Difference in color (windows vs Photoshop)

Different file viewers will have different interpretations of the picture's embedded color space and thus you'll get a different rendering. This is a common complaint with web browsers. I would trust Photoshop to display your colors properly more than the built in Windows picture viewer. You might check a few free editors/viewers like XnView or InfranView to see if the display is on par with Photoshop. If you have a more recent copy of Photoshop it should have come with Bridge, which also makes a very good picture browser where you can see your Windows file structure alongside your photos.

 

If you haven't profiled your monitor(s), then all of you viewing applications will show the images based on their standard profiles, which will give you different results. It doesn't matter what you use, the issues will be the same until you profile your monitor(s) and set the monitor and applications to use that profile.

Cheers

Ray

 

You need a special profiling tool that will read your monitor details and create a profile for use with your monitor and applications. Here are some options:

Monitor Calibrators at Image Science - read the related articles, they're very worthwhile.

I use one of these, as I can profile my monitors as well as printers:

X-Rite Colour Munki Photo - ImageScience.com.au

I have a Spyder 2 system as well, but the Colour Munki is a lot quicker and easier to use.

Cheers

Ray

 

I think the issue us that the Windows Picture Viewer isn't a color-managed application.

Open a file in Photoshop, switch the color from AdobeRGB to sRGB (Under the Edit menu, Convert to Profile), save the file, open it in Windows Picture Viewer and see if they don't look alike.

Remember to do this on a copy of your original picture.

 

It's probably the main reason to not use aRGB - a lot of viewers including most of the web based ones don't support it and will display the colours wrong.

The only reason to use aRGB is if you have a colour managed workflow from camera through editing software to printer software which supports it - using aRGB as the printer's input profiles.

I have a large format printer and rip which is setup for both aRGB and sRGB, but even so I use sRGB for my own image files from the camera or raw. Otherwise I need to save 2 versions of each image - one to look at (sRGB) and one to print...

 

It doesn't matter what application you use, if your monitor is not profiled and that profile subsequently used by the application of choice (if it can use ICC/ICM profiles), the colours won't be correct. Using AdobeRGB in lieu of sRGB creates more complications, as you then have also enable your camera to use Adobe RGB and every camera on the market is set to sRGB by default. All images posted on the web really need to be in sRGB mode, as most monitors currently in use cannot display the full AdobeRGB gamut (or the ProPhoto one). Doing anything else is a waste of time and effort.

Cheers

Ray

 

It does matter if your monitor is profiled or not, so I can't do anything more than point you to relevant articles, or go search Google for monitor profiling, for information on what it means and why you are wrong.

Cheers

Ray

 

Another stubborn Dutchie like my wife.

What monitor profiling does is set everything to a measureable standard, which any compliant program that can read and therefore any image is displayed with the correct colour gamut that the monitor is capable of displaying. Professional monitors, like some Eizo models and a few others, can display almost the full AdobeRGB gamut, but most are only able to display sRGB and not always all that well. Printing is an altogether different issue, as you're working with reflective, rather than transmissive, brightness. You don't need a printer profiler, but most really would benefit from a monitor profiler.

Cheers

Ray

 

As important as profiling your monitor is, this particular issue has nothing to do with profiling. Profiling the monitor will change how BOTH programs display the image. The two programs will still be different from one another.

This is an issue where Photoshop respects the color profile embedded in an image and the Window Picture Viewer doesn't.