Photoshop color settings?

[Leslie Hardin]

I noticed that the colors in my files were way off between PS and Illustrator. Under Color Settings I'm supposed to have North American Press 2??? I don't have that option, mine just says Custom and Photoshop 5 Default spaces.

I wonder if I accidentally removed something when I was manually un-installing Illustrator due to the problems it was giving me a few weeks back which is still is. Although I followed Adobe's instructions to the "T" so not sure.
I'm hesitant to send any prints to the lab for fear they won't be color matched due to these settings.

[Damon Leo]

Custom should be all you need. Just put sRGB or Adobe RGB. The others don't really matter unless you are doing CMYK for press products, in which case you should create a custom setting based on your printers requirements.
I hope I understood your question.

[Leslie Hardin]

Thanks Damon.

So here is my screen shot of my color settings. Is this correct?

[Leslie Hardin]

So where does your monitor profile when you calibrate your monitor come into the equation? How do you know you are using the correct monitor profile you created and your lab prints are going to match what you are seeing in PS when creating them? Does this involve the color settings menu at all or is it not related?

This is what I'm wondering because I'm wondering if it is safe to send prints to the lab or not due to if these color settings are correct or I may be totally wrong and they have nothing to do with it.

It seems that I have analyzed all of this stuff before even in other threads but I have forgotten it and can't find the threads-LOL so I need to analyze it again

[Carl Gandolfo]

Leslie,

The monitor profile is not part of you PS color settings. It can be found here:

Start/Settings/Control Panel/Display/Settings/Advanced/Color Management

Just make sure your current monitor profile is selected under Color Management. You are then good to go!

[Leslie Hardin]

Whew...then I am good to go with the monitor profile because I have the correct one listed where you mentioned Carl-:2k:

I just want to be able to go back and forth between Illustrator and PS and not have my files be totally off from one another and have to fix the colors back between the two.

I can open up one file in Illustrator and it will be one RGB color range and open it in PS and it be totally different and have to fix it. It tells me that my color settings are not synchronized.

[Carl Gandolfo]

Whew...then I am good to go with the monitor profile because I have the correct one listed where you mentioned Carl-:2k:

I just want to be able to go back and forth between Illustrator and PS and not have my files be totally off from one another and have to fix the colors back between the two.

I can open up one file in Illustrator and it will be one RGB color range and open it in PS and it be totally different and have to fix it. It tells me that my color settings are not synchronized.

Ms. Hardin,

I have no Illustrator experience so I can't help in that regard. But it is not your monitor profile causing this message.

Carl

P.S. Thanks for the *kiss*!

[Damon Leo]

I just got the CS3 Suite myself and found this in the Help:

Synchronize color settings across Adobe applications

If you use Adobe Creative Suite, you can use Adobe Bridge to automatically synchronize color settings across applications. This synchronization ensures that colors look the same in all color-managed Adobe applications.
If color settings are not synchronized, a warning message appears at the top of the Color Settings dialog box in each application. Adobe recommends that you synchronize color settings before you work with new or existing documents.

1. Open Bridge. To open Bridge from a Creative Suite application, choose File > Browse. To open Bridge directly, either choose Adobe Bridge from the Start menu (Windows) or double-click the Adobe Bridge icon (Mac OS).
   Choose Edit > Creative Suite Color Settings.
2. Select a color setting from the list, and click Apply. If none of the default settings meet your requirements, select Show Expanded List Of Color Setting Files to view additional settings. To install a custom settings file, such as a file you received from a print service provider, click Show Saved Color Settings Files.

[Damon Leo]

As far as matching what you see on your calibrated monitor to what you receive from your lab, that's called soft-proofing.

Remember, the Help File is your friend. There is an excellent discussion on this in the Adobe Help. Just search on: "soft-proof color" .

You need to buy right now: "Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers: A Professional Image Editor's Guide to the Creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC" by Martin Evening.

This is absolutely the best book on PS and costs only $31 on Amazon. I want you to read it from cover to cover and sleep with it under your pillow and keep it by your computer as a reference.

[Carl Gandolfo]

Damon,

What makes this book so good? I understand that is such a broad question but why this book over other CS3 tutorials?

Keenly watching for a response.

Thanks,
Carl

[Leslie Hardin]

Damon, I use my help center all the time, I love just going through and picking out stuff to read some days. I have found that it on some things, it can a little too general for my tastes and not answer exactly or in detail what I am needing to know so that is when I come here. See, I would have never known to search for "soft proof color", I didn't know what that was so if you don't know WHAT to search for, how can you search for it? LOL

I'll check out that book, thanks

[Damon Leo]

Carl,
Martin Evening was very involved in the development of Photoshop and Lightroom, so he knows them inside out. He also seems to worry about the same things that I do, and since he is a photographer, he understands what is important to us versus graphic designers.
He is releasing a very extensive FREE update to his Lightroom book, since 1.1 is so different from 1.0.
I have a lot of Photoshop books, but if I had to choose just one, this would be it.