Posted on May 12th, 2005 by Kevin Dangoor

Photoshop color shifting when saving for the web

Yesterday, I was working in Photoshop and got a simple image looking the way I wanted it to. I had eyedroppered the color from a different file. Whenever I tried to edit in Image Ready or save for the web, the image became distinctly lighter. It would seem that this interestingly formatted page has the reason: Save For Web Color Shift ImageReady. As of now, I’m still seeing the color change when I move from Photoshop to ImageReady, so the tips presented there have not yet borne fruit for me.

A major issue here for me is that I’m trying to synchronize the color in the image with an HTML color. Photoshop tells me the correct HTML color code, but ImageReady is producing a different color.

5 Responses to “Photoshop color shifting when saving for the web”

Frank on May 13th, 2005 11:29 am:

The colorshifting happens because Imageready has a native color calibration set to RGB monitor… also Flash has this setting by default… these two apps. present their result in the web via crt,lcd but basically an RGB monitor.

But Photoshop can be used for output in other devices, i.e., press printing.
So the colorproffing is different.

In order to match the color appearence in Photoshop and Imageready/Flash, just go to VIEW palette, then PROFF SETUP and finally click on MONITOR RGB… all this in Photoshop and your color will match up…

Greetings.

Frank Dozsa

Kevin Dangoor on May 13th, 2005 12:07 pm:

I absolutely agree that color management is vital for print and other media. I have a hard time coming up with a use case, though, where you would want the colors you see in Photoshop to be something other than what you see in ImageReady. In other words, when saving for the web, Photoshop should automatically do the color conversion to ensure that the monitor view looks the same as what you were just looking at.

The Proof Setup is a good tip. I had discovered that after posting this entry. By setting it to the monitor view, that at least eliminates surprises.

Frank on May 13th, 2005 4:04 pm:

Just to keep up a little bit… The fact is that Photoshop evolved from another realm and shifted to the web, while ImageReady is the add-on to make Photoshop web-user-friendly…

Another companies that did not see it coming where left behind and today they struggle to survive, i.e., Corel Draw, as a good example… they survive because of their loyal costumers, but the new ones tend to shift to web-centric apps.

That’s why even thou not as impressive as Photoshop, programs oriented for the web keep gaining more space, like Fireworks, that still have an edge when it comes to web, but lack other “features” that are Photoshop’s strenghts.

Kevin Dangoor on May 14th, 2005 7:33 am:

I do realize that Photoshop started out in print-land and made the transition to web-land. But, because they have a tool specifically for the web (ImageReady, and Photoshop’s Save for the Web feature), they really should have made the color conversion automatic so that what you’re looking at in ImageReady is exactly what you were looking at in Photoshop.

Perhaps that is “hard” for them to do in their code. But, hard or not, that’s what a user like me will expect…

Frank on May 14th, 2005 8:38 am:

As you I’m a web-centric user, but I attended a photomarketing tradeshow quite recently, and believe me the amount of people that use Photoshop and do it for other reasons than the web is huge.

But at the end the web rules so I tend to agree with you, maybe Adobe should warn in some way to this surprising problem.