Syncing color in Painter 12 with PS CS5.5... headache.

[jessejesse]

So I have been trying to nail my color management settings, and running into a weird situation. I am using a Spyder 3 to calibrate my monitors.

So i have my PSD image in Photoshop CS5.5 and when i drag it between my two monitors (a dell ips and my macbook pro) it seems to look about the same... maybe slightly different, but not really noticeable.

The same PSD image in Painter 12, when dragged from screen to screen, changes noticeably. On the Macbook Pro screen it is pretty close to Photoshop, but on the Dell it makes a big jump, as if the colors are becoming much less saturated.

See the example of it in the attached image. It's a bit hard to tell in this image but basically as i said above, the image is just looking way less saturated (that is the top right image), in Painter 12, specifically on my external Dell screen. I'd say it was the screen, but Photoshop is not doing it.

I have also attached an image of my color settings in both PS and P12.

The same thing happens in Painter with a RIF file as well. I have also tried changing painters default color profile to the one "with BPC" and "no BPC". Still no difference.

Any ideas?

Cheers.

[Arshes Nei]

The only other thing I see different is the Color Engine, one is Adobe's ACE?, and the other says it's using Adobe CMM? ( Although I'm sure they're pretty much the same?)

The other thing is, I'm not sure if the profile needs to be "re-converted" if you change it (the settings). Reconverted through Photoshop.

The other thing to look at is the color profile your monitor is using...

[jessejesse]

Yea, the CCM engine in basically ACE wrapped in a way so as to be portable (outside of adobe photoshop) so other apps can use it. It's made by Adobe.

No sure what you mean by re-converted... can you explain?

As for my monitor profile, I'm using a Spyder3, So i'm not really sure what other steps i can take to make things more accurate.

Thanks!

[jason_maranto]

I have not had good luck with using Adobe CCM with Painter -- I'm on Windows so I just use the windows default CMS.

However the real difference here is you have Black Point Compensation enabled for Photoshop and not for Painter -- you will have to change to sRGB IEC61966-2-1 withBPC (in Painter) to get the same results.

However there is a much larger issue with your settings here... if you are intending to ultimately publish in CYMK then you are far better off working in Adobe RGB 1998. I only use sRGB if I am intending to produce work for the web.

Also, I would tend to use the Sheetfed Coated CYMK rather than SWOP unless you work is printed in massive print runs -- most short run work is printed on sheetfed presses these days. Web Offset printing is mostly for print runs of larger than 100,000 units.

Best,
Jason.

[Arshes Nei]

I have not had good luck with using Adobe CCM with Painter -- I'm on Windows so I just use the windows default CMS.

However the real difference here is you have Black Point Compensation enabled for Photoshop and not for Painter -- you will have to change to sRGB IEC61966-2-1 withBPC (in Painter) to get the same results.


Best,
Jason.

I would have mentioned the Black Point Compensation, but the OP mentioned already switching between the profiles do not work.

jesse, even though I noticed you have "ask before opening" sometimes Painter doesn't correctly read the correct profile?

One other question, are any psd with layers that render differently in Painter/or Photoshop doesn't have the same conversion?

For example, there is no GEL layer in Photoshop, it will default to Darken (but sometimes multiply is better)

[jason_maranto]

You would not see a difference unless you "convert to profile" or use "color proofing" within Painter... simply changing the default profile does not apply any changes to existing documents under the settings they have there.

Good call on the layers, that could be part of the issue as well since Gel is much more saturated than Multiply.

Best,
Jason.

[hecartha]

So i have my PSD image in Photoshop CS5.5 and when i drag it between my two monitors (a dell ips and my macbook pro) it seems to look about the same... maybe slightly different, but not really noticeable.

The same PSD image in Painter 12, when dragged from screen to screen, changes noticeably. On the Macbook Pro screen it is pretty close to Photoshop, but on the Dell it makes a big jump, as if the colors are becoming much less saturated.

See the example of it in the attached image. It's a bit hard to tell in this image but basically as i said above, the image is just looking way less saturated (that is the top right image), in Painter 12, specifically on my external Dell screen. I'd say it was the screen, but Photoshop is not doing it.

