Opening a PhotoCD in Photoshop 5.0 or 5.5

Photoshop 5.0 and 5.5 have changed the way to open PhotoCD files. Photoshop now requires you to use ColorSync or ICC color Profiles. We've put this guide together to help you open your images. Although the screens may differ slightly, this guide should work on either MACs or PCs.

First, Open Photoshop and then Navigate to the disc. The disc will have a name that begins with "PCD" followed by a four digit number. You should see a window like this:

If you are on a PC you will not see a folder called "Photos", only Macintosh users will see this folder. This folder is created by QuickTime and a system extension called Apple Photo Access. Inside of this are folders for the five different resolutions on a PhotoCD disc which you can open as PICT files. If you are on a Mac, you may open one of these using Apple's Quicktime instead of Photoshop's Color Management. If you are on a Mac or PC you can continue to the next step.

Inside the "PHOTO_CD" folder you will find another folder labeled "IMAGES." Open the "IMAGES" folder.

Inside the "IMAGES" folder are the files Kodak calls the "Imagepac". Refer to your index print to select a file to open. Either highlight the file and click open or double click on the file. That will bring up the next window.

This window gives you options on the size of the file you want to open from your PhotoCD and which ColorSync or ICC profiles you want to use to open your images. The first option is circled in red... this is the resolution (in pixels). Unless you have ProScans on a Portfolio disc, you will have five options here. Click on this box to select the size that best suites your needs. If you're not sure about what size will work best, please refer to our size chart below.

These are the various size options on a PhotoCD Master Disc.

The next choice is to select the ColorSync or ICC profiles. Click the SOURCE button.

Find your collection of ColorSync or ICC profiles. If you installed Photoshop properly, you will find some profiles that begin with the letters PCD.

The ones that you will generally want to use are:

Select the Profile and hit open or double click on the Profile. In the bottom box, it gives you a little more information on the profile you have selected. In this case, it tells us that the profile pcdekycc.pf has been selected and that it is Photo CD Universal E-6. E-6 is the name of the chemistry used to process slide film. Therefore, this is the option to select for scans from slides.

The next choice you have to make is your DESTINATION profile. We find that the best choice is to select your Working RGB Space. Typical choices are ColorMatch RGB, Adobe RGB(1998), and sRGB. These come with Photoshop. To find out which choice your system is set to, go to "FILE" > "COLOR SETTINGS" > "RGB Setup". You Should see a window like this:

Click on the Destination button in the PhotoCD window and select the choice that was in the RGB set up and douple click on that profile to make it active.

Now you can hit OK and your image will open. This probably seems like a lot of work, but you only need to do this the first time. Once you have made these selections, Photoshop will remember them and you will only need to change these settings if you change film type (i.e. negative film to slide film), or wish to open a different size file. Also note, the profile choices you select will affect how the images look.

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