BetterPhoto Q&A
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Photography Question 

Peter Mantione
 

Images on website look lighter than in photoshop


My images look great in photoshop, however when I upload them to Betterphoto.com they look lighter and less saturated. Am I doing something wrong?
Shoul'nt they look the same? Thanks


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July 14, 2004

 

Jeanne Hansen
  I am having the same problem. I also copied my scan into a photograph cataloging software application (QPict for Mac), and it looked lighter in there as well.

Jeanne


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July 14, 2004

 

Jeanne Hansen
  Peter,
Today at work I asked our graphic artist what could be causing this. He said that the only thing he can think of is that the scan is made in CMYK colorspace. He said to scan in RGB. I checked my images tonight and they were scanned as RGB, so that's not it. You might want to check yours.

Out of curiosity I copied somebody else's image from the BetterPhoto gallery to my desktop, opened it in Photoshop, and compared it to the BetterPhoto image. The BetterPhoto image was washed out. So then I got to looking at file properties and discovered that when you upload a tiff to BetterPhoto, it gets converted to a jpeg. The file I uploaded was a tiff at 1MB, and when I copied it back down from BetterPhoto to my desktop, it was a jpeg at 200K. That would seem to explain it.

Just as I was getting ready to post this message I noticed in the Upload Image Option instructions that BetterPhoto wants you to scan at 72 ppi. I scanned at 300 ppi. I'm going to try 72 ppi and I'll post back out here if it made a difference.

Please post to this thread if you run across any other possible explanations.

Best,
Jeanne


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July 15, 2004

 

Jeanne Hansen
  I made another discovery on this, and now I'm going to let it rest. I scanned at 72 ppi and it didn't look any different on screen than the same image at 300 ppi. I copied the file to QPict (which appears to be having the same display discrepancy as BetterPhoto), and it still looked washed out compared to Photoshop. I figured that since I was having the same problem in QPict and Photoshop, there must be a Photoshop setting that's making it look different. In Photoshop Elements (Mac), I found a menu item for Color Settings. There are three options: no color management; limited color management optimized for the web; and full color management optimized for print. The full color management option was checked. I tried the no color management setting, and then it looked identical to the image in QPict.

So....my theory is that it's not so much that BetterPhoto is washing it out. Photoshop is intensifying it. I'm going to scan at 72 ppi, open the file in Photoshop, turn off color management, and adjust the settings in Photoshop to intensify the colors to match my 35mm slide.

Sheesh - I'm doing more to improve my scanning skills than to improve my photography.

Good luck with it and again, please post in this thread if you run across anything else.

Jeanne


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July 15, 2004

 

Peter Mantione
 
 
 
Jeanne, thanks for your efforts. I am going to do a test upload an image with different color spaces to see how they look on this site Pic #1 was saved using a working space of Adobe RGB (1998). Photo #2 same photo but I changed the the color space tp Adobe RGB. I noticed that when I changed to Adobe RGB my image in Photoshop got light and un saturated so I have readjusted the image to give better saturation to see if this will make a difference when I upload it. Let me see how it went..


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July 15, 2004

 

Peter Mantione
  Jeanne. I think I just solved the problem. when I set Photoshop to Apple RGB the image in Photoshop now match the colors on Betterphoto.com.

I went to Color Settings Working Spaces
RGB set to Apple RGB.

Finally my images on photoshop CS now match on the internet.. Let me know how you did.

Peter


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July 15, 2004

 

Jeanne Hansen
  Hey Peter. I see you have Photoshop CS. I only have Photoshop Elements, so my options under the Color Settings menu are different. I can only select one of three radio buttoms for the level of color management. When I pick No Color Management, my images in Photoshop match BetterPhoto. I'm also going in to Photoshop to bump up the contrast a bit, and the results look great compared to the actual slide. Mission accomplished. BTW I dig your photo. Great composition.

Jeanne


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July 15, 2004

 
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