What is weird considering your screenshots is the result is identical between your macbook pro and your dell monitor for the Photoshop image. That means your macbook and your dell monitor have the same color space which is a suspicious coincidence.

Color management uses you screens color space to allow display compensation on your screens so the image they will display will be more or less the same for the user (you can see examples of screen compensation here, look from the photos sample). But, when you are doing a screenshot, you are not capturing the image your screens are displaying, you are capturing the compensation which should be different between devices. Anyway, MacOS or its Grab tool adds screen profile to the screenshot so I am not sure if the image you posted has not been altered. In any case something is wrong because the image should be the same than the one from your website if a profile had been added.
So...I compared the image from your site and the 3 saturated images from your screenshot to evaluate display compensation. That indicates one of your screens is lacking saturation for at least the blue and the red and the blue is also too bright.

Now, it is difficult to know what should be displayed by your screens and your programs without your screens profile.

Could you save this image and load it inside painter and photoshop also. You could make a screenshot for the two screens and the two programs using Mac shortcut or using Grab tool so MacOS will embed your screen profile inside the capture. Please, do not combine the 4 images.
This image uses a custom sRGB profile I modified where blue is red, red is green and green is blue, so it will show in obvious way if one of the combination program/screen is not using color management.

I have not had good luck with using Adobe CCM with Painter -- I'm on Windows so I just use the windows default CMS.

I checked on Mac and it seems to work correctly (at least for one screen) but it is buggy with Painter and Windows.

However there is a much larger issue with your settings here... if you are intending to ultimately publish in CYMK then you are far better off working in Adobe RGB 1998. I only use sRGB if I am intending to produce work for the web.

jessejesse is using sRGB screens so it will be a mistake to use a color space he could not display. Painting with Adobe RGB is good only if you can see the colors you are using and you need a wide gamut monitor to display such color space accurately. The first and second image from this post shows the problem that comes when someone uses Adobe RGB color space on sRGB screen.
There is a benefit using Adobe RGB for printed work but it does not make sense if you cannot see the extra colors when painting.

[jason_maranto]

Absolutely -- which is why I say in this thread that anybody serious about color should be using an Eizo monitor like this one:

http://www.eizo.com/global/products/...75w/index.html

I'm not up on the specs of the new Mac monitors but I was under the impression that they feature larger than sRGB space -- after all no company is restricted to just sRGB... they only have to make sure their gamut encompasses sRGB but they can go as large as they like.

I'm sure you are already aware that you will be much more successful in the color conversion to CYMK from Adobe RGB 1998 than any version of sRGB -- the gamut is simply too constricted for sRGB and the primaries don't match as well.

Personally I use BruceRGB most of the time, but Adobe RGB 1998 is a much better choice than sRGB if you are working for CYMK.

Best,
Jason.

[jason_maranto]

BTW, I read your posts on the other thread... thats pretty good but there's 2 things about working in Adobe RGB that you should always bear in mind to get good results:

1) Use a swatch list of CYMK safe colors -- in Photoshop we have the gamut warning to save us, and I wish Painter implemented something similar.

2) Rendering intents is a very important element in color conversion, it largely takes care of the "unprintable colors" issue you raise so long as you have it set appropriately... set it wrong and it will result in chaos.

Also often (or always) working in proofing mode is a good idea if CYMK is your destination space as what the file looks like in RGB really means nothing... and I know we are emulating, but that is what proofing is.

This is no different than what they had to go through doing color separations of photos of Frank Frazetta paintings back in the day -- I've seen those paintings and they have crazy saturated colors mostly because he was trying to compensate for the dulling effect of conversion and printing. The issue is he was using pigments that fall outside the gamut and therefor never had a chance to print "right" at all... you can amp the saturation all day but extreme reds, blues, and greens will never print "right".

Best,
Jason.

[hecartha]

Absolutely -- which is why I say in this thread that anybody serious about color should be using an Eizo monitor like this one:

http://www.eizo.com/global/products/...75w/index.html

Yes, that may be great but seriously, only few people here will spend such amount of money for a monitor.
Lot of people who are requesting advice use TN monitor, sometime they use a laptop as main screen without knowing about limitation. How many people here think about buying a calibrator? I remember the thread from your link, that the one where I read calibrator=gadget, so I prefer to consider everyone here try to work with what we have now. I prefer to be realistic, if someone uses actually a TN panel, I will not recommend to switch to a 2000$ monitor but to an IPS panel, maybe at 250$ or more depending of the person. I hope you know what I mean.

