Vista - Poor image quality displayed in WPG

I have been disturbed for some time now with the poor image quality displayed
in Windows Photo Gallery. Photos appear over-saturated and darker in WPG
than any other display vehicle (eg: Photoshop, Windows Mail, IExplorer, MS
Word).

In researching this problem, I found others expressing the same problem WPG,
but saw no solution. Most responses I saw suggested ignoring WPG and instead
using a 3rd party program such as Google’s “Picasa�.

What I like about WPG is that it’s a quick and light-weight program for
viewing photos, and am hoping that someone out there can shed some light on
what the problem is with WPG, and how do I correct it?

A sample image comparison: left side image in PhotoShop; right side image in
WPG.
http://localsbackyard.com/wpg.jpg

TIA for any suggestions and/or solutions!

Gee

Did you try any of the "Fix" options in the Preview screen? There are some
tools and options to adjust brightness, contrast, color, etc.

"gee" <gee@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5DA7B3C3-758E-4144-A4AB-FBAF73B5BE8C@xxxxxx

John, Those "Fix" options you suggest using would physically alter (edit)
the characteristics of the image. I believe the OP is asking how to correct
windows color management so that WPG standard display qualities match those
of the color management of Photoshop etc.

To the OP, I suggest you check windows color management settings in the
control panel to be certain it's the same as the color management settings
you use in those other programs. I'm betting it isn't and windows is using
some other profile that is causing the difference you're experiencing (i.e.
windows is using something other than than the ADOBE rgb you're likely using
in Photoshop etc.). Sorry I can't be more specific than that but without
being at your machine that's as close as I can get.


"John Hanley" <jphanley@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uVAJHjMCIHA.536@xxxxxx

JoeT,

Thanx for your input regarding my checking "Color Management Settings". I
have posted a screen shot of each of (3) tabs, but due to my weak
understanding of these settings, am reluctant to change anything until learn
more about them.
http://localsbackyard.com/WCM.jpg

In looking thru the available options (in the Color Management Settings), I
haven't found where the color management settings for individual programs are
differentiated.

Also, since Windows Photo Gallery is the only program on my computer that
over saturates images (ie: other Windows-based programs such as "Windows
Mail" and "MS Word" don't over saturate), is finding (and attempting to
change) a windows profile going to alter only WPG?

TIA again!

Gee




"JoeT" wrote:

Yes, it is an issue with picture quality in Windows Photo Gallery !

After I installed Vista, pictures started to look odd, started thinking my
digital EOS was wrong, bad focus, settings; all pictures looked blury,
over-saturated, too dark, gamma was all wrong, and it looks almost like 16 or
8 bits colours ... ! really obvious in shadow or dark parts of a picture. I
even started to test my EOS camera to see what the *@# was wrong. My reliefe
when I finally started to suspect WPG and I got good old Thumbs Plus
installed - picture quality back to normal. So, the problem has to be Windows
Photo Gallery. No settings that I can see to fix this. No updates to
download. A shame.

PS: Of course you cannot use the edit picture feature, like some suggested
here. That would only alter picture when the problem is not the picture
itself. Result would be quite random.

I had a similar problem but it was only happening on my primary monitor.

My solution was to remove the monitor driver that Windows Update updated
(optionally). It must have installed a new colour profile and I could
probably have just removed that.

I thought my new 5mp camera phone was producing poor images... *phew*