Photoshop CS3 save for web makes image lighter?

Leave it to Adobe. Sounds like another "great" idea one of their programmers had behind the scenes... Everybody is used to the feature working like this - so let's change it and not tell anybody!

To answer your question, I have no idea what's going on - but from the samples on your source link it sure looks like the files are being translated to a cmyk profile instead of rgb.

Because everyone's setup is unique, I'm just going to ask, first, did you notice and try the stuff in the follow-up article?

Also, Smashing Magazine recently had an interesting article on color management for the web that might contain something helpful.

I'm stuck in CS2 Dino-Land here at the office. My job has me jumping back and forth between print and web design, so I'm having to change out my color profiles in Photoshop often. One thing I noticed was that my save-for-web colors would keep coming out muddy, and it wasn't until I fiddled around with the "Assign Color Profile" setting that I found the right RGB color mode to use when working with web images that would keep the color true for me from the initial RGB design to the Save for Web function. Turned out for MY setup, I needed to use the Apple RGB setting in order to not see the shift happen... or rather the Apple RGB setting showed me beforehand what the shift would look like, so I developed my online work in the Apple RGB setting (jeez... that sounds confusing... I'm sorry.)

To clarify what I was saying... for me, working on my web images in Apple RGB is like working on my print images in the CMYK colorspace. (Instead of working on a print image in RGB and then getting aggravated when I converted the image to CMYK and found all my reds turned to brown).

Hope that makes better sense now.

Again the Apple RGB setting is what my own unique setup needed. though. Your setup may be different. But opening playing around in the "Assign Color Profile" settings with my image open is what helped me to find the right profile instead of just guessing by making changes through the "Color Settings" setup. Once you find the right profile, THEN save it in your "Color Settings".

I'm thinking the problem is trying "save to web" with a colour profile. Colour profiles are not supported by all web browsers and therefore images might look correct in 1 Browser while the colours might be completely off in others.

You should always work in sRGB for web graphics and save with no profile.

Also make sure you're monitor gamma should be 2.2, not the Apple standard 1.8.

Jeepers creepers, it's something very simple! I only saw all your replies now, didn't know I had to subscribe to see replies on my own posts! OI!! Silly me!!

And I actually fixed it from this tutorial on smashing magazine website: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/12/setting-up-photoshop-for-web-app-and-iphone-development/

thanks so much everyone!

:)

(As soon as I save with no profile it works perfectly fine!)

It's just funny, that it just started happening about a week ago?! And I can't remember changing my settings. Anyway it's working now!