Which color profile to use?

[vsrdan]

I have two computers with Radeon X300 PCI-Ex cards. One has KDS Rad-5 15" LCD (which will be replaced soon) and the other has Samsung 730B 17" LCD (on DVI).

When I opened digital images in Photoshop the KDS monitor always displayed wrong (means brown insted of black, etc.) colors and the Samsung seemed OK. Both monitors were using respective original color profiles from manufacturers. However, when I changed the color profile from original to "sRGB Color space profile", the KDS monitor started to display correct colors. Does this mean manufacturer supplied profile is not good?

With Samsung, I am using SM730B profile from Samsung. Should I change that too? (In fact I changed it to Adobe RGB 1998 prifile and there were no visible differences).

I am using XP Pro in both computers.

 

[Sycraft]

Unless you know what you are doing, it's usually best to leave Photoshop to its defaults, which means sRGB for RGB space work. That's the standard under which computers work in general and what is most likely to look right to you. Don't mess with Photoshop's colour features if you don't have a reason to.

 

[vsrdan]

Unless you know what you are doing, it's usually best to leave Photoshop to its defaults, which means sRGB for RGB space work. That's the standard under which computers work in general and what is most likely to look right to you. Don't mess with Photoshop's colour features if you don't have a reason to.

I am talking about changing the color profile for monitor (in display settings)

 

[Sycraft]

Well in that case, maybe the manufacturer messed up the profile. I don't know, I was under the impression that Windows didn't load correction curves in to the graphics card as my colorimeter comes with an app to do that but I don't know.

At any rate unless you are doing prepress work just do what looks the best to you.

Either way make sure Photoshop is set to use "North America General Purpose 2" (if we are talking about CS2). That mode should look the best if you don't have hardware to actually calibrate your devices. It should be the default mode.

 

[vsrdan]

Either way make sure Photoshop is set to use "North America General Purpose 2" (if we are talking about CS2). That mode should look the best if you don't have hardware to actually calibrate your devices. It should be the default mode.

What if I reset the color profile to original manufacturer's profile (by KDS) and change it to "monitor" in Photoshop? Will it give bad colors in images after photoshop work?

 

[lsd]

Try to use the same profile on Photoshop on both monitors. Maybe using Adobe Gamma can be helpful, or, Powerstrip too (specialy dealing w/2 monitors and more, you can adjust it to load a specific color scheme to each application you run, for an example you can set a color scheme to use with PS, and another for 3dsmax, another one for Corel Draw, for gaming..). But it doesn't guarantee that you'll the same colors on both monitors due to panel characteristics of each other.

The reason of using the same profile on PS and on the monitors, it's a "safe measure" that you don't see so much color disparities. However, the best thing, if you print stuff, to make (or get) a target proof, print it, and then try to calibrate both monitors so the colors on the target open on PS are similar to the target printed and placed near the monitor. It may be a pain to achieve a good result...

I don't know if I was helpful and please correct me if I said anything wrong... I did this procedure here for some time and it seems to work

 

[BadDog]

I am talking about changing the color profile for monitor (in display settings)

Using factory default color profile is useless unless your graphics card can also use it. The trick is getting both card and monitor to use same settings.