Adjusting Photoshop color settings

In this movie, I'll show you how to adjust your color settings to achieve what is generally the optimal experience inside Photoshop. Now, conceptually, this is a challenging topic. However, the change itself is very easy to apply. So it goes like this. If Photoshop were a lesser application, it would just go ahead and send off this RGB data to your monitor And your monitor would display it according to it's factory default settings. Which means that the image would vary from one monitor to the next. And, you've probably seen this effect, if you've every gone into an electronic store, and watched a bunch of televisions right next to each other.

And you've noticed for example, how the grass at a sporting event let's say, is greenish or even yellowish on one screen and more blueish on another screen and that's what happens if there's no color management. However, Photoshop goes ahead and manages the color experience by assigning a profile to your RGB space. Now if you take a look at this title bar, up here at the top of the screen, you'll notice in parentheses it says background, because the background selected at the bottom of the layers panel. Next it says RGB because this is a red, green, blue image.

And then after the slash there's an eight which tells us that the bit depth is eight bits per pixel per channel which defines how much distinction we have in aluminate range. And then finally we're seeing an asterisk. Now, an asterisk outside the parentheses tells us that we have unsaved changes. But if it's inside the parentheses as it is here, then we know that the image subscribes to a color profile that is different to the one that Photoshop is using by default, which is not a problem by the way. That's perfectly okay. It's not going to cause any problems whatsoever.

In fact, it's a good thing, that there's a profile assigned to this image. So again, it doesn't vary from one screen to the next. The issue, is that the profile that's assigned by default to Photoshop is not the ideal RGB profile. So here's what you do to change it. You go to the Edit menu and you choose the Color Settings command, or you press Ctrl+Shift+K, or Cmd+Shift+K on a Mac, and then notice right here that the settings read North American General Purpose Two. Those are the defaults here in the states.

Which means that the RGB working space is SRGB. Now, while SRGB is not a terrible space,I don't want to over characterize this, it's not an ideal space either. It's a very old-profile definition, and it's based pretty much on a worst-case-scenario computer monitor. The kind of thing you might have used on a PC back in the 1990's. Now, while SRGB is considered the ideal color space for the web, and I'll come back to that in a moment, I recommend you change it here, whether you're creating web graphics or print graphics to a better space, which is this one right here, Adobe RGB 1998.

The only reason to use some other space, such as pro photo RGB is if you're typically working with 16 bit per channel images and if you are, you know who you are. But otherwise, for day to day work inside Photoshop Adobe RGB, 1998 is the best way to go. Now the only change you might want to make, is if you're working with a specific commercial printer. Then you might be able to get a CNYK profile from them, so that you can achieve the best commercial printing results. But you need to talk to your commercial printer about that.

And if you don't have such a profile I recommend that you leave the CMYK option alone. Make sure that these color management policies are all set to preserve embedded profiles, that's very important, and that these check boxes are turned off. Then, what I recommend you do is go and save off your settings by clicking on the Save button and what I've been calling these settings for years is best workflow, so I'll go ahead and enter that name. And then, click on Save button. You have an option of entering some comments, if you like.

I've gone ahead and copied some text to my clipboard, so I'll just press Ctrl+V or Cmd+V on a Mac, in order to paste it in. And for what it's worth, the text reads "these are the settings that Deak recommends in his one-to-one courses for Lynda.com. The ensured consistent color and printing across all Adobe applications" and we'll come to that in just a moment. Then I'll click OK in order to save those settings And I'll click OK again in order to accept my change. Now notice, up here in the title tab, that we're no longer seeing the asterisk.

And that's because this image was already set to Adobe RGB in the first place. Now the only time you're going to see the image shift on screen, is if it's not profiled in the first place. And if you run into that problem by the way, if you end up opening an image and it look peculiar, or it looks different than you anticipated, then what you want to do. Is return to the edit menu and then choose a sign profile down here at the bottom and if you load a (UNKNOWN) I've given you a keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+F2 or Cmd+F2 on the Mac. If you get an alert message just go ahead and click OK and then what you want to do is switch the profile for that image back to SRGB, and it will look the way it did in the first place.

In my case however, the image is changing on screen, and that's because it was already set to Adobe RGB. And that's the way I want to leave it. Al right, so I'll just go ahead and cancel out and notice as soon as I do, the saturation of those colors goes ahead and pops back to the way they were in the first place. Now, one of the questions I get from web folks is, shouldn't I be working in SRGB? Isn't it a mistake to use Adobe RGB? And the answer is no. Adobe RGB is going to serve you better over time because sometimes you're going to be printing your images, in which case you want the best colors you can possibly achieve, and that's what Adobe RGB is going to do for you.

And also, when you go to the file menu and choose the save for web command, that one of the options that Photoshop goes ahead and applies by default here, is a conversion to SRGB. Leave that check box on and everything is going to go great. Your image will look exactly the way it's supposed to look inside a web browser. Alright so I'm going to go ahead and cancel out of here. Bow thee's just one more change that you need to make. If you subscribe to the entire creative cloud. This doesn't apply to those of you who have Photoshop by itself.

But if you've installed multiple Adobe applications, here's what you do. First, make sure you've installed the Adobe Bridge. Then you want to go up to the File menu and choose Browse in Bridge, or press Control+Alt+O or Command+Option+O on a Mac. Then, here in Side Bridge, you go up to the Edit menu and you choose Color Settings. And notice it has the same shortcut that it does inside PhotoShop, that is Control+Shift+K, or Cmd+Shift+K on the Mac. Now if you don't see this command or it doesn't work for you, it means that for whatever reason, Bridge is not recognizing that you own more than one Adobe application.

I'm going to go ahead and choose Command however, because it's going to work fine for me. Now notice that my applications are not synchronized because I changed Photoshop without changing everything else. In order to synchronize all the various applications, you want to go ahead and select those settings you saved just a moment ago, which in my case were Best Workflow and then go ahead and click Apply down here at the bottom of the dialogue box. And that's all you have to do to apply your changes across all the other Adobe applications.

Now, note by the way, if I go back to the edit menu and choose color settings again, I'm going to see the word synchronized up here at the top of the dialogue box Which tells me that all the Adobe applications are now set the same way. And that's very important, because that way you won't have any color shifting when you're switching images back and forth between, say, Photoshop and Illustrator, or Photoshop and InDesign, and so forth. Anyway, my deed is done. So I'm going to click the Cancel button in order to cancel out of that dialog box.

And that wraps up our look at the advanced shortcuts and settings. Here inside Photoshop and Bridge.