colors off in Preview when viewing JPG's with sRGB profiles

Hi topmodelphotography ..

If you're keen about running the right profiles - please don't mess up the way you do. The sRGB profile that you're using is showing a narrower color space (value 0-16 of blacks are out). The sRGB profile is mainly used for consumer monitors in the cheap end where contrast conditions are worse that expensive and professional displays to present contents in a similar way across manufacturers. If you should use any predefined color profile, please use Adobe (1998) profiling.
best practive is calibrating your monitor with a good calibrator and use these profiles.

In System Preferences you should set up the calibrated profile and the same goes for all Adobe apps under Color Settings.

Useful reading concerning Color Profiles:
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=321382&sliceId=1

Your issue with Preview is most likely due to erroneous setup in System Settings. otherwise try and disable Dithering in Preview.

And don't use Save for Web if you intend to keep at least a minor part of your colors in your images. Use TIFF's where possible (without 'upgrading' images from compressed formats such as JPEG's, GIF's, etc.)

useful reading about Image compression:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_compression

Hope this answers some of you questions. 😉

topmodel, first off I'd say don't apply generic sRGB or Adobe RGB profiles to your monitor as a partial solution. As you found out, they aren't useful in describing the output capabilities of modern displays. They should really only be applied to image files.

I suspect you have a corrupt or otherwise bad color profile for your monitor. You can check if your custom Dell profile is corrupt by opening Colorsync Utility, going to Profile First Aid, and clicking Verify.

Did you create the calibrated profile using a hardware colorimeter like the Spyder3 or eye1? If not, it's worth saying that sometimes a manufacturer's own "custom" profile is crap. I use a LaCie 319, which came with a profile that was supposedly designed for this model but instead makes everything very foggy. My previous NEC's profile didn't work at all.

Are you running a multi-display setup? I've been having color problems with mine since upgrading to Leopard. The Apple apps (preview, quicklook, safari) no longer distinguish between my two displays in terms of color. Colors show up as unnaturally muted and less contrasty on my laptop display if the external display is set as default in Colorsync Utility. Switch defaults and opposite happens: oversaturared on the desktop display. I'm all ears if anyone's run into the same problem.

I think I am having the same issue as iMapple. When looking at images in preview or safari on my external monitor they are over saturated and have a green cast to them. All other programs including Safari can view them just fine. Any ideas as to why?

I have been using Eye-One Display to calibrate my monitors and it worked just fine with 10.4.

Help would be appreciated!

Adobe RGB (1998) Is the largest recommended RGB working space. That would be my starting point over the limitations of the sRGB work space.

Joe

Try going to System Preferences/Universal Access/Display/Enhance Contrast and be sure the slider is set to Normal before calibrating.


Joe