Alright, this doesn't happen ALL the time, but it happens often enough.  

I work on a photo in my Photoshop CS3 ... its beautiful ... colors are perfect, lighting, etc.... but when I go to upload it?  The colors are MUTED, and DULL, and the image is DARK.

I have google searched for answers off and on, but can not find a fix for this.

Any ideas?  Does this ever happen to you?

ShariLyn/ Tizjezzme

ShariLyn, it has happened to me but the events were regular and not discovered until I viewed some images on another monitor.  I had awful colors for a while all because my monitor was dying and color was off.   When uploaded, it looked fine on the same monitor...on another one all was a mess.  

Your situatilon sounds different.   For a "see it yourself" thing, download one of your dark dull photos posted and then open up un your CS3.    How does it look?  Does it look good again?

If it still is dark and dull, adjust to make it look right and upload again.  How does it look now?  Keep the adjustments in mind.  If really extreme changes are needed, something is amiss and I don't know what. 

Tom

Hmmmmmm! Are you using an sRGB colour profile? I think Internet browsers only recognize sRGB color spaces so if you are using RGB, which is traditionally used for printing, you may want to try converting the colour profile in PS to sRGB. Sorry thats all I can think of at the moment!

Andrew

I looked at a recent upload in your gallery and it looks fine to me...problem is I don't know how much brighter you might see it on your monitor.   I would view those recent photos and not once think anything was wrong in color and levels.

Tom, I ended up redoing the photo (my recent horses upload), making/forcing/bumping up the colors prior to the orton technique, and reuploaded it.  To me it looked better but still much different from what i saw when I brought it up on my CS3. 

Andrew, yes, I saw when googling, something about the sRGB color profile .. and I do have it set right there.  I have gone into my CS3 and looked at the screen that has all the color data, and I'm afraid to touch it.  :-/

Tom ... I did my last upload (postworked it) from my laptop at work.  (what can i say, the workload is a bit slow lol)  Funny when I got home and saw it from my desktop computer, it looked FINE.  Strange.  So, now to figure out how to correct the color on my laptop?  I'd just hate to mess it up worse ..

I will keep an eye on things here .. see what I can figure out.  I appreciate your imputs very much Tom and Andrew!

Maybe you are using a different browser on your laptop..? Or a browser that is not color managed..? Take a look at this article, maybe it could be of any help...

Set up a "proof" view in Photoshop. Set it to custom, and then to the colour profile of your monitor - or just "Monitor RGB"  that way you can work on the image in the same colour space as the monitor displays it / web browsers do.  Just look at the help files in PS to work out how to do it - i think it is within the "View" tab at the top.

Beyond that there is a whole minefield of profile madness i rarely venture into...

Profile madness is an understatement.  Its intimidating to me.  But I will have a look at that and see what I can figure out.  Thanks for the idea.  :)

**girsempa ... yeah, I tried different browsers .. all 3 that I have.  Same thing.  The stumper for me is WHY this doesn't happen all the time.  Only sometimes!  :-/
**

Andrew is right...

RGB is for PRINTING.

sRGB is for displaying on the web!

Many editors like PS have the option of: SAVE for WEB.

I just saved a raw file in sRGB, Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB. This goes from the smaller color box to the larger.   When viewed on my monitor, all look exactly the same to my eye.  You see,the monitor will not show the larger color ranges and it comes out essentially sRGB.  Print is a differernt event.

The two primary standards are sRGB and AdobeRGB.   The later has a larger color gamut but monitors are generally only going to show sRGB even if the image is done in AdobeRGB.

ShariLyn, if you have not messed with the output of your camera and changed from one color space to another, then that is the same as it has been. Likely it is sRGB to start with.

If you have not changed the color space of your main editing software, that is the same as it has been.

If you use RAW then the output is the color space you choose.  If you have not changed that, it is also the same setting as before.

All should be the same.

So, if these have not changed, something else has (or is) and  may account for the non-consistent nature of the problem.  I speculate  it has nothing to do with the color space you use which has done just fine in the past, has it not?

That is it from me..I am sinking in tech stuff over my head already!         Tom.