Thumbnail images turning strange colors

I has to be color modes. Perhaps it was changed to something other than CMYK, RGB, etc?

We need to know where the thumbnails are being made.  In photoshop?  In PHP?

It sounds like you're making them in Photoshop.  If so, how are you resizing/saving them?  While you resize and save, do you see the color problem?  If you reopen the file, does it happen then?  Is it only when you upload and view in a browser?

If you resize in PHP, what script is doing the resizing?

I had trouble with color problems when resizing in PHP, turned out I wasn't using true-color images before resizing (so they were pallette-ized by default).

I used MGI Photosuite 4 to resize the picture and they look almost as good as the full size, one you can also download is IrfanView it's a free software but it give you quite a bit of control (shift-G) will let you adjust gamma correction, brigthness, contrast, saturation as well as color balance.

http://www.irfanview.com/

Gamebits

Hi all,

Thanks for the comments. To address some of the questions….I made both the large and the thumbnail images in PS CS2 and both look fine when reopened in PS. Both sets of images are in the AdobeRGB(1998) color profile. I resized the large images down in PS and then did a “Save for web” with the jpeg, high quality settings. I’m not doing any resizing in PHP (no GD issues)…but for giggles, here’s the code that deals with grabbing my thumbnails from a directory and outputting them:

// Thumbnail Listing

      else if( $cid && empty( $pid ) )
      {
            $number_of_thumbs_in_row = 3;

            $result = mysql_query( "SELECT photo_id,photo_caption,photo_filename FROM gallery_photos WHERE photo_category='".addslashes($cid)."'" );
            $nr = mysql_num_rows( $result );

            if( empty( $nr ) )
            {
                  $result_final = "\t<tr><td>No Category found</td></tr>\n";
            }
            else
            {
                  while( $row = mysql_fetch_array( $result ) )
                  {
                        $result_array[] = "<a href='http://www.bojodesigns.com/gallery/index.php?cid=$cid&pid=".$row[0]."'><img src='".$images_dir."/tb_".$row[2]."' border='0' alt='".$row[1]."' /></a>";
                  }
                  mysql_free_result( $result );      

                  $result_final = "<tr>\n";
      
                  foreach($result_array as $thumbnail_link)
                  {
                        if($counter == $number_of_thumbs_in_row)
                        {      
                              $counter = 1;
                              $result_final .= "\n</tr>\n<tr>\n";
                        }
                        else
                        $counter++;

                        $result_final .= "\t<td>".$thumbnail_link."</td>\n";
                  }
      
                  if($counter)
                  {
                        if($number_of_photos_in_row-$counter)
                  $result_final .= "\t<td colspan='".($number_of_photos_in_row-$counter)."'>&nbsp;</td>\n";

                        $result_final .= "</tr>";
                  }
            }
      }

//end code

Thanks again for your assistance.

jsev1995,

I'm a little confused about what you mean by not degrading the quality. A "high" jpeg setting under the save for web option is usually overkill when it comes to image quality for the web. I have routinely used the "medium" setting over the years without these weird effects. Is it possible something else is going on? Thank you for creating these thumbnails..they definitely are what I'm shooting for...but don't really solve my problem. I'm going to have much more than these 5 thumbnails so I need to be able to do it myself.

I'm sorry, I misread/mixed up something. Try these instructions, nothing more, to make your thumbnails, and see if it works:

1. Open large image in photoshop
2. Go to image->resize->Image Size
3. Set the size and click OK
4. File->save

If this works for you, you clicked some other setting last time and that caused the problem. If not, it is some kind of bug in Photoshop and should be reported to Adobe Support.

What version of Photoshop are you using?

I'm using PS CS2. I will try the regular save (versus the save for web I've been using) later today. Though even if it works, I would be curious to know why this time "save for web" didn't work....why even have the web optimization choice in PS?! I'll let you know how it works...Thanks.

Does "Save for Web..." let you choose a colour profile? If so, make sure it's sRGB and not Adobe RGB.

PS doesn't let you pick in the save window, but I will try that as well as the regular save option....thanks for the reminder about sRGB, I vaguely recall that can cause some problems every once in awhile.

so did my suggestion work?

Mea Culpa everyone! I forgot that I have a file upload scriptthat has one line for resizing in PHP...I was only looking at my main gallery script before! Once I manually inserted records into my db without using the upload script, all was well. So that was the problem. My sincerest apologies and thanks to all that made suggestions. I would like to split my points between jsev1996 and HackneyCab for their efforts...