I have a bunch of RGB black-and-white jpgs. When I open them in Photoshop, they look fine. However, a few of them, when converting to a PDF from Macromedia Freehand, show up as sepia-toned.

So, I've opened them up in Photoshop, and noticed that if I convert these RGB jpgs to grayscale, sure enough, they turned sepia-toned...NOT grayscale. Any idea why? I have all my color management shut off.

I'm not sure why some of my JPGs are turning out sepia in the final PDF and some not.

As a followup, I can take the JPG, convert to RGB, then apply DESATURATE, then convert to CMYK, and, in Photoshop, it looks grayscale. In Freehand, it turns green-toned. Odd. Very odd.

There are several scenarios that could cause this. The most common cause of this kind of symptom is an invalid display profile.

Test for this by clicking on the gradient tool and selecting on of the black to white gradients. Does the gradient appear tinted in the toolbar? If the answer is yes, you have a screwy display profile, specifically one that produces less blue relative to red and green.

Run Adobe Gamma, and make sure you have the RGB sliders combined as a single slider. If you are using a third party profile package, do not attempt to get it working until you have the basics in place. Deactivate your profile package and get things working correctly with Adobe Gamma before reactivating it.

Of course it is possible the display profile is not at fault, but check for that first, then we can tackle the CMYK issue, which may be a separate problem.

Mike Russell

Mike:

I can pick a b/w gradient, and apply it to an RGB image. Once I convert that RGB image to Grayscale, however, then it turns sepia toned.

If, as I suspect, the color profile is incorrect, gradients will work normally and have no color tint.

It would still help to know whether the gradient dropdown control in the upper left corner of your Photoshop window is sepia.

Otherwise try running Adobe Gamma, and see if the checkbox is set to combine the RGB sliders into a single slider. If not, that's very likely to be the problem.

Mike Russell

The gradient dropdown is black and white. If I apply it to an RGB image, it appears as black and white. Only when I convert the image to grayscale does the image then go sepia toned. Converting back to RGB, the sepia tone remains, and I need to then desaturate the image to get it back to truly grayscale.

Anyone else have this issue? I ended up turning them all into desaturated RGB JPGs. I then imported into FH (looked fine) then printed to PDF, where my RGB JPGs from photoshop all ended up with a very slight green tint this time.

So, went back in, tried making them CMYK and POOF, back to brown sepia-toned images. Have no idea what's going on.

Now trying to convert them to desaturated images in Fireworks and exporting those as TIFs...

Quick fix: if you save your images as grayscale jpgs it will be impossible for them to print as jpegs.

My guess is you'll have to check out your monitor profile to fix the problem long term, as described earlier in this thread. Open one of your images in Photoshop, and use the info check a gray area and see if the rgb values are all equal. If they are not, see my earlier post on how to fix the monitor profile.

Mike Russell

" Quick fix: if you save your images as grayscale jpgs"

But that's one of the problems. Turning them to grayscale turns them sepia toned.

I'm confused as to what monitor profiles have to do with it. I've turned off all color management in photoshop.

I'm not sure what Adobe Gamma is. I have an file 'Adobe Gamma Loader.exe' but that doesn't do anything when I attempt to launch it.

" Quick fix: if you save your images as grayscale jpgs"





But that's one of the problems. Turning them to grayscale turns them sepia
toned.




You're saving them as gray RGB files. You can also use PhotoShop to convert them to grayscale before you save them as jpegs, this will make it almost impossible for your images to be printed with a color cast later.

I'm confused as to what monitor profiles have to do with it. I've turned
off all color management in photoshop.




Even with all color management in photoshop turned off, PS still uses your monitor profile as your working space.

I'm not sure what Adobe Gamma is. I have an file 'Adobe Gamma Loader.exe'
but that doesn't do anything when I attempt to launch it.




Adobe Gamma is in "Start>Settings>Control Panel>Adobe Gamma". My guess is if you just run it, keeping the gamma sliders locked together as one slider, your problem will go away.

Don't concern yourself for the time being about adjusting the sliders accurately as the default positions are reasonable, just run through the wizard and save the resulting profile. Next time you run Photoshop the new monitor profile will take effect.

If that doesn't do it, you can get by with converting to grayscale until the problem is solved.

Mike Russell

"You're saving them as gray RGB files. You can also use PhotoShop to convert them to grayscale before you save them as jpegs, this will make it almost impossible for your images to be printed with a color cast later. "

I'm obviously not explaining myself very well. ;o)

In photoshop, if I go to MODE >> GRAYSCALE, then the image turns sepia toned. It's NOT grayscale...it's actually sepia toned. I can convert back to RGB, and then desaturate to get back to (what appears) an actual grayscale.

As for adobe gamma, i can't run it, as the computer thinks I'm not an administrator. :(

Curvemeister:

I take that back. You are correct.

If I go to Grayscale, then save as JPG, it works. It still looks sepia toned in Photoshop, and I can still desaturate it, but it does print to PDF as truly grayscale, so it must be some weird issue with my Gamma.

THANKS for the help. Sorry I was so confused!

Glad you have a method that works!

I'm 99% certain that if you have your administrator run Adobe Gamma the problem will go away.

Good luck