Calibrating colors in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom

I’ve been using Photoshop for quite a while but I’m pretty much a newbie still. I’ve started to use Adobe Lightroom for my workflow recently. I have to say its a fantastic application. It has simplified my post processing tremendously.

From Lightroom, you can choose to edit your photos in Photoshop by right-clicking on the photograph and selecting “Edit in Adobe Photoshop CS2/3″ as shown below:

The first time I did this, my eyeballs nearly fell out when the colors of the same image were so different between 2 applications made by the same company. Here’s a sample:

On the left, we have Lightroom and on the right is Photoshop. For some reason, the difference is more visible on my computer instead of the screenshot above.

Forumer Hitz on ClubSnap forums came to my rescue with these settings:

In Photoshop, go to Edit and select “Color Settings”:

Update the Conversion Options section to:

1. Engine: Adobe (ACE)
2. Intent: Relative Colorimetric
3. Check “Use Black Point Compensation”
4. Check “Use Dither (8-bit/channel images)
5. Uncheck “Desaturate Monitor Colors By:”
6. Uncheck “Blend RGB Colors Using Gamma:”

Then, go to View and turn off “Proof Colors”. That’s it for Photoshop!

Now in Lightroom, just to ensure we open the photo with the PSD file type and selected color profiles, go to Edit and select “Preferences”:

Go to the External Editing Tab and under the “Edit in Adobe Photoshop CS2/3″ section set:

1. File Format: PSD
2. Color Space: sRGB (Any selection is fine, but if you don’t know what to choose go with sRGB. I’ll explain in future.)
3. Bit Depth: 16 bits/component

That’s it! Your Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop will be displaying the same colors now!