Preserve colors from Windows 7 Paint into Photoshop

Question

I've been without Photoshop on my laptop for a few months and have been working with Microsoft Paint on some UI mock-ups. Now that I have Photoshop (CS6) on my laptop the colors are completely different. Even if I screenshot the mock-up with Paint open on my desktop (with the layout visible) and then try to paste that into Photoshop, the colors are still the same as when opening in Photoshop from a saved image and are incorrect. Some of the colors in paint I color sampled from my website and they match perfectly.

I've tried everything to get mock-up into Photoshop with the right colors, but no luck. I've also tried the various color profiles (RGB, CMYK, etc., but i'm not keen on them).

The only time it shows up correctly is if I open in paint or with a web browser, so I'm thinking it must but some web color profile or something. Any ideas how I can preserve all my original work and get it looking the same in Photoshop?

New photos off the web have the same issue, by the way. They look good in the browser then they are different in Photoshop and Microsoft Photo Viewer.

Answer 1

I finally figured it out. I was trying to change the color mode in photoshop and what I needed to do was change the profile to be the same one my operating system is using. Now the colors look identical.

Answer 2

The default color profile in Windows is sRGB. When you open in Photoshop, or copy/paste into Photoshop, assign the sRGB color profile (Edit > Assign Profile) to the image and what you see in Ps will match what you saw in Paint. From there, you can convert to a different color profile or color space.