“Article guest-blogged by Chris Gutierrez“

So, you can’t figure out why your images look like they’ve been run through the washing machine after saving them in jpeg format? Here’s why.

The color profile you have Adobe Photoshop set to is changing the image once you save it. Perhaps you edited an image saved from the web, or simply resized a photo you took. Photoshop has converted the image to it’s previous profile. Luckily a simple fix can quickly rid you of this annoyance.

With the image you plan on saving open, click Edit > Convert to Profile . Once you have the color profile window open, simply change it to “Working RGB – sRGB IEC61966-2.1″

sRGB IEC61966-2.1 has become the most common color space of the web, with gamma set at 2.20 and a white point of 6500K. It’s a good midpoint for average usage. I say this because it is impossible to control the monitor settings of every user that may view your image, every browser will display a different version of your image, as they aren’t capable of the conversion. sRGB IEC61966-2.1 is the midpoint that compromises with dark (5000K) and bright(9500) monitor settings to bring a similar image to all users.

One common mistake that is made when choosing color profiles in Photoshop is selecting your specific monitor’s profile rather than sRGB. This converts the image’s colors to appear optimal on only your monitor. New monitors can sometimes have a white point as high as 9500k. When a user pulls up the exact same image on another computer, your work will have completely different hues and colors.

With that being said, we can now look at Adobe Photoshop’s “color settings” options. You can view the “color settings” window by clicking Edit > Color Settings ( or pressing Shift+Ctrl+K). Once you have the window open you can begin to manipulate the several options you have.

The image on top is a screen capture of the settings I use. I mainly use Photoshop for web work, I rarely use it for print. This is why my settings look almost identical to the “no color management” mode with the exception of my RGB work space and policy. I have changed my workspace to the sRGB settings to provide that “average user” profile I seek when saving images for the web.

This also means when I save in Photoshop, my end product won’t look washed out or desaturated. The other setting I changed was the RGB color management policy. When this is enabled, Photoshop will convert any RGB profile to my current workspace profile when opened (sRGB) regardless if it is AdobeRGB (1998) or any other profile. With it on the “Off” option it actually changes the profile to the current workspace you have when you open a new document.

Converting it back to it’s original profile will change the documents appearance and give you an undesirable image. To save myself from the trouble and confusion I use the “Preserve Embedded Profiles” option and change them as needed using Edit > Convert Profile, which will not change the image’s appearance once I convert them.