Lightroom to CS3 colorspace question

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seekingsummits

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I just purchased my first Mac to make things even more confusing for myself. I have calibrated my screen using Sypder2 Express (best I can afford at this point). When I do an initial edit in Lightroom then export to edit in CS3 using the Spyder profile, everything gets darker and more blue. Is there a way to make these 2 play nicer together and still use the custom colorspace? Thank you. Adam
 
You need to learn a little more about colour management. You never apply a monitor profile to an image, colour managed programs view through the space automatically (that is the point of calibrating). For best results, use ProPhoto RGB when editing in CS3.
Check out http://digitaldog.net/ and read the articles there.
 
seeking summits,

First, welcome to LR Forums.

Following up a little on Sean's rushed reply: you seem to be using the terms "profile" and "colorspace" interchangeably, and that's a misconception.

A quick rudimentary introduction to a miserably complicated topic:

A colorspace defines a range (called a "gamut") of colors, and how the different colors are to be enumerated, or assigned a digital encoding. That helps both people and computer programs know that 153,''3,2'5 is a very specific shade of purple.

Unfortunately, that color space is an theoretical abstraction, because every output(monitor, printer, lab process) device has different, even individual, characteristics, which can vary with time, temperature, etc. That's where profiles come in. They provide a real-life measured relationship between the abstract concept of 153,''3,2'5/purple and what actually appears on your monitor or your printer's output tray.

So, you assign working "colorspaces" to your computer applications, which in turn assign/convert the colorspaces to the output/exported/saved image files.

You then tell the computer applications what "profiles" to use in translating this colorspace for output to real world devices.

Most computer applications are only rudimentally aware of this, and expect the images to be in sRGB or maybe AdobeRGB colorspace, and know nothing about profiles.

In this case PS and LR understand all of this. So, you should assign the calibration profile you developed with Spyder to the appropriate display drivers within the Mac system (sorry, I'm a Windows guy, don't know specifics). That will allow PS and LR to interpret your actual monitor's colors. For interchangeability, you'll want PS and LR to work in the same colorspace, which as Sean said should be ProPhotoRGB. Since most output devices don't understand the ProPhoto colorspace, when you export your images, you'll have to convert to a different colorspace. You will want to consider the capabilities of the intended output devices, when selecting a colorspace. For web/email consumption, you'll want sRGB. For printed output you'll want the colorspace requested/required by the output device. If you have a profile for the specific output device, you can tell LR or PS to use that at output time. Note that you'll need LR2, if you're want to profile a "print to file" image.

Colorspaces are for software and data.
Profiles are for hardware.
 
Thanks. Ill check that out. I guess it didnt make much senset to calibrate with Spyder and have a specific profile created with that name, but not use it. Ill continue with what Ive got going. Thanks again
 
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