I'm not up on the specs of the new Mac monitors but I was under the impression that they feature larger than sRGB space -- after all no company is restricted to just sRGB... they only have to make sure their gamut encompasses sRGB but they can go as large as they like.

Apple Laptops are sRGB screen for macbook pro >2008. Before it was something smaller.
Apple monitors and Apple iMac are mostly consumer products, so they are matching sRGB again. In fact, it is a bit more but nothing that could be considered as wide gamut monitor. They are made to cover sRGB completely with a little margin. Pure red and pure green are matching sRGB lightness and hue.
Laptops from other manufacturers of course are using tiny color space to extra wide color space depending of the kind of backlit. A dell precision with RGB LED backlit will cover completely Adobe RGB when a Dell XPS (not all) will not cover sRGB.
About desktop monitors, excepted if they are sold as wide gamut monitor, they are using something close to sRGB at best. If you try to sell two monitors, one with white LED backlit and one with wide gamut CCFL backlit, most people will buy the LED monitor because of marketing.
So, I think recommendation should take in consideration the hardware.

I'm sure you are already aware that you will be much more successful in the color conversion to CYMK from Adobe RGB 1998 than any version of sRGB -- the gamut is simply too constricted for sRGB and the primaries don't match as well.

From a pure theory, sRGB primaries are also colors inside Adobe RGB color space, so there is no reason for a specific issue with sRGB during conversion. The pure sRGB red at 255 is a darker red at 219 in Adobe RGB color space. But if someone want to use the most of a printer, I am with you since Adobe RGB is better...if the painter has the hardware to display these colors.

BTW, I read your posts on the other thread... [...]

To be clear, I am not in any camp. I just explained the pro and con for a choice. I have not spent time trying to illustrate color management concept to force anyone to use one workflow from someone else but to help to create and understand his/her own workflow. If I am in any camp, I am with those who are claiming "try to understand what you are doing and choose the best for you!"

Now you have a good point with rendering intents, but that concern only the print step which means the painting has been done.

My advice in this thread is considering the current hardware from the original poster which is sRGB screen at best (at best because I have observed in those screenshots a display compensation that indicates a screen which is not able to display sRGB completely). So trying to use Adobe RGB color space introduces issue when using colors that are not in sRGB color space and the problem is bigger than just a saturation issue.
My demonstration shows exactly what is happening, when using a pure Adobe RGB red, it is replaced by a darker sRGB red which breaks color relationship when painting. The same thing happens in the opposite way with the pure green. The only solution using Photoshop is to desaturate monitor colors by xx% in color settings under advanced controls but that is not a reasonable advice (and it is not available in Painter).

[jessejesse]

Wow. This is a lot more than I initially expected.

So I realize that for a much more accurate experience I need a wide gamut monitor... Which I will get in the future. My current situation dictates I work with what I have, which unfortunately is only my Dell IPS with a Spyder3. I'm currently overseas and don't want to make any big purchases that will have to be sold again in 8 months when I come back to the states. Plus, finding a dell IPS in a developing country was hard enough!

At any rate, I'll go over all this more thouroughly and report back soon.

Thanks everyone!

[jessejesse]

Also, real quick.

I'm confused why this would be an issue in Painter, but not in Photoshop. That leads me to think it is a Painter issue. Something I'm not setting properly. I guess it's possible that painter and photoshop just have different methods for adjusting images for monitor compensation.

I definitely understand that I need a better quality monitor, but the issue here, unless I'm wrong, is that Photoshop is only changing the image ever so slightly between monitors (almost unnoticeably), while Painter is changing it quite a bit. I feel like it should not be that way.

[jason_maranto]

I don't disagree, but you have to understand I don't care what the image looks like in RGB -- if I am going to print it is completely irrelevant. All that matters is what I will get on output... and Adobe RGB will give you a wider range of colors to paint with in CMYK (in fact the full CMYK gamut in most cases).

