RGB 16bit.
'Color Settings' in Photoshop say 'Monitor Color'. Assuming I'm looking at the correct screen.
Hehe, no worries we all were at some point 
Right let's set you straight. And before I continue bear in mind trying to colour manage for the web is almost useless right now, given the huge range of monitors browsing, some calibrated, most not. It would need a major standardisation to bother worrying too much. Even if it looks ok to you, it probably doesn't look the same to me, or dave, or bob, etc.
Ok shooting RAW, check. Importing into Lightroom, check. Now when you're viewing your files in Lightroom they're being rendered (we'll use that word for sake of simplicity) into the ProPhoto RGB colour space. Adobe chose this because the ProPhoto space is very large, and would clip very few colours captured by your cameras sensor. Allowing you to maximise colour and tone. The problem with this is you're only ever going to be viewing Lightroom on a monitor, and we don't have anything that can display even close to all the colours in the ProPhoto colour space (We've only really just moved onto what are known as wide gamut LCD's, which can display all, or a high percentage of the Adobe RGB colour space). There are other downsides to this but I won't go into them now
So in Lightroom go into Edit / Preferences / External Editing. You're given the output options for when you de-mosaic the RAW file into a rendered image format, tiff, jpeg, etc. Here you're given options for File Format, Color Space, Bit Depth, Resolution and Compression. For now just concentrate on the Color Space option.
If this is set to ProPhoto RGB, it will export how it looks within Lightroom. You will now however, have to go into Photoshops colour settings, and make sure your 'Working Spaces : RGB :' is also set to ProPhoto RGB. This now means that the image in LR and PS is being viewed in the same way. I would recommend at the output section in LR to set the file format to TIFF and bit depth to 8. Unless you're working with a particularly tricky or tonally fine file in which case choose 16bit instead.
Herein however lies the problem. First off your monitor can't display all the colours of the file. Even if it fills the ProPhoto space end to end, you will only ever be able to see up to the limit of what your monitor is capable of. I use an Adobe RGB workflow, as I work on a wide gamut monitor capable of reproducing that colour space. Sure I loose some of the tones captured by the camera, but on the upside I get no surprises. And it's not like an Adobe RGB file is lacking in colours to choose from.
It's a shame you can't change the working RGB colour space in Lightroom to Adobe RGB, but Adobe have their reasons for leaving it how it is.
Basically once you've exported your TIFF into Photoshop you can do your edits, then use the 'Save for web' dialogue to create an sRGB jpeg copy for web use, it can also strip the exif data at the same time.
I would recommend adopting an Adobe RGB workflow, exporting from Lightroom as an Adobe RGB 8bit TIFF, and having your colour settings in Photoshop set to Adobe RGB too. 8 bit monitors are realistically already at the edge of displaying the wider gamut (we're moving onto 10bit panels but they're not exactly widespread yet, and a lot of the ones that say they are are actually 8bit panels with dithering).
Does that help or have I just confused you even more? I waffle a lot online, especially past 1 o'clock. I'm much better at teaching in real life
Right let's set you straight. And before I continue bear in mind trying to colour manage for the web is almost useless right now, given the huge range of monitors browsing, some calibrated, most not. It would need a major standardisation to bother worrying too much. Even if it looks ok to you, it probably doesn't look the same to me, or dave, or bob, etc. Ok shooting RAW, check. Importing into Lightroom, check. Now when you're viewing your files in Lightroom they're being rendered (we'll use that word for sake of simplicity) into the ProPhoto RGB colour space. Adobe chose this because the ProPhoto space is very large, and would clip very few colours captured by your cameras sensor. Allowing you to maximise colour and tone. The problem with this is you're only ever going to be viewing Lightroom on a monitor, and we don't have anything that can display even close to all the colours in the ProPhoto colour space (We've only really just moved onto what are known as wide gamut LCD's, which can display all, or a high percentage of the Adobe RGB colour space). There are other downsides to this but I won't go into them now
So in Lightroom go into Edit / Preferences / External Editing. You're given the output options for when you de-mosaic the RAW file into a rendered image format, tiff, jpeg, etc. Here you're given options for File Format, Color Space, Bit Depth, Resolution and Compression. For now just concentrate on the Color Space option.
If this is set to ProPhoto RGB, it will export how it looks within Lightroom. You will now however, have to go into Photoshops colour settings, and make sure your 'Working Spaces : RGB :' is also set to ProPhoto RGB. This now means that the image in LR and PS is being viewed in the same way. I would recommend at the output section in LR to set the file format to TIFF and bit depth to 8. Unless you're working with a particularly tricky or tonally fine file in which case choose 16bit instead.
