Blacked out images in Lab Color mode

This problem relates to Camera Raw 4.5 and 4.4.1. I first noticed this when I
opened a file in Lab color. When it opened the image went black. Also the top thumbnail in the channels panel was black. In RGB mode the top thumbnail
in the History panel is blacked out. This relates to my desktop,my laptop runs just fine with ACR 4.5. BTW my desktop is running XP Home,my laptop is running XP Pro. This seems like the right place to go for help. Oops,almost forgot... ACR 4.3.1 works fine,no problems at all.
Thanks,
Rich Kreidel

You really must get rid of any other copies of the Camera Raw plug-in, especially if the other copy is somewhere in the Adobe folder system. Try using the search feature on your menu, and search for camera raw.8bi and see if you can locate the other copy that way.
Another thing to check would be to open Photoshop and go to Help/About Plug-Ins. Camera Raw should only be listed once. If you see it listed multiple times then that is definitely your problem. Click on the Camera Raw listing(s) to find out what version you have.
This Camera Raw update/installation process has caused a lot of confusion for quite some time. Once you get to understand it, it really is a simple process to update. But all it takes is a little mistake to cause a lot of problems.

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Conditional actions in Photoshop can't test for Lab color mode.

I’m posting here because the feature request/bug report form isn’t currently working for Photoshop.
I wanted to create an action to determine if the color mode of an image is Lab, and if so, convert it to RGB. But there’s no conditional action test for Lab color mode. The list of conditions that can be tested includes RGB, grayscale, and a couple of other color modes, but not Lab, Does anyone know of a workaround? Can I get it done with scripting?
It would be a big help if the next update of Photoshop CC could include a conditional action test for Lab color mode.

This for example would convert an active Lab image to sRGB:
if (app.documents.length > 0) {
if (app.activeDocument.mode == DocumentMode.LAB) {
app.activeDocument.convertProfile ("sRGB IEC61966-2.1", Intent.RELATIVECOLORIMETRIC, true, true);

Problem Lab color mode in Illustrator CC 2014

What is the best way to choose a CMYK color mode in Illustrator? When I want to import a file from Illustrator to InDesign it will automatically be converted to a Lab color mode and I can not change the CMYK values. All colors from Illustrator are therefore in a Lab color mode. I work with Illustrator CC 2014, thank you very much!

Thank you I think I understand what you mean. I added a Illustrator and Indesign picture to show you what happens. I made a file in Illustrator with the right values and saved it as a eps file. Then I imported in to Indesign and the second picture shows what happens. I never had this problem but since the new CC version I can't change it.

When I select the lab color mode, many options are greyed out?

Can anyone help me . When I select Lab color, many options are grey out. The following are greyed out: exposure,vibrance, black and white, channel mixer, and selective color. It worked perfectly the first time I used it but will not work now. Do I need to reset something. I have tried everything I can think of. I use a PC and PS 5.
Thanks for the help.

I'm working on the Mac versions of CC and CC 2014. If I select Lab, those very same options are grayed out.

Pros and Cons of working in LAB color mode

I like to use LAB as my color mode. Partially becasue I have a spectrophotmeter and can sample things; partially becasue it is the space which I am most familiar with.
If you pick up almost any ID instruction book, it says "ID has three color modes: RGB, CMYK, and LAB. We aren't going to talk about LAB." I assume that is at least partially due to legacy. However, is there something I am overlooking? Is there a danger to work working in LAB I haven't thought through?
Mostly my work is output to web or print - both desktop and offset - without spot colors.

