Lifeless in Photoshop Elements

[Tom Hildreth]

When looking at some colorful slide scans from last fall, I have noticed that when viewing them in Internet Explorer or Windows Picture and Fax Viewer the colors are bright but realistic. I'm happy.
 
However, when viewing them on Photoshop Elements (the program used when I edited the files), they are lifeless.  Reds are rust. Yellows are tan.
My guess is I changed a setting in Elements, but I haven't found it yet.  Any ideas what would cause this?

[LarryD]

Tom I have found that I have to uninstall and reinstall my Elements about every 6 months.... I started with 2.0 now I use 5.0

[Kin Lau]

Under the Edit menu, Color Settings, make sure you're set to "sRBG" which is either the Optimize for Computer Screens or "Let me choose".

[Tom Hildreth]

Thanks Guys,
I'm using Elements 6.0, color set for Computer Screen Optimization (sRGB). Guess I need to take some more time to experiment with this problem.

[Tom Hildreth]

The solution to my problem was that under edit, color settings, I had selected Always optimize colors for computer screens. For reasons unknown to me, this made the colors appear dull and lifeless in Elements. I changed the selection to no color management and the colors are bright and accurate such as they appear with other programs. Go figure.

[phule]

Color management is one of those dark arts that makes me want to run screaming into the woods and live off tree bark and moss.  

Until it all comes together, that is and everything looks great.

[Tom Hildreth]

I agree.  The following is a slight exaggeration, but sometimes I think onscreen color hasn't advanced very much from the early days of color TV. Many of the families near me simply had to have (expensive) color TV in the early/mid 1960s. Most of the sets I recall (this was pre-Sony) produced the most awful colors in the livingrooms of America. I have just recently seen an add for a very thin LED television. I'll be interested in seeing how this upcoming technology works out.