Pale images in PSE5

[peterpan]

When I open any image in PSE5 it looks washed out in comparison with viewing it in any other program. This makes it impossible to use PSE5 to make any adjustments.

Can anyone give me ideas on what may be wrong as I have a stack of over/under exposed slides I want to scan in and try to recover.

thanks
pp

[Not4wood]

When I open any image in PSE5 it looks washed out in comparison with viewing it in any other program. This makes it impossible to use PSE5 to make any adjustments.

Can anyone give me ideas on what may be wrong as I have a stack of over/under exposed slides I want to scan in and try to recover.

thanks
pp

Dear Peter Pan,
Hahhahaha, I've always wanted to say that.

Have you tried printing from PE5 this way? Do you normally use PE5 and all of a sudden your screen is washed out or are you first starting out and cranked up PE5 and were very surprised to find out how far Off your monitor really is and realized it needs to be Calibrated?

Peter, Welcome to the Next Level.
Elements, whether you want to accept it or not is still an Advanced Level Color Management Program. By having this kind of level and sophistication it is now outside of the very old Windows Operating System and WYSIWYG. More then likely the other programs your hinting at is within Windows and the old method of seeing what you get. There are a lot of threads buried within the Village that will tell you about Calibration for your Monitor. Sorry, its too early in the morning and I have to get ready for work to look for the threads.

Signed,
Lost Boy

[peterpan]

Thanks for your reply.

Monitor is calibrated with Eye One Display 2 and is spot on 6500k, RGB @ 0.

This however is irrelevant as I of course am looking at all images with the same monitor and there is a difference when viewing photos in PSE5.

When I print with PSE5 (printer profiled) I get a print that is closer to what I see in other programs. I have checked this with various test images e.g. 'The Digital Dog' and always the same result PSE5 viewed images are sort of washed out.

pp

[johnrellis]

A couple of troubleshooting suggestions:

1. Do the images look washed out in both the Organizer and the Editor, or just the Organizer? Were these images taken with a camera set to the Adobe RGB color space? There's a bug in PSE 6 and 7 where the Organizer doesn't recognize that such images are tagged with Adobe RGB, and they get displayed incorrectly. (The bug is probably in 5 too, but I haven't checked.)

2. There are sometimes incompatibilities between specific applications and display profiles. Temporarily disassociate the Eye One profile from your display so it has no profile set for it:

http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshopelements-6-7-faq.htm#_Colors_are_wrong

Then compare the problem images in non-color-managed applications and PSE. If they look similar, that suggests an incompatibility between the Eye One profile and PSE. Try recalibrating.

3. Vista or XP? Which specific applications are you comparing with PSE?

[peterpan]

John,

Thank you, very much.

The suggestions and information you gave has lead me to the answer to my problem.

In my intention to be able to print WYSIWYG I used known test images in particular one from digitaldog.net, as it had larger images within it. It is titled 'ColorMatch RGB' - this was my problem.

When I viewed the other half dozen test images none had the washed out look and all print very close. So now WISIWIG.

I quite simply got fixated on the one image not realizing others might display differently.

I am deeply indebted to you. Now I will look more closely at your web site, which I have included in my favourites.

regards
peter

[johnrellis]

Great, glad you got it resolved.