I demonstrate this effect very clearly within my VTC Painter 12 videos -- I would say take a look, but unfortunately it is contained with the pay-to-view section only. But trust me it is very practical and easy to see the fault within worrying about the RGB appearance at all when you are working for print.

As a painter I want the widest range of printable colors to chose from, I'm not willing to accept dull CMYK output just because I was afraid my monitor was too weak to deal with a real colorspace... sRGB was and always will be a mediocre compromise colorspace. It's great for websurfing, but it is simply not a suitable colorspace for painting for print.

I am disappointed to hear that the apple monitors are crap -- I had used a mac back when they were CRT and they were always better than average quality back then... but I have never had a use for laptops.

Personally the brand I like for consumer monitors is NEC... they make decent quality stuff at an affordable price.

Best,
Jason.

[jessejesse]

@Hecartha

Here is a link to the images you requested...

Straight away, i can tell you this produces the same result as my image, desaturated by a bit on my Dell, in Painter 12... but not in Photoshop. On the Macbook Pro, it looks about the same in both Painter and Photoshop.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2761971/ca/screen_caps.zip

[jessejesse]

@Hecartha

Here is a link to the images you requested...

Straight away, i can tell you this produces the same result as my image, desaturated by a bit on my Dell, in Painter 12... but not in Photoshop. On the Macbook Pro, it looks about the same in both Painter and Photoshop.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2761971/ca/screen_caps.zip

[hecartha]

@Jason
In fact we agree on almost everything excepted the use of Adobe RGB where I think it is a personal decision based on kind of work and available hardware

@jessejesse
So this test shows the problem does not come from Painter.
The image Photoshop is displaying on your Dell monitor is using your macbook pro color space. You can clearly see the difference, your Dell monitor is able to display all color variations accurately when your macbook pro is skipping sRGB colors.

If that does not mean anything for you, here is an example with your image maybe that will help you to understand. Your image is displayed on multiple screens and all of them use a different color space. You can observe the image captured is different because the screen color space is different. So a specific compensation needs to be used for every screen.
Now, you can see that the result on screen is trying to match the same colors. The color differences you see are because hardware limitations.


I get your macbook pro profile from the tiff images but there is probably a bug with macOS also because it added the macbook pro profile to the Dell captures. Could you post the Dell profile here?

I will post anyway your macbook pro color space later.

[jessejesse]

Hey, I can't thank you enough for all your help... here are the two profiles...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2761971/ca/profiles.zip

Cheers!

[jason_maranto]

@ hecartha - You have a real knack for Illustration of complex topics and a deep understanding of one of the most seemingly difficult issues for artists to grasp... so I'd say the forum is lucky to have you here.

I'm known to be uncompromising -- I have a tendency to take the stance that nothing but the best will do... it's not a terribly practical viewpoint for most other people and I'm sure your advice is solid in that way.

Another example of my extremeness is I mapped all of my real world pigments to LAB and then checked if they would be printable (at full chroma) -- what I found is many popular colors like Ultramarine Blue were never printable in the first place so I eliminated those pigments from my palette.

Beyond that jessejesse, you have never said whether print was really your destination -- and if it is not then sRGB is truly the best choice because there is no other way to have any assurance that what other people will see (on their monitors) is even close to what you intended... sRGB was set up to be a lowest common denominator colorspace that all devices would be able to display/work with regardless of quality or purpose.

If you are intending to work for both then my recommendation is to paint in AdobeRGB 1998 and then convert 2 versions -- one to sRGB for web viewing and one to your CMYK output space.

Obviously since you are already calibrating your monitors (kudos for that) all that is required is to to be mindful of the respective color gamuts and avoid (as much as possible) unprintable colors... the easiest strategy for this in Painter is to use the Pantone process color swatch set exclusively and avoid using the Painter color wheel widget as it will often give you unprintable results.

Best,
Jason.

[hecartha]

@Jason
As I suspected after reading your previous post, you have much more experience than me about printing. In fact after reading your last post, there is not any comparison ahah.
Now about your kind comment, it is really appreciated!

