Where shall I post process?

MichaelHo · 11 Dec 2007 at 20:16

I have been post processing my photos on my macbook, it's monitor has not had any sort of custom calibration done to it. On my macbook screen the colours of the photos look really good, however when I upload the photos to my site (www.michaelho.co.uk) some of them looks washed out, which is quite different to what I see in Lightroom on my macbook.

I also have a desktop pc connected to a tft monitor (HP1955) which is set to sRGB mode, when I access the site on this monitor the photos also looks washed out and if I post process the same photo in Lightroom on this PC I seem to get better colours but I'm not sure if it's only the screen that shows this difference in colour or other people's monitors too.

My question is on which machine should I post process on?

Messiah Khan · 11 Dec 2007 at 21:17

It might be worth having a look at your site on other peoples monitors to see what most people see. Either that or invest in a calibration device. Laptops tend not to be too good due to the vertical viewing angle changing the brightness. Also are you sure your entire workflow is in sRGB?

MichaelHo · 11 Dec 2007 at 21:33

How do I make sure that my entire workflow is in sRGB? I use Lightroom and export to photoshop sometimes with LR, I know there's a sRGB setting for exporting tiffs to CS3, and also there's a sRGB option for when I export DNG files to Jpegs.
What other setting do I need to change to sRGB?

Irish_Tom · 12 Dec 2007 at 09:18

I've been without my Lightroom for a while now (but it's coming back) so I've forgotten how to set the colour profile you use with it. I tend to work in ProPhoto throughout my workflow until the very last minute.

If I want an image to go on t'interweb I'll export it from Lightroom as a .tiff. Open it in Photoshop and do any final tweaks and then save it. I will then resize it so the longest edge is 800px and then go to edit then convert to profile and then make sure the profile is sRGB IEC61966-2.1. (that should show you if any of the colours are going to be washed out and if they are you can re-edit the image). I'll then save for web.

Once it's in sRGB it should look the same way as it's going to look on the web. It's possible that you have Lightroom set to ProPhoto or AdobeRGB.

Alternatively you can make your whole workflow sRGB from the very start in Lightroom, but as I say I've forgotten the exact menu order to do it. However, because sRGB has a smaller gamut than ProPhoto I tend to only use sRGB if the image is going on the web.

I'll probably get told now that my working practice is wrong and if anyone can provide me with evidence I'd be willing to change but my method seems to have worked for me all right so far.

Panzer