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CKr · May 25, 2005, 12:03 AM

I have never paid too close attention to color detail until this weekend when my girlfriend and I took some really nice outside shots. Most of them are of us at the park. I did up a nice wallpaper using a picture of her and found that when it is set as the background the colors are faded compared to the original .jpg file. If you open the .jpg in Photoshop or Preview the image looks fine but if you set it as the background it is faded. I'm a bit disappointed because the image looks beautiful and would love to have the colors look right. Has anyone else noticed this? Is this an ongoing issue with OS X or something introduced in 10.4 or 10.4.1?

For comparison, the original is on the left and that same file set as the background on the right. I used the built in screen capture CMD+Shift+3 to grab the screen for the second image.

Graymalkin · May 25, 2005, 01:12 PM

Preview and Photoshop are probably respecting a color profile stored in the image. Finder might not be doing that and as such doesn't make it look as nice when it makes it the background image. Other than that I have no idea.

BearOso · May 25, 2005, 01:37 PM

Not sure if this will work, but try saving it as PNG from Photoshop and test that. Tiger has some issues where it is blurring and fading certain jpg files.

CKr · May 25, 2005, 02:28 PM

Originally Posted by Graymalkin

Preview and Photoshop are probably respecting a color profile stored in the image. Finder might not be doing that and as such doesn't make it look as nice when it makes it the background image. Other than that I have no idea.

I'm now certain this is the problem. Finder is using my calibrated profile while photoshop is using the embedded sRGB profile. I took a look at the image in iPhoto again and it looked about the same as it did on the desktop. I like the look of the photo in Photoshop better but I guess I can deal with how it has come out.

Originally Posted by BearOso

Not sure if this will work, but try saving it as PNG from Photoshop and test that. Tiger has some issues where it is blurring and fading certain jpg files.

I did try this and the background looked the same. Thanks for your input though.

chris v · May 25, 2005, 02:37 PM

I had an issue the other day where 10.4 "lost" all my monitor profiles, and reverted both displays back to Generic RGB. I had to restart to get them back. Take a look at the "color" tab in the displays prefs and make sure you've got good profiles selected. If you've never set up a custom profile for your display, I suggest you hit the "calibrate..." button, turn on "advanced" mode, and go through the assistant.

d.fine · 05:55 PM

Hey, my profiles are gone!? And when I press 'cailbrate' I get a message :

'Can not calibrate the display. The factory profile for the display could not be found.'

What now? The profiles where there, including the calibrated one, untill yesterday...

EDIT : nevermind, a log out/log in fixed the problem. The profile was back, and I could calibrate again. Odd tough that it would just dissapear like that...

chris v · May 25, 2005, 06:12 PM

Originally Posted by d.fine

Hey, my profiles are gone!? And when I press 'cailbrate' I get a message :

'Can not calibrate the display. The factory profile for the display could not be found.'

What now? The profiles where there, including the calibrated one, untill yesterday...

EDIT : nevermind, a log out/log in fixed the problem. The profile was back, and I could calibrate again. Odd tough that it would just dissapear like that...

That's exactly what happened to me. The last prior reboot had been the 10.4.1 updater. When in doubt, re-start.

l008com · Jun 18, 2005, 11:30 PM

I have the same "no profile/can't calibrate" problem, and Ive reboot many times, with no effect. When I click on any of the other profiles in the list, i just get a system beep. Nothing changes. And trying to calibrate the profiles gives me that same message you guys got. What the hell is going on, Tiger's got some issues.

alex627 · Jun 24, 2005, 07:07 PM

Originally Posted by l008com

I have the same "no profile/can't calibrate" problem, and Ive reboot many times, with no effect. When I click on any of the other profiles in the list, i just get a system beep. Nothing changes. And trying to calibrate the profiles gives me that same message you guys got. What the hell is going on, Tiger's got some issues.

I have the same problem. Reboot solves the problem temporarily. Logging in as a different user and then switching back to the original user "loses" most of the profiles. I see my calibrated profile which does not work and the generic RGB profile. This is extremely irritating having 2 people use the same computer. I have to reboot to change color profiles.

Anybody got a fix?

TETENAL · Jun 24, 2005, 07:24 PM

Originally Posted by Graymalkin

Finder might not be doing that and as such doesn't make it look as nice when it makes it the background image.

It think the SystemUIServer draws the desktop background. It's certainly not the Finder.

d.fine · Jun 25, 2005, 03:55 AM

After that one incident almost a month ago, it hasn't happened since to me. I didn't do anything special that I know of.