@Jesse
So, here, you can observe your macbook pro color space compared to sRGB:

For the image at the left... the angle describes the hue and distance from the center describes the "saturation". The peaks are pure colors which are the most saturated available. Those shapes are in fact 3D shapes and because the top view you are seeing does not show the depth axis (the lightness), I used the right graph to illustrate it. It shows pure colors with their RGB values for the sRGB standard (left bar) and your screens (right bar). The size of the bar represents the lightness which is how dark or bright is a color based on human perception. So you can compare different colors (red with blue and so on).
(You can find a tool in MacOS that shows the 3D representation of a color space, just look at this post after the first image)

Now, these 3 images show how your image is looking on your devices

It shows the benefit of color management from the native desaturated colors to the final color managed image. The image in the middle shows the RGB compensation to match the sRGB colors. You can observe your macbook pro fails to emulate accurately the pure blue color at the left up corner simply because this color is outside of its gamut.
The final image needs to be compared to this one and not to your original image. The reason is because I rendered everything in Adobe RGB color space so I could compare directly the colors from your laptop and the colors from your Dell monitor in the most accurate way.

Now, here is your Dell monitor color space:

It is much wider and it covers almost completely sRGB color space.

And here are the rendered images

Display compensation if pretty slight. See the lightness bar for the blue color, it shows your monitor is displaying a blue a little too bright. You can observe the display compensation is using a darker blue to compensate the color difference between your monitor native colors and sRGB colors.

Now about your problem...
Photoshop and Painter should display this image for your Dell monitor and this image for your MacBook Pro.
Obviously, Painter is displaying the right one but there is an issue with Photoshop. I cannot help you more with your issue (yeah after all of that ahah) but you know at least what is your problem -> Photoshop attributed the wrong color profile to your Dell monitor. Maybe it is well known bug or maybe it has been fixed with the latest updates.

[Arshes Nei]

hecartha, thanks for that demo. Often Painter gets the blame for color management issues (some quite deserved) but people assume that Photoshop handles it correctly and it's Painters fault. It's interesting to see demos like this that...well paint a different picture.

[jason_maranto]

hecartha, thanks for that demo. Often Painter gets the blame for color management issues (some quite deserved) but people assume that Photoshop handles it correctly and it's Painters fault. It's interesting to see demos like this that...well paint a different picture.

Agreed, I've found the color management in Painter 12 to be stellar thus far (as opposed to the mess of some previous versions).

Best,
Jason.

[hecartha]

I am really surprised also!
Anyway, the Painter color management under macOS is far better than what they gave on Windows...maybe it has to do with legacy XP compatibility since the Windows color management engine has been completely modified with vista.

[jason_maranto]

I know the Painter devs wanted to drop Windows XP support but I don't think the timing was right for that yet... simply because it would have reduced the amount of people willing to upgrade to 12.

I run both Windows 7 and XP side by side in the studio and I'm always amazed at how little Microsoft has done to make a compelling case for upgrading from XP for most users.

Best,
Jason.

[Arshes Nei]

I found the applet for Windows XP that has the color space with the nice gamut map. Does anyone know if it works for Windows7 ?

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...ndows-XP.shtml

[jason_maranto]

According to this page it is not for any other version of Windows:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en....aspx?id=12714

Best,
Jason.

[Arshes Nei]

According to this page it is not for any other version of Windows:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en....aspx?id=12714

Best,
Jason.

Well, the reason I'm asking is that if you notice the driver date it's 2005. So it may be referring to older OS, vs Windows 7 which has a compatability mode?

I'll give it a shot when I'm home I guess

[hecartha]

I know the Painter devs wanted to drop Windows XP support but I don't think the timing was right for that yet... simply because it would have reduced the amount of people willing to upgrade to 12.

I really would like to know if the problems with Painter color management under Windows is because of this compatibility. A tried ACDSee Pro and it seems it is suffering exactly the same issue with a kind of color compression, same artifacts at the same place. But in the same time, color management works without any problem under Microsoft and Adobe programs (using the Microsoft engine)...weird.

I found the applet for Windows XP that has the color space with the nice gamut map. Does anyone know if it works for Windows7 ?