MarieMeyer wrote:
I seems to me that if I specify colors in LAB and then output to sRGB or Adobe RGB the color is going to be the same - whereas if I had typed in RGB values it will not. (Realizing this is NOT some magic cure for monitors not being calibrated!)
Obviously ID isn't an image editing/generator program, but for brochures and thing I do apply flat areas of colors. If I type in a LAB color that is out of the gamut of the CMYK profile of the working space, I get an OOG warning and can dial it back. What I really like is the speed with which I can adjust the value of the color without changing the hue/chroma by adjusting just the L channel. It is sort of like creating tint swatches, only in reverse!
dylw, I take your point about the number of printers who aren't meticulous. But don't I have the same problem if I'm relying on a swatchbook that provides CMYK values but was printed on a differe paper at a different company than the one that I'm going to use?
When I was a student I used to worry about exact color matching and presume that it could be achieved. Now that I've been out here working in the real world for a few years I understand that perfect color matching, even with good color management, is a myth. Most users don't have calibrated monitors, or even monitors capable of displaying the full gamut of what your eye can see or even what your camera or scanner might be able to capture, and process color gamuts are genereally smaller still. When you go to press you are at the mercy of the press operator, the vagaries of plate making equipment, paper inconsistencies, ink mixing, and even ink brand, not to mention the light sources in use at the press and in your office and where your product is finally viewed by your user, and how those particular inks react to differnt wavelengths.
Even a custom profile is at best a point sample, or an average of many point samples, from a particular run or runs, and is not going to match every sheet that comes off the press. A well-trained eye can probably spot variation in color from one end of a single press run to the other, and even more likely from one run to another. Your spectrophotometer is using a particular wavelength and angle of light to sample your color. Is that the same wavelength and angle that will be used in the client's office under the fluorescents? Has your specrophotmeter aged and drifted?
Color management is about getting good, or even excellent, matching of colors across various output conditions, but there are too many environmental variables to be able to achieve one single "perfect" set of output numbers. All you have to do is grab some output and stand in a doorway and compare what you see in daylight against what you see in room light to demonstrate. The human eye and brain, to varying degrees, recognize certain things as being "normal" colors and will accomodate to tell us, for example, that paper is white, even if it's a bit yellow or gray, until we have a whiter sample for comparison. Further, most of us are incapable of seeing the difference a 1 or 2% density shift on press would produce (and that's pretty close to the tolerance you could hope to achieve in the pressroom), let alone the fractions of percents that we often specify when converting colors.
Lab is a theoretical color space that has no "real world" equivalent, but is extremely useful for translating colors from one real world condition to another. Even if you choose to work "in" Lab, you are at best translating your sampled colors under their specific sampling conditions (which don't match your general lighting) to your monitor space (which may or may not be accurate) and then asking to translate to yet one more output space that probably will not match the real world conditions under which the finished work will be viewed.
What you are doing by specifying the color in Lab is trying to eliminate the source profile, but I doubt you'll get any better output.

PSE and LAB color mode

I use PSE8 to design textiles. Normally my images are put into Index Mode and I specify colors from a LAB color catalogue and send the color specification in an e-mail or Excel file. My printer has asked that I specify the colors directly into LAB mode without indexing. Is there a plug in to do that? Thank You.

LAB is disabled at a pretty deep level in PSE. There are a few plug-ins that will let you simulate the effect you'd get with LAB (one of the settings in the smart curves plugin, for example), but nothing can add the ability truly to understand/render this color space, I'm afraid.

Few Questions 'bout Printing in Lab Color

I'm a little confused about how LAB color works. I have a document thats currently in CYMK color mode, and I'm having difficulty finding satisfactory colors. I was advised elsewhere to abandon CYMK. I therefore want to convert my image into to LAB color mode. I've read that converting from one color mode to another can cause layers to look funny, however I need to retain some of my layers... Do you guys typically have problems with this? In retrospect I should have STARTED in Lab... Seems that converting from CYMK to LAB wouldn't be as problematic as converting from LAB to CYMK...
The key question is this: will my printer (Epson R800) even be able to print in LAB mode? I thought yes, or at least closely... because it has much more than CYMK to work with... it has these cartridges:
#1 Blue UltraChrome Hi-Gloss Ink Cartridge T054920
#2 Cyan UltraChrome Hi-Gloss Ink Cartridge T054220
#3 Gloss Optimizer UltraChrome Hi-Gloss Cartridge T054020
#4 Magenta UltraChrome Hi-Gloss Ink Cartridge T054320
#5 Matte Black UltraChrome Hi-Gloss Ink Cartridge T054820
#6 Photo Black UltraChrome Hi-Gloss Ink Cartridge T054120
#7 Red UltraChrome Hi-Gloss Ink Cartridge T054720
#8 Yellow UltraChrome Hi-Gloss Ink Cartridge
Finally, in the print screen menu should I be
"letting photoshop manage colors" or letting "printer manage colors"? Do you guys have any other tips on how to tweak printer/photoshop settings/preferences to maximize the accuracy of my colors? Would I possibly be better off just using RGB?
I know my questions are conveyed in a slightly confusing manner, so thank you for your patience reading through them. I really appreciate any insight you guys can give me.
Thanks,
Rich

