CMYK files displaying crazy color. No available Color Profile to assign.

[BeckyMalaria]

Hello,

I'm having the problem described in this thread:

http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?topic=1120.0

I have a bunch of old CMYK files and the thumbnails' color is way off. I have tried assigning color profiles as outlined in the thread and in this MS help document:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc507743.aspx

When I reach the step of the Color Profile drop-down, there are no profiles listed.

I am not too savvy about color profiles so I'm hoping this is a problem easy to fix... any advice appreciated!

-Becky

[BeckyMalaria]

Well, this may be a clue (from the second link above)

"Expression Media gives you color-accurate display in all views (List, Thumbnail, Media, Light Table, and Slide Shows) by using Windows Image Color Management (ICM), a color management technology."

I'm on a Mac so maybe I don't have this wonderful Windows technology 

I've been looking in the Library folder etc. to see if there is a folder that should be holding color profiles, but I haven't found anything yet...

[BeckyMalaria]

Me again.

On my home computer, I DO get a list of color profiles. Same version of EM. Weird?! I really can't figure out where it's pulling that info from.

Becky

[Roelof]

I'm not familiar with color management so i can not answer your question.
But dit you try to post it on the Phase One user-to-user forum or post a support call there?
Roelof

[BeckyMalaria]

Hi Roelef,

Sorry I never responded!

I haven't posted on the Phase One site about this issue yet. I did some searches in their knowledge base and found this article:
http://www.phaseone.com/Search/Article.aspx?articleid=1168&languageid=1

I tried the suggested steps and it unfortunately did not fix my problem. However, in the course of playing around with the problematic files I noticed that they did not seem to have an embedded color profile at all. I opened some up in Photoshop and assigned a color profile (after discussing it with a friend in publishing I selected EUROSCALE COATED v2), saved and closed.

The new thumbnails in EM after a rebuild look good! I tried other CMYK profiles in Photoshop, but this seemed to look the best in EM. I searched EM for all CMYK images with no color profile, opened in Photoshop, and ran a custom Action to assign the color profile, save, close.

It doesn't totally solve my problem as I still have wonky looking CMYK jpegs (I don't want to do a lossy save after assigning a color profile, and I haven't found a way to assign a color profile without having to re-save the file after to make it stick.) But my tiffs look good, so that's a positive step!

-Becky

[BeckyMalaria]

Posting an update: Having run into the file size limit for our EM catalog, we decided to test Media Pro. And behold, now I can assign a color profile for the jpegs! After embedding Euroscale Coated v2 for all the profile-less jpegs, and rebuilding the thumbnails, my jpegs look fine! Whee!

NOW if only they would solve my alpha-channel problem... if only... if only...

-Becky