Digital Workflow: An important word of causion when converti

[John Maddock]

I've noticed a few of my images looking rather dull when saved for the web and posted here recently. I've now tracked down the cause, and learned a few important lessons in the process. So I'm posting one rather dramitic example below.

All my images end up tagged as "Adobe RGB" colour space when I've edited them on my machine with Photoshop Elements, and for printing this is definitely the way to go as this colour space has a much wider colour gamat - much closer to my printer's - than sRGB. However if I downsize and save for web directly, then the image just gets its colour space information stripped off, and the result is a very dull looking image, especially in the reds and browns - which is why I only really encountered this come autumn !

What you really need to do is convert the colour space to sRGB and then save for the web. Unfortunately this option isn't present in Elements :angry:

The only workaround I've found is to copy the image, and paste it into a pre-existing sRGB image, and then save that for the web. Elements then performs all the colour conversions for you on the fly when you cut and paste. Probably other programs have similar issues and solutions.

Anyway, here's the version that's been correctly converted:

[John Maddock]

Hopefully you should see some fairly vivid reds in the bracken in the last image.

Now here's a cut down version that's been saved for the web directly, without the colour space conversion first. If I've got this right, you should see a fairly dramatic difference!

Anyway, I hope this stops other folks from falling into this trap as completely as I did!

Regards, John.

[Hards80]

it is quite a dramatic difference.. good information for everyone john!