You can't actually print in Lab mode, although it can be great for certain corrective moves. You have to print in either RGB or CMYK. If you are using the Epson driver for your printer, the print is seen as if it were an RGB device, even though it uses CcMmY and black inks.
To get better color accuracy, you need both a hardware calibrated monitor - so you know that what you see is accurate - and good custom printer profiles, so that the colors are properly converted to the color space of the printer. There is a lot of information both in these Adobe forums and on the web in general about color management and the proper use of profiles, and how to go about it.

Apply Image in LAB Question

I am presently taking the The LAB Frontier course by Dan Margulis at Kelby Training and I am having difficulty with the Apply Image command working the way Dan said it would. I am using CS3 on an PC.
Dan makes extensive use of this command in sharpening and other functions as follows:
Be in LAB color mode.
Start with a Background layer and duplicate.
Oversharpen Layer 1.
Have Layer 1 selected and go to Apply Image.
Apply the lower layer Lightness channel to the top layer reducing opacity to 50%.
CHANGE THE MODE TO DARKEN. This is my problem as Darken is not an available choice.
I have tried this on two different PCs with the same unfavorable result. Does anyone have an idea why Darken mode is not available to me?

This is interesting to me because I had never explored "Apply Image". Didn't even know it was there. But playing with it, I was able to invoke ALL of the blend modes in LAB, provided I used the Lightness channel exclusively.
Exclusively means that BOTH target and source are confined to the Lightness channel.
"Target" and "Source" are introduced for flexibility in the Apply Image command. They allow you to blend two layers not necessarily one on top of the other as in the usual blend operation. In Apply Image, the Source acts like the top layer, so it is the layer for which you designate the blend mode.
Here's what to do: Open two images. Put both in LAB mode. For whichever is the target, go to the channels palette and deactivate the a and b channels, leaving only the L channel active. Then invoke Image>Apply Image. In the dialog box that comes up, choose the other open image as the Source and, if it has layers, designate which one you want to use in the blend . Select the L channel. Now select a blend mode for this source. You will find, SURPRISE, that ALL blend modes are availble to you (no longer are some, like Darken or Lighten, grayed out).
Again, what is new to me is that Apply Image affords a convenient way to blend layers from disparate sources rather than being confined to having them in the same image AND one on top of the other. Works well in RGB also, and there you don't have to restrict the channel to access all blend modes. In LAB mode, restricting operations to the Lightness channel in order to access some of the blend modes requires a touchy procedure which, if not followed, leaves these modes still frustratingly grayed out.

Convert to RGB Color Mode (Windows XP/CS4)

It appears I have to change an image from indexed color mode to RGB mode. Can someone please tell me how to do that? Thanks!

Image > Mode > …
But if a photograph is "Indexed Color" it is likely not very good quality and you might want to try getting the proper source material.

Transparency in CMYK color mode

Windows XP Pro, Photoshop CS3
It seems that one can only retain background transparency if image file is saved in PNG or GIF file format. It also seems that one cannot save to these file formats if graphic is in CMYK color mode - one must be in RBG mode to do so. How can I retain image with transparency in CMYK color?

I am starting with a TIF image in RBG color mode, a tree with grass in the background and foreground for example. I would like to eliminate the grass, make that background and foreground transparent with the background eraser tool so that only the tree remains and that when the tree is superimposed on a second image the background and foreground surrounding the tree will be that second image. In order to make the background and foreground of the tree transparent I have to save the file in GIF or PNG format since transparency doesn't seem work with TIF files however I cannot convert the GIF or PNG files from RBG to CMYK. CMYK doesn't seem work with those file types.
From: J Maloney [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2009 4:00 PM
To: Todd Beckerman
Subject: Transparency in CMYK color mode
PSD, PDF or TIF. Retain transparency for what?

What happens to LAB color when exported to cmyk

I have a workflow at work that goes like this: We work color in Photoshop in Adobe RGB (1998) and convert to our cmyk space only upon output. I've found that, in many cases, I like to work in L*a*b. What happens when an LAB images is placed in InDesign and exported to a pdf to our cmyk space? Thanks!