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...ndows-XP.shtml

Nope, it does not work. I tried everything but once installed the cpl file is unable to load. If I remember correctly it says it has been made for a previous version of Windows and it cannot work under Windows 7.
Now I tried it before under XP and it is a bit buggy. Some profile appears with a problem with some polygons lol.

There is also for Windows this one -> PerfX Gamut Viewer 3D
It is not great but it is "easy to use" which does not mean user friendly.
There is also ICCView which is online. It needs a plugin to display wrl files
But the best is Argyll. ICCView is based on this one and I used it for the images I posted here. The only problem is it is a command line application. I integrated it in my file manager so I just need to select a profile and push a button now. I suppose it is possible also to create a shortcut with embedded command line and just drag and drop a color profile on the shortcut to generate the gamut file and 3d file.

[hecartha]

I am thinking about a simpler way to compare easily color lightness between color profile.
It is possible in Photoshop to switch color panel to Lab system.

So with this kind of image

you just need to load it in Photoshop and add a color profile. You will need after to use the color picker to check the lightness (L slider)

Example with sRGB:
Red: 54
Green: 88
Blue: 30
Cyan: 91
Magenta: 60
Yellow: 98

Compared to Jesse's MacBook Pro
Red: 55
Green: 84
Blue: 44
Cyan: 90 (it seems I have made a mistake on my graph)
Magenta: 67
Yellow: 94

The problem with the blue is easily visible

[jessejesse]

So, I can't thank everyone enough for all the help! Wonderful insight.

While some of this is a bit over my head, I understand that Photoshop is messing up somehow. Am I correct in my understanding that the color shift when dragging an image (In Painter) from my Mac to my Dell is normal and is an effect of the difference in gamuts? Where my Dell is actually showing a superior image, because of it's wider gamut? And the over saturated image on my Mac is actually over saturated as it struggles to emulate the out of gamut colors?

And in Photoshop, the correct behavior should be the same color shift when moving the image?

Now, on the related topic of working space... I think I will stick with sRGB, rather than adobeRGB, since my Dell can not display the full gamut anyways. Seems silly to work in a space that I can't see anyways. Is that an accurate assessment?

I will also attempt to use a color pallette that fits within the CMYK gamut when working for print, and/or work with the proofing mode on. Does that seem like a good idea based on my setup? Is that an industry standard way of working?

I come from a world of graphic design... Where color accuracy is just as important but often handled with Pantone chips or CMYK reference books. Many designers don't use wide gamut displays or hardware color calibration. As I shift into digital illustration, the need for these things comes to light more and more.

Cheers!

[jason_maranto]

If you do decide to go for a better monitor and cost is an issue this is a good "cheap" option IMO: http://www.amazon.com/Asus-PA246Q-24...1611736&sr=8-1

Designers can get away with using Adobe RGB without a wide gamut monitor because at that point color specifying is just numbers -- and as long as the numbers match up with the pantone specifier they know what they will get on output.

Alot of people I know who work for print exclusively have gone to a CMYK only workflow (which is not possible with Painter) in order to mitigate the effects and issues of a RGB to CMYK color conversion. There are a couple of reason I'm not big on that, but I understand the motivation of not wanting to deal with these issues.

The issue with painting is different than designing because of the subtle value and hue relationships that must be maintained in order for the image to "read" as you intend... if you have a style with very muted colors (near-neutrals) then the sRGB colorspace will convert to CMYK very nicely. However the closer you get to saturated (high-chroma colors) the more this will hurt you -- for a style that relies on more saturated colors Adobe RGB is going to give a better color conversion.

And for that matter Adobe RGB will also give you more printable high-choma colors to choose from... but as has been pointed out bad monitors make seeing everything impossible (even for some sRGB colors and definitely for CMYK).

Color conversion is a murky business that has been befuddling print oriented artists for decades -- the question is always "Why did my colors turn out so dull?".

The bottom line is if you work for print and use saturated colors then you are best off working with Adobe RGB.

One thing alot of people don't know is that the advent of flat panel monitors is a the cause of much of this problem -- up until recently flat panel monitors could not display as many colors as common CRT monitors of 10 years ago... by converting to flat panels the monitor makers really screwed artists for quite some time.

Best,
Jason.