Display problems on reinstall

[hrafn]

I recently had to rebuild my system from scratch. I reinstalled Elements 4.0 and imported my photos into the organizer -- they look terrible. Darker or shaded portions of the images look like a high rez image would look on low rez settings, the colors all flattened and blurred into an ugly mess. The same is true if the photo is displayed in the editor

The photos look fine when displayed with other software. I have checked my monitor calibration (Adobe gamma) and it is fine. I have deleted the catalog and started over. I have searched for settings within Elements to no avail. Does anyone have an idea as to what is going on?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[hrafn]

Okay, still no joy on this end, hoping that someone can steer me in the correct direction. First, a little background:

Digital photos were all originally imported using either PSE 2 or PSE 4 with Epson PIM II plug-in installed, ICC printer profile for Epson R800, and ICC monitor profile for Dell 2405FPW Color. Everything looked good.

Following failure of main drive and external backup drive, off-line copies of files restored to system. PSE 4 installed and photos imported -- photos (especially in shaded areas look awful (like bad low-rez scan on crummy system in the old days). New photos imported directly from camera look same -- bad. Take photo into editing space, still looks bad, prints worse.

As Epson PIM II plug-in and ICC profiles refused to install for PSE 4 (didn't find PSE 1, 2, or 3 - sorry), I uninstalled PSE 4. Installed PSE 2, installed Epson PIM II plug-in for PSE and ICC profiles, etc., and things still look bad in Album; however, if I take photo into Elements, ie. the editing space (recall that this is v2 back when they were packaged differently), then the photo displays fine and prints fine!

So now I reinstall PSE 4 -- photos display bad in both Organizer and Editor! But, now they print okay.

So, now what I am dealing with is everything looking awful in PSE -- any ideas what is going on?

[hrafn]

Help! Anything....

[NickLewis]

Hi, and welcome to the forum. :)

What sort of files are you talking about? (JPGs, RAW?)

And what camera are you downloading from?

I've no experience of the plug-in you refer to, but I suppose it's possible that it has done something to your image files that is interfering with their display now that it's no longer installed.

But I'm puzzled about the problems with new files. Also, were the offline backups that you restored taken before or after the original import to PSE - if the former, then we could eliminate the plug-in as contributing to the issue.

Nick

[TonyW]

Sorry to hear of your problems and can't help much but if it's the display that's looking bad then it's the display adaptor and monitor profiles you need to be looking at. I'd also isolate the problem by changing the Color Settings in Elements to No Color Management.

Tony

[hrafn]

Nick, Tony, thank you each for your reply it is most appreciated.

The files are JPGs downloaded either from a Nikon D-70 or Nikon Coolpix S1. The display problem showed before I reloaded the plug-in. The PIM II plug-in/ICC profiles corrected the printing problem.

I don't know why I did not try what you suggested, namely turning off color management, but that did the trick (perhaps it was off in the previous setup before disaster struck). I feel better because now I can look at the photos and have some idea of what I have. Many, many thanks to you both for responding!

Given what I have learned about color management, however, I am interested in extending my knowledge so as to obtain better results with viewing, editing and printing.

Do you have any recommendations as to where to begin, given what we now know?

No matter whether I choose optimize for monitor or optimize for printer the results are the same! I don't understand why using the profiles supplied for this monitor and this printer would result in such a horrid effect within PSE -- its just the opposite of what they are intended to do.

Is there something the clueless newbie here is missing?

Thanks again!

[TonyW]

Glad it worked but something must still be wrong somewhere as it shouldn't make that much difference which colour settings you use. The changes should be subtle and it sounds like your seeing much more than a subtle change. It does sound like the ICC profiles embedded in your images (probably sRGB) aren't working right with your monitor profile. If you go into Control Panel>Display>Settings>Advanced>Color Management what Color Profile is showing as being associated with the monitor?

Tony

[hrafn]

The monitor is a Dell 2405FPW (Analog) and the color profile is 2405FPW (reasonably enough).

[TonyW]

The monitor is a Dell 2405FPW (Analog) and the color profile is 2405FPW (reasonably enough).

That could be the problem. Although I don't trust everything I read about color management on the Internet and i don't fully understand how it works it does seem that others have run into a problem with this profile.

http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00Ejvq

You might want to try some of the things suggested. If you ran Adobe Gamma didn't that let you save a new profile? In which case shouldn't that be the one to use? A good tutorial on using Adobe Gamma is here:

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps8_colour/ps8_1.htm

Best solution is to use a monitor profiler (I use a Huey) on both my desktop CRT and laptop LCD displays and it did a much better job than I was getting using Adobe Gamma. Well worth the $70 or so it cost me.

Tony

[hrafn]

Many thanks Tony, the problem described in the other thread is identical -- somehow I find it comforting to know that I am not the only person in the world seeing this problem, which gives me a little more confidence in my powers of observation and reason.

I will run through the processes described in the article when I get some time, perhaps next weekend, but I do appreciate very much your taking the time to point a newbie in the right direction -- I hope to be able to pass the favor along some day!

Thanks again.

[NickLewis]

Glad you're sorted out.

It's a curious business this, though. I rather assumed it was something deeper than colour profiling as well, as the effects you were reporting seemed too drastic.

But obviously others are having a similar problem. Odd.

Nick