Colour Display - an observation

nealeh wrote:

 

I've always felt that as Elements is not a colour managed application it is not usually worthwhile spending too much time on it.

 

 

I'm posting this as an observation, rather than a question, but would be interested to hear other opinions about colour management in Elements.

 

Poor pedagogy. Colors can be managed and here's how:

http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/color-management-settings-best-print.html

nealeh a écrit:

 

Both the Elements Editor and Organiser are set to 'Optimize for Printing', Photoshop for 'Europe Prepress 3'.

The fact that Elements Editor and Organizer are set to 'Optimize for printing' means that :

- if the raw file is converted in the ACR module in Elements, the resulting image (psd, tiff or jpeg...) will be in Adobe RGB.

- if the raw file has been exported in Prophoto from Lightroom or if it has been converted to Prophoto in Photoshop, the profile of the image file will be Prophoto (the pixels RGB values will be in Prophoto) . Since Elements IS color managed, it will be processed in Prophoto; the setting to 'Optimize for printing' will have no effect, as explained in the help file because a profile is already assigned to the picture. The colors will be displayed correctly if your screen is properly calibrated. What you get in printing will vary if you let Elements do the color management according to the printing profile for your printer/paper/ink, or if you let the printer driver do the color management. For instance if your printer driver does not recognize the input Prophoto profile, your output will be off.

What I can't say without more information is the reason of the discrepancy between the rendering of the editor and the organizer.

It’s not true that Elements is not color managed. For example when sending an image from the ProPhotoRGB working space in Lightroom, Elements will respect theProPhoto profile if the default settings are correct.

The worst possible setting is “no color management”

I would always recommend usuing the menu:

Edit >> Color Settings

and then choosing “Optimize for Computer Monitors” unless a specific profile for printer, paper and ink is being used in conjunction with the print driver.

MichelBParis wrote:

What I can't say without more information is the reason of the discrepancy between the rendering of the editor and the organizer.

 

It's possibly because the original image was 16-bit. When I converted it to 8-bit in PSE the thumbnail updated to a more realistic representation.

Absolutely impossible. Working in 16 bits rather than in 8 bits (bit depth) is a totally different matter than using different color spaces (color gamut). Assuming your display is a common or wide gamut one, having the bit depth in 16 bits may 'soften' color gradations and avoid posterization, but not change the hues themselves.

Edit :

Anyway, your display is only 8 bits just like your home printer. So your 16 bits image would show in 8 bits.

 

What I can't say is why the PSE Editor and PS views of the same file have clearly different tones (you may need to click the screenshot to see this more obviously).

Yes, I can see that, and there must be a reason, perhaps a bug. Generally I don't get such differences between the editor and the organizer. One recent case with PSE12 is with jpegs edited in ACR via the new command File / Open in ACR. The thumbnails are not updated, even after a strong change such as a complete desaturation and a manual updating.

In your example, the jpeg is clearly oversaturated and the red channel is severely clipped. I suppose the jpeg was created from the intermediate psd ?