Preserved Topic: Jpg and gif colors

I need some help with gif and jpg files. I noticed that most of the time when saving a file as a new file, the image seems to lose its color vibrance. For eg. I am trying to save a button with text on it in gif format. I tried going directly to Save As as well as save to web. I've also tried, Exact colors, Adaptive and Selective, the results of these were similar. The resulting file is that of a dull color although the original was a bright orange. I have encountered this many times before also with jpg images where the colors change quite a bit. How is this so? How am I able to ensure that the file I save would be as close to the original as possible?

I would appreciate it if anyone could help me.

Hi Irishblue, is it possible to post an example of the button your saving ? So we can see what the finished result actually looks like, then we can perhaps answer your question. Thanks

go to Edit/Color Settings... and make sure that your RGB workspace is using the same profile that your monitor is. Sounds like from what you're saying that it looks vibrant in Photoshop and dull out of it, that'd be my first guess if that's the case.

Jason

Jason, I just noticed that there wasn't any color profiles for my monitor before. I had just set it to Adobe1998 which is the same as my photoshop's color profile. Is that a commonly used color profile?

The image still appears dull in color when view outside of photoshop. I'll try to post the image in here if possible.

Basically I need to create an image with both text and a picture beside it, should I use jpg or gif?
I tried it as a gif, although the color of the text came out fine, but the image on the right came out fussy.


The jpg version. the image on the right came out fine, but the text turned a duller colour.


How should I save it so I preserve both the text and image to appear how they should?

ib: Type gif into the search box in ps help. Check out the faq's here. I could be wrong but it seems you don't know the difference between a gif and a jpg. The critical difference is that jpg's can contain millions of colours. a gif however can display a maximum 256 colours that's the main reason the gif has the pronounced steps. The ps help file has more info.

Getting Photoshop to choose a correct pallette, and perhaps using some dithering, should make the gif work pretty well, I'd think.

from a basic reading, it seems that you may be missing the 'number of colours' setting, which in essence, is the most important bit of gif saving.

now, the best way to have text with an image next to it would be to save the text as a gif, the image as a jpg, and use html to position them next to each other.

otherwise, it's generally a case by case sort of thing, but my personal preference lies with gif.

When you need to make a choice between GIF and JPEG, you need to balance image quality and file size. Your particular image is a no-brainer, it's suited to JPEG because of the gradient and amount of colors in it. Compressing it as a JPEG at 60 quality or above will be pretty darned good looking at 1/3rd the file size of the best-looking GIF. The choice is clear here.

If you save that image as a GIF with the full 256 color palette, using the selective or perceptual color reduction algorithms and 100% diffusion dither it comes close to perfect, very hard to notice color banding can be seen inthe right side gradient, might not be noticeable, might be obvious, depending on what setting the graphic is in. The compression settings I described give you a file size that weighs 24-25k (if you get the file size any lower you're going to see a much more significant color banding in the gradient)

If you save it as a JPEG at 60 quality it's perfectly acceptable, and comparable in quality, better in my opinion, than the GIF file created in the last paragraph. There's no color banding in the gradient on the right side at all as compared to the results of the GIF compression. There will however be some 'loss' (squigglies) in the white areas immediately surrounding the text at left but it's hardly noticeable at full size, you can see it well if you zoom in on the image, and maybe people with lower resolution monitors can see it more readily than I can at 1280x1024 on a 19". The image described in this paragraph, the JPEG, weighs in at 8-9k and is superior in overall quality.

In a nutshell:

GIF is superior for logo-like work, large expanses of single colors, and images that have a total pixel palette of less than 256 colors

JPEG is superior for photo type graphics that have lots of colors and subtle, smooth transitions between those colors




Jason

It sounds to me like this has a lot to do with the color profile. Adobe1998 is the defacto profile for print output. This isn't very helpful for web output generally. It could have something to do with the output settings when it's saved, but from what you're describing, and what you posted, I'm guessing it's a color calibration problem. Generally it's best to calibrate your monitor rather than simply select a color profile from the list. Color is a major pain to deal with.

Something you aren't gonna like hearing either is that no matter what you output, you aren't guaranteed that everyone will see it the same. There isn't anything you can do about that. The best you can do is to calibrate and then output to a standard profile. So calibrate to make sure that you're seeing what photoshop is really doing, but then when you export your image into JPEG or GIF, use a color profile that is common online. I find that sometimes it's better to convert to sRGB before exporting... although I believe that the color profile is stripped when you do a save for web if you don't specify to include yours. This mostly applies to JPEGs as GIFs use a built in indexing system (color look up table or CLUT).

Is this computer being used for device specific print work? Like with an offset press or print house? Have you run your monitor calibration?

<edit>I don't pay enough attention... looking at your picture post questions... it could very well be a combination of the two. The results on the GIF aren't unexpected IMHO since you have a large color shift and GIF doesn't deal with that well. JPEG can't guarantee your colors, but it deals better with gradiations in color. Decide what's more important to you, exactly colors or cleaner images. Although, I still think that color calibrating your system would help.</edit>

[This message has been edited by MindBender (edited 03-25-2003).]

Thanks for all the helpful responses
I'm going to try setting both my monitor and photoshop profiles to sRGB. I'm using photoshop 7 (home pc). Is there any difference if I run a direct "Save As" as opposed to using the "Save for Web" option? Based on what most of you recommend, I guess I should go with the jpg saving mode since I want the gradients to turn out nicely.

On a sidenote, there is this wierd thing going on with my office mac. The monitor has already been calibrated by them color experts. However, the prints of photos that come out are rather inaccurate especially on a high resolution paper that is pure white. We are using a Canon s9000 printer. And most of the time we have to add crazy amounts of magenta and contrast. The resulting image looks entirely different in colour on screen then what comes out of the printer. Any idea what is causing this, or how I should rectify it?