Herein however lies the problem. First off your monitor can't display all the colours of the file. Even if it fills the ProPhoto space end to end, you will only ever be able to see up to the limit of what your monitor is capable of. I use an Adobe RGB workflow, as I work on a wide gamut monitor capable of reproducing that colour space. Sure I loose some of the tones captured by the camera, but on the upside I get no surprises. And it's not like an Adobe RGB file is lacking in colours to choose from.
It's a shame you can't change the working RGB colour space in Lightroom to Adobe RGB, but Adobe have their reasons for leaving it how it is.
Basically once you've exported your TIFF into Photoshop you can do your edits, then use the 'Save for web' dialogue to create an sRGB jpeg copy for web use, it can also strip the exif data at the same time.
I would recommend adopting an Adobe RGB workflow, exporting from Lightroom as an Adobe RGB 8bit TIFF, and having your colour settings in Photoshop set to Adobe RGB too. 8 bit monitors are realistically already at the edge of displaying the wider gamut (we're moving onto 10bit panels but they're not exactly widespread yet, and a lot of the ones that say they are are actually 8bit panels with dithering).
Does that help or have I just confused you even more? I waffle a lot online, especially past 1 o'clock. I'm much better at teaching in real life
Using those exact settings I get this.
I understood everything you said there which is nice, however it just doesn't work for me
Well good that you understood at least! Bad I wrote all of that and it didn't help at all
As there appears to be no obvious problem with regular logic, I would suggest starting again. Remove the monitor profile you downloaded, banish it from your system, make sure Lightroom has nothing to do with it (much more picky than PS), especially converting pictures to it.
Which operating system are you using?
As there appears to be no obvious problem with regular logic, I would suggest starting again. Remove the monitor profile you downloaded, banish it from your system, make sure Lightroom has nothing to do with it (much more picky than PS), especially converting pictures to it.
Which operating system are you using?
But it has removed the issue of the yellow tinting? The colour is now consistent across the different programs you use? How do they look if you Export an sRGB jpeg for web? (that was the original problem you were having wasn't it?)
You should be using Photoshop as the reference for colour. If it looks washed out it's because it's washed out, not because the program is showing the picture incorrectly.
You should be using Photoshop as the reference for colour. If it looks washed out it's because it's washed out, not because the program is showing the picture incorrectly.
Switching to Adobe RGB rather than ProPhoto RGB gives much better colours.
This is what I get when using Adobe, this when using ProPhoto and this is sRGB.
Thing is it's going to be impossible for me to work on an image if it exports completely differently to what I see on screen.
This is what I get when using Adobe, this when using ProPhoto and this is sRGB.
Thing is it's going to be impossible for me to work on an image if it exports completely differently to what I see on screen.
If you're exporting a picture for use in a non-colour managed program you should always export as sRGB. It will kill any of the colour that resides outside of the sRGB spectrum but thems the breaks when compressing a working space as large as ProPhoto into one as small as sRGB. You don't see the difference as much with Adobe RGB as it's in between the two in terms of size.
Just to double check something as I don't think it was answered before. If your export settings from Lightroom are ProPhoto 8bit TIFF, no compression. And your colour working space in Photoshop is ProPhoto, do the images look identical in both programs now? Because they should. If the image in PS looks desaturated slightly when in Color settings click 'Advanced Options' and make sure 'Desaturate Monitor colours by:" option isn't checked.
Now taking that same image in PS, go to Edit / Convert to profile. Source space should say ProPhoto RGB, and in Destination space select sRGB IEC61966. Is there a visible difference when doing this?
Also, taking the same image in Lightroom, go to File, Export, and in File settings set the format to jpeg and the Color Space to sRGB. Is this just knocking the vibrancy out of the image? (It should look exactly the same as what I told you to do above in PS).
It will be dependant on the image, but if there are lots of colours that fall outside of the sRGB colour space you may find it kills a lot of the vibrancy when it clips them. However better this than using AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB images on the web and letting a non-colour managed application decide what best to do with it.
Just to double check something as I don't think it was answered before. If your export settings from Lightroom are ProPhoto 8bit TIFF, no compression. And your colour working space in Photoshop is ProPhoto, do the images look identical in both programs now? Because they should. If the image in PS looks desaturated slightly when in Color settings click 'Advanced Options' and make sure 'Desaturate Monitor colours by:" option isn't checked.
Now taking that same image in PS, go to Edit / Convert to profile. Source space should say ProPhoto RGB, and in Destination space select sRGB IEC61966. Is there a visible difference when doing this?
