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Windows 7 shows CMYK images as negative 1

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acevans

Technical User
Apr 9, 2003
78
US
My company just recently (1.5 months) upgraded my computer to windows 7. Now all my images that are CMYK are showing as negatives. RGB files are fine. Im a graphic designer so converting all to RGB is not an option. Im on a dell system, but they cant find a problem. Everything is up to date. I've seen other posts on different sites with the same issue, but no solutions yet. Please help
 
Not sure this will help, but perhaps you need the CMYK color profile?

Try it here:

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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
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Thank you so much for your reply. I installed it but nothing happened. Am I supposed to do something in my color management after installing?
 
you will probably not get around it but you will need to convert them, I would suggest using TIFF here...
It seems that there is a problem with the way Corel saves the palate (cmyk mode), if you have access to a MAC, I'd suggest using Adobe on it to load and then save the pictures, if I remember correctly, OSX doesn't have this issue...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"
 
Why did it become YOUR problem and not theirs to solve? I'm not one to bash IT people, but it is their job. On the other hand, I'm always suspicious of rogue users that try to take over their work computers and be "IT Director of my PC".
 
There is no need to convert images that worked before.

Color management is an important matter. If your system has not been calibrated, do it (even if it has no relation to this problem).

The question left unanswered is where are these images appearing as negatives?

Previous versions of Windows did not support CMYK images any better than newer versions. If we are referring to thumbnail display in Windows Explorer, I would suspect that you had some sort of third party software installed on your previous system to help display CMYK image thumbnails. That software probably just needs to be installed on your new system.

There are a few good commercial Explorer add-ons that can help display various color modes and image formats. If you want free software, look to sagethumbs:

Sagethumbs will not display CMYK perfectly (there is a minor color shift) but it is better than viewing negatives.
 
Big Ben, we do use photoshop and illustrator on PCs. ALL jpgs and tifs if they are cmyk are negative. I work for a bank/mortgage company that uses print material, so the final pics MUST be cmyk...

I TOTALLY AGREE goom, however all I get from my IT is 'no one else has this problem, and we don't why'...We are the ONLY ones in the company that handle all the marketing material, therefore require the pics to be in cmyk! Its not just one computer, its 6 or 7! so its not an isolated problem...

To spam, yes it is ALL the CMYK thumbs that are negative on server and personal space, and I have no idea if/what was installed before, too many IT in between the current one to remember what was installed. But I will try your suggestion and get back to y'all
 
ps... I have to address a misconception.
Im a graphic designer so converting all to RGB is not an option.

Even though it should not be a solution to this particular problem, RGB photos are an ideal format in printing because we now have the ability to assign CMYK color profiles to them without damaging the original color gamut. The only time one really needs a CMYK image is when you need to make purposeful changes to the ink distribution on paper (aka... if your design application is not color-profile aware). Otherwise, you can design/paint RGB images while losslessly previewing with a CMYK profile.

More info:

Even if your printer does not support (or is too clueless to understand) the RGB print workflow, you can send a CMYK PDF that you have prepared from your RGB photos. It is a one-click operation in a program like InDesign. Just export a PDF/X-1a file from InDesign. It does the RGB->CMYK conversion for you.
 
however all I get from my IT is 'no one else has this problem, and we don't why'...We are the ONLY ones in the company that handle all the marketing material, therefore require the pics to be in cmyk! Its not just one computer, its 6 or 7! so its not an isolated problem...
Sorry to redirect the thread AND sounds like a bad IT group.
 
SPAMJIM...you THE MAN! most of the images are fixed..an odd random few are still negative..weird, but the added benefit to sagethumbs is all my illustrator and photoshop files now have a viewable thumb! VERY COOL!

Goom...hey, I'm with ya! One of the responses from them was 'well thats just the way Win7 sees cmyk files'.....there has GOT to be a fix/patch/SOMETHING that microcoft has that fixes it! And for all you MAC ppl, theres a bunch of blogs with the same issue for yall too.

our IT guys are stretched to the limits so not all bad. However when we ask them about an issue the response it I'll have to Google it.....uuhhmm I can google it!! Our other problem right now is our printer (color laser 5500) will print the same color different ways on the same paper!

Thank you all for your help!!
 
If sagethumbs is not affecting all images, check your settings for it. By default, it may only generate thumbnails for images less than 20MB. You can adjust the sagethumbs settings to include larger image files.
 
Spamjim, thanks for the insightful posts, there where a few things that I wasn't aware of that I had garnered from your posts...

acevans, glad to see that you more or less fixed the issue, and I must admit, that I do not have that much experience in the DTP area, haven't dealt with it in over 20 yrs. and then it was a whole different ballgame...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"
 
acevans, i had the same problem, searched the forums and end up here.
I also installed sagethumbs, the jpegs thumbnails were... lets say fine (as in... not inverted, like spamjim said - a minor color shift), but when i opened a cmyk jpeg in Windows Photo Viewer, it was still displayed as negative.

Now i said... it's clearly something wrong with the W7's interpretation of colors, so there's got to be somewhere in control panel a setting that's messed up, maybe a wrong color profile setting.
What worked for me was selecting an RGB profile for the Windows Color System (you'll find that in CP > Color Management > Advanced tab). Your current profile might be CMYK (like Fogra27 - that's what i had for a selection - dont know how that happened!).

I also uninstalled sagethumbs because the cmyk jpegs were displayed with bright colors if you know what i mean, which i found a bit annoying. The only good thing was that i had a preview for a psd file :)

I'm almost 100% sure this will work for you too. Cheers!

 
>when we ask them about an issue the response it I'll have to Google it.....uuhhmm I can google it!!

Yes, but they are paid to spend time Googling it ... if you spend time doing that, then that is time spent not doing your own job

Anyway ... Windows 7 uses a different graphics model from previous versions of Windows (including Vista), particularly when fully accelerated by your graphics card.

As a result, it can actually be your graphics driver and/or the level of graphics acceleration that cause display issues. So two things worht trying:

1) Ensure latest graphics driver for your graphics card (or chipset) is installed
2) Drop graphics hardware acceleration down by two levels (thus disabling bitmap acceleration)
 
when i opened a cmyk jpeg in Windows Photo Viewer, it was still displayed as negative

If you open it in Internet Explorer 9 (and if it has a color profile), you should see it appear correctly. The basic fact is that CMYK JPG files are not as widely supported as RGB JPG. Not even Microsoft can get all their own apps to consistently render CMYK images.

If you need CMYK file previews, you need to augment Windows. You may choose to browse images with Adobe Bridge or you might install xnview, a free image viewer.
 
What i was trying to say was that i solved the problem by simply changing the Windows Color System profile from cmyk to rgb, and that's acevans should do (if, by accident, he also had a cmyk profile selected).
Now the cmyk jpeg thumbnails are displayed correctly, and in windows photo viewer as well. No need for other softwares or driver updates.

Thank you for the replies.
 
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