Written by I Heart Faces Contributor: Andrea Riley (“Drew”) from Happy Chaos
(This tutorial was written using Photoshop Elements, but the same thing can be accomplished in other Photoshop programs as well.)
Update: This tutorial is designed purely for how to make your photos look good on the web. There are many viewpoints and factors involved with printing. For example, the calibration of your monitor, what color space your printing company uses, etc. View this tutorial as focusing only on how to make your photos look the best they can be on the web.
Have you ever been in a situation where you fixed up a photo until it was absolutely perfect? Then, you uploaded it to the web. You looked at it a minute and thought, “Hmmm…I swear it looked better than that!” If this situation has happened to you, it’s probably a guarantee that you are editing your photos in RGB mode which is not ideal for the web.
The fix is very simple.
Go to Image – Convert Color Profile – Choose “Apply sRGB Profile” (If you already had that, then I’m not sure how to help you! ☺)
Pioneer Woman has an excellent tutorial on this, so I won’t go into nitty gritty detail.
Some questions have been raised as to whether using RGB mode is best for printing. That’s biting off more than I want to chew, so I’m going to direct you to a great source that will give more information on that. This is addressed at Ken Rockwell’s site. His claim is that sRGB is the best mode (printing and web) for any serious amateur photographer.
You may be wondering how to make a photo default to a certain color profile. Just go to Edit – Color Settings.
A window will pop up letting you choose whichever setting you prefer.
It really is that easy! In fact, I pretty much edit in sRGB, because many experts claim that this is also the best mode for printing.
The rest of this tutorial is designed to show you the difference between RGB and sRGB on the web. The first picture in each set below is one in RGB mode. The second one is sRGB. The second one should look better. Sometimes it can be a bit difficult to see the difference, but in other situations it can make a HUGE difference, particularly with skin tones.
I hope you’re able to see the difference on your screen…it made a subtle, yet very needed, difference on mine. Some pictures are more obvious than others, but the second one has more zing and less of a grey grainy effect…just like it looked when I edited them.
Till next time…
Who is this Drew girl and what makes her an “expert”? Simple answer: She’s Angie’s sister, owns Photoshop Elements and works for free. Yep, that’s her only qualifications for this job. Hopefully all the newbies out there can appreciate a contributor who doesn’t know it all and isn’t afraid to admit it. Have fun following Drew’s Fix-It Fridays and be sure to drop by her blog to say hello!
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AWESOME!!! Thank you!
Along with using the correct color space, it's important to sharpen for the web too. Many people know to lower the resolution to 72 ppi and reduce the image size to fit your blog or website, but some forget to sharpen the resized image and it ends up kind of fuzzy. Sharpening should be your last step after editing and resizing. Try it – it'll make a big difference!
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