InDesign can place PSD and TIFF files which are in the LAB color space.
What happens when you export to PDF depends on which PDF preset you use. If you choose PDF/X-1a, the Lab color will be converted to the working CMYK color space (by default US Web Coated SWOP v2, same as in Photoshop). You can test this by examining the resulting PDF in Output Preview in Acrobat 8 Professional or Acrobat 9 Pro.
If you chose PDF/X-3 or PDF/X-4, the color would be unchanged and the PDF would still have the image in LAB color space with the LAB profile that Photoshop created.

CS3 - Bridge Smart Object image to CS3 & Lab Color

I open an (NEF) image in Bridge, do some work, and open the smart object in CS3. When I go to Lab Color I get: “Changing modes can affect the appearance of smart objects. Rasterize smart object before mode change?” I don’t want this, correct?
After I choose “Don’t Rasterize” this dialog window appears: “Merge layers before mode change?” I choose no.
Within Channels (Lab Color) I go to delete “A” & “B” because I just want the Alpha Channel. However, I get “Flatten Layer?” and when I choose “No” I can’t delete “A” & “B.”
Solution?
~ Much Thanks ~

I should say I am trying to learn this software and stumbling through Mr. Kelby's 7 Point System book.
I found my error. I was highllighting the layers not clicking the eye icons off and on.
Thanks for all who look.
JB

Monochrome (RAW) images (from Canon EOS 5D) after importing back to color mode

After importing monochrome (black and white) images their thumbnails appear as such but after a couple of seconds they are reverted to color mode. Import XMP Metadata from file does not change anything. Do I overlook or miss something here?

THe initial BW preview is the one from the camera, then LR builds its own ignoring everything but WB and setting its standrard default. You can create a Develop preset for BW than looks similar to your cameras initial output preview and apply it to all importing images when you shoot 'BW' digital.
Don
Don Ricklin, MacBook 1.83Ghz Duo 2 Core running 10.4.9 & Win XP, Pentax *ist D
http://donricklin.blogspot.com/

LR4.4 - blacked out boxes when importing images from upgraded PSE10 catalogue [was: Lightroom 4]

I have been using photoshop elements 10 for over a year and decided it was time to upgrade to Lightroom for my photo workflow as I am doing more paid photography work. I purchased and received my boxed full version of Lightroom 4 from B & H photovideo on Friday. I installed it then went on-line and updated it with the download of lightroom 4.4. Then I opened lightroom 4.4 for the first time and went to files and selected upgrade my photoshope elemnts catalog to lightroom. Once that was completed I then tried to import images to lightroom 4 to work with them and all I get are blacked out or greyed out boxes in my slide strip at the bottom of the desktop window in import mode. When I point to each box it shows a file name but will not show the image. I have spent all kinds of time reading and watching tutorials on opening images, importing images and catalogs and I am FRUSTRATED.... Would really like to talk to someone to get this figured out. I never thought it would be this difficult to use this program... HELP Please...

I would like to THANK YOU for your assistance in my situation. I followed your suggestion and went into my monitor settings and did a manual reset to the default profile and went back to Lr and the images started popping up one at a time until all 7000+ were visable. Just for the record, I am using Canon 1Ds Mark II, on a Quadcor AMD unlocked FX processor running Windows 7. I shoot in RAW and convert to JPG. It would have been the last thing for me to look at on my monitor settings as all the other programs on my computer run without a glitch. Thanks again for your help... Cheers!

My image blacks out when usi

I am unable o use the healing brush, patch tool, etc. The image keeps blacking out. This repeats. It's as if it is "unstable." The image does not stay on screen. I experienced the same problem while using the crop tool, but was able to crop in Raw. I am an experienced user with PS 5; this is my first week with CC. Is anyone able to help me? Thanks.

Hello Mr. Cox,
Thanks for your suggestion. I wopuld like to follow it, and give it a
try. But, I am not very computer skilled to do what you recommend
without further help. Would you be willing to tell me how I set the
Photoshop GPU mode to "basic" since I do not know how. FYI: my computer
is brand new laptop from Lenovo.
Many thanks,
Herbert

Blacked out images in Lab Color mode

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