Also, taking the same image in Lightroom, go to File, Export, and in File settings set the format to jpeg and the Color Space to sRGB. Is this just knocking the vibrancy out of the image? (It should look exactly the same as what I told you to do above in PS).
It will be dependant on the image, but if there are lots of colours that fall outside of the sRGB colour space you may find it kills a lot of the vibrancy when it clips them. However better this than using AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB images on the web and letting a non-colour managed application decide what best to do with it.
They are the same now when exporting.
There is, some of the colours appear to merge together, I guess due to the colour clipping, it's mostly the blues in the background instead of being a gradual change appears to be more of a solid blue from top to bottom.
Yes it's the same as Photoshop now.
Thanks Adrian, that seems to have sorted it for me
One last question, I'm looking at buying a new monitor as I want something larger and I've read IPS screens are the best for colour representation, however I really can't justify the cost, how do VA monitors do in comparison to IPS and TN? Any recommendations for me in the £250 price range for a 24"? My only requirements are it needs to connect via HDMI and be relatively fast for some gaming.
Glad I could help mate
For the problem you're experiencing with the colours looking like they're blocking together, this is most likely because the rendering intent (the method by which the software decides how the colours outside of the new destination space are squeezed inside) is set to Relative Colorimetric. The way this works is basically just by clipping all out of gamut colours to their nearest in-gamut value (on the very edge of the gamut). However all colours that are in gamut remain exactly where they are. This is great if you only have a couple of colours outside say sRGB but want to maintain the most faithful colour conversion.
Your other option is a rendering intent called Perceptual. This differs by moving all values to maintain the same ratio between certain colour values. This will help maintain those skies if you have large gradients that fall outside of the new colour space.
Just flick between the two and choose which looks better, there is no hard and fast rule and it depends completely on the image.
Regarding monitors depending on your budget it's probably best just going for an IPS panel as I've heard rumours of some 6bit VA panels in some screens (Used to be the case that all VA panels were 8bit, like IPS). IPS has better colour stability with viewing angles but exhibits a white glow, VA less so but can have better minimum black points and contrast ratio for a given brightness. It really does extend beyond the panel type though, contrary to what some might have you believe. I have an Eizo Coloredge that contains a VA panel, but the driving circuitry and software support make it far superior to any cheaper IPS screen. Likewise I work on plenty of IPS Eizo's too and it's the construction that makes them good, not the panel. The Dell 2407 for example was a fantastic entry level editing monitor, VA panel, but of course you won't be able to pick one up now that's new.
For your budget the Dell U2311H isn't a bad monitor (just typing this on one now!). It's not 1920x1200 which is a bit of a pain but better having 1920x1080 of good than 1920x1200 of ****. Beyond that though I've not really kept up with consumer monitors so you're better looking somewhere like Prad.de or tftcentral
For the problem you're experiencing with the colours looking like they're blocking together, this is most likely because the rendering intent (the method by which the software decides how the colours outside of the new destination space are squeezed inside) is set to Relative Colorimetric. The way this works is basically just by clipping all out of gamut colours to their nearest in-gamut value (on the very edge of the gamut). However all colours that are in gamut remain exactly where they are. This is great if you only have a couple of colours outside say sRGB but want to maintain the most faithful colour conversion.
Your other option is a rendering intent called Perceptual. This differs by moving all values to maintain the same ratio between certain colour values. This will help maintain those skies if you have large gradients that fall outside of the new colour space.
Just flick between the two and choose which looks better, there is no hard and fast rule and it depends completely on the image.
Regarding monitors depending on your budget it's probably best just going for an IPS panel as I've heard rumours of some 6bit VA panels in some screens (Used to be the case that all VA panels were 8bit, like IPS). IPS has better colour stability with viewing angles but exhibits a white glow, VA less so but can have better minimum black points and contrast ratio for a given brightness. It really does extend beyond the panel type though, contrary to what some might have you believe. I have an Eizo Coloredge that contains a VA panel, but the driving circuitry and software support make it far superior to any cheaper IPS screen. Likewise I work on plenty of IPS Eizo's too and it's the construction that makes them good, not the panel. The Dell 2407 for example was a fantastic entry level editing monitor, VA panel, but of course you won't be able to pick one up now that's new.
For your budget the Dell U2311H isn't a bad monitor (just typing this on one now!). It's not 1920x1200 which is a bit of a pain but better having 1920x1080 of good than 1920x1200 of ****. Beyond that though I've not really kept up with consumer monitors so you're better looking somewhere like Prad.de or tftcentral