08/11/2007

Shutterchance Workspace Problem

Processing images for upload to Shuterchance.

I noticed recently that some of my images were being degraded when uploaded to Shutterchance. This was mainly evident in well saturated colour images. See example here. After some experimentation and an exchange in the Shutterchance Forum I came to the conclusion that the problem was due to my images having an AdobeRGB profile whereas Shutterchance webpages appear to require images with an sRGB profile. Images which are not in sRGB are automatically converted on upload. As sRGB contains less colour information than Adobe RGB profiles there is a loss of colour information, ie some de-saturation!

This is my workaround:-

  1. Open your image in Photoshop (CS2: v9) and if the Workspace is not sRGB change it before you start any further processing.
  2. I would start by copying the image.
  3. To change to sRGB, go to Edit, Assign Profile, and choose sRGB, click OK.
  4. You can check the Workspace ID on the bottom margin of your image.
  5. The information displayed in the margin by default is the size of the image in pixels, this can be changed by clicking the black arrowhead in the margin, choose “Show” and you will get a list of options one of which will be “Document Profile”, this displays the Workspace identity.
  6. I set other image parameters as:-
    Dimensions 72 px/inch, smallest side dimension 700px or largest side maximum 1000px
    JPEG compression 12

I am no Workspace expert so if I you disagree with my comments I would be pleased if you would correct them.

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