White is no longer!

Question

I have PS CS4 v.11.0 loaded on a Dell Optiplex 755 running Windows XP Pro SP3 with a Dell 1908FP(Digital) on ATI Radeon HD 2400 LCD monitor.
When running any program EXCEPT PS, white appears as white on the screen. When running PS, white appears as a pale shade of ecru in all open files, swatches, and color selection tools. All other colors are also "off" in this same manner.
However, when I use the PS-created files in other applications, white is once again white, but colors (unless I stick with Pantones) are also off.
Please save me from the insane asylum and offer me some advice on how to rectify this situation.
Thanks!
Susan

Answer 1

> So my last question is, if all appears to be fine to my eye, are there any of the above settings you recommend that I change?
That is a simple question that unfortunately can have a less-than-simple answer.
In general, none of THOSE settings is going to have a dramatic impact on how things look to your eye, particularly if you are using your eye on a monitor (as opposed to a print). You are using Adobe RGB as your working RGB space and that is not necessarily a bad choice depending on the types of images your work with, your preferred workflow, and your intended output medium. If you are posting images to the web, just make sure you convert to sRGB for those.
What COULD impact how things look to your eye and how well you get a match between what you see on your display and what you get in a print, is how well your monitor is calibrated and profiled. If you plan on doing serious work, I would recommend getting a calibration/profiling device. These start at the low end with devices like the Huey and go up from there to devices like the Spyder3, Eye One, and so on.
Here is a pretty good document that covers both of the above topics:
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/WGuidelines.pdf
Color Management, calibration, and profiling can be rather daunting at first but there is a ton of information on the web. Just try drinking it in a little at a time.
> does photoshop cs4 have pop color?
Well, you had me going with that question because I was not familiar with the term. If you mean being able to keep a specific color in an image and turn the rest of the image shades of grey, yes, you can do that in Photoshop. It is not as easy as clicking a "pop color" button and then selecting the part of the image where you want to keep that color but it's pretty easy. Here is one of probably 10 ways to do it:
- Do a Select>Color Range from the PS menu.
- Click on the color you want to keep (not turn to grey).
- You can shift-click to add samples that will add additional tones
- You can adjust the fuzziness to also control the breadth of tones selected.
- You can use the Selection Preview options to see the select portions in different ways.
- Once you have selected what you want, click OK.
- Now on the menu, do Select>Inverse. This will now select what you want to change to greys.
- Now do Image>Adjustments>Desaturate.
That's it. As I said, there are several other ways to do it and you can use adjustment layers instead of direct image adjustments but I gave you one of the quick and dirty methods.
Hope that helps.