Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: Schewe on July 06, 2014, 01:29:48 am
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Kev, not for nothing, but how do you prepare images for posting on LuLa and your blog?
Drag & drop from the LuLa home page shows the image having no embedded profile but clicking on the larger blog image shows an image with an embedded ProPhoto RGB profile. No image on the web should really ever have anything other than sRGB...
So, when I view the main image on LuLa the image is over saturated...but when I grab the image and look at it in PS and assume an sRGB profile, it look normal...when viewed in Safari without a tagged profile it looks oversaturate...my display is set to Adobe RGB.
The image posted on your blog (the image after clicking on the main image) appears ok but when downloaded, it reports ProPhoto RGB as the profile.
So...what's real? I think the image on LuLa with a stripped profile is actually not sRGB. The image on your blog seems to be ProPhoto RGB but displays correctly in Safari (since on Mac it is profile sensitive)
Here's some advice...ALWAYS transform from the working space to sRGB. If you strip the profile, ok...but at least the image is down transformed to sRGB. Depending on the OS & the browser, at least sRGB images will look "ok".
But if any image is mismatched (meaning with or without a profile but uploaded in the original working space) you run the risk of images displaying incorrectly...
This may be one reason why some people (myself included) accuse you of over processing images. Any image in ProPhoto RGB that is displayed in a non-color managed browser will look like crap...
Check out your process for processing and uploading images to both LuLa but your blog...(and anywhere else you post). This stuff is tricky...it's easy to miss a step or two.
Just sayin'...
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This may be one reason why some people (myself included) accuse you of over processing images. Any image in ProPhoto RGB that is displayed in a non-color managed browser will look like crap...
Very true!
Many image hosting sites use sRGB as their workspace, and one should convert the image to sRGB from Prophoto.
But I don't see the over processed look in those images on my screen. Rather the opposite. If you submit an image to them in Prophoto, they will assign it to sRGB (instead of convert), and the image looses all vibrance and warmth, and it looks cooler and more bland.
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Jeff
Thanks for the feedback and we can talk further on this when we speak this week.
On LuLa we us Save For Web in PS to size and save an image for the site. Supposedly this feature strips or assigns an sRGB and scales the image to the right PPI and such. Seems to work so far. I check the images on Safari as well as Chrome and they match pretty good. On the blog I Import a 12 inch print with the white matte my standard presentation on blog and FB etc.. It may have come in as ProPhoto as that is what I work in almost always. When I import into WP it is supposed to undergo a few things, sizing to different sizes and a profile change to display properly as well as PPI scaling. It seems to always look good and when I was learning WP I was told don't worry about the color as WP will do a conversion or reassign. This method of importing a large image allows a person to click though a few times on an image and see it really large.
At this moment I have the original image in PS open, and the LuLa Home page and the Blog and they all look the same with maybe some minor differences. (at least on my machine).
So, I am just following procedure that I have been doing for a while. Yes, it would seem to me I should reassign a profile in PS prior to importing the image into either system. But there seems to be something that goes on at import into WP that does some kind of conversion.
When we meet next I'll show you the process. Always open to suggestions.
Kevin
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Hi Kevin,
I am pretty sure that the image your blog is tagged Prophoto RGB. If it is retagged to sRGB it looks much different. In general, I would say that having a JPEG image in Prophoto RGB is a bad idea, as steps are to large. Prophoto is an RGB best enjoyed in a 16 bit space.
Best regards
Erik
Jeff
Thanks for the feedback and we can talk further on this when we speak this week.
On LuLa we us Save For Web in PS to size and save an image for the site. Supposedly this feature strips or assigns an sRGB and scales the image to the right PPI and such. Seems to work so far. I check the images on Safari as well as Chrome and they match pretty good. On the blog I Import a 12 inch print with the white matte my standard presentation on blog and FB etc.. It may have come in as ProPhoto as that is what I work in almost always. When I import into WP it is supposed to undergo a few things, sizing to different sizes and a profile change to display properly as well as PPI scaling. It seems to always look good and when I was learning WP I was told don't worry about the color as WP will do a conversion or reassign. This method of importing a large image allows a person to click though a few times on an image and see it really large.
At this moment I have the original image in PS open, and the LuLa Home page and the Blog and they all look the same with maybe some minor differences. (at least on my machine).
So, I am just following procedure that I have been doing for a while. Yes, it would seem to me I should reassign a profile in PS prior to importing the image into either system. But there seems to be something that goes on at import into WP that does some kind of conversion.
When we meet next I'll show you the process. Always open to suggestions.
Kevin
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Thanks.... I will change the next blog image save and also check with WP. I do believe the save for web for LuLa in PS has been working fine. Maybe just using the save for web feature on my images in ProPhoto will do the proper conversion. I'll mess with it a bit and see what happens.
Kevin
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I also downloaded the blog picture and it was tagged with Prophoto RGB. That is not a problem using a color managed browser like Safari and Firefox. And Chrome also if you enable monitor profile. I don't see that this would be retagged as sRGB, only if uploaded without a profile. I do agree that Prophoto is not a good idea on the web generally although almost all main browsers are now color managed, except Windows Internet Explorer which to my knowledge is profile aware but ignores the monitor profile. Last I checked Opera it was not color managed. I'm not sure about browsers in phones and tablets as I have not checked these.
I do see the picture on LuLa as a bit soft and save for Web does not sharpen the downsized unless this is done as a separate step. Save for Web does have an option for saving the sRGB profile with the downsized picture and I think it is better to have a profile always rather than having the browser assuming the profile or any program if the picture is downloaded.
I'm a little surprised that the pictures on the blog are that large.
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When I was learning WP I was told don't worry about the color as WP will do a conversion or reassign.
Don't be too confident. When you upload that image, WP creates a range of smaller JPEGs and typically strips out the colour profile and other metadata. Depending on the size of picture the visitor is viewing, they'll either get one of these untagged smaller versions or the uploaded file which might have proPhoto if you've mistakenly applied it.
Apart from ensuring you upload an sRGB JPEG, you need to ensure WP is not using the old GD image processing library as it strips the colour profile. Usually the server will also have available the more modern ImageMagick image processing library which doesn't strip the profile/metadata, and you can force WP to use it using the ImageMagickEngine (http://wordpress.org/plugins/imagemagick-engine/) plugin.
John
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But there seems to be something that goes on at import into WP that does some kind of conversion.
Kevin
What is WP?
Added: I guess you mean Wordpress? On a self-hosted Wordpress platform (Wordpress.org) , it depends on the theme. Some themes strip away the image profiles or ignore them. I don't know how Wordpress.com is handled.
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What is WP?
wordpress.com
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On a self-hosted Wordpress platform (Wordpress.org) , it depends on the theme. Some themes strip away the image profiles or ignore them.
It's not the theme, Rajan, it's the graphics library that the WP installation is using. See my post above.
John
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Thanks.... I will change the next blog image save and also check with WP. I do believe the save for web for LuLa in PS has been working fine. Maybe just using the save for web feature on my images in ProPhoto will do the proper conversion. I'll mess with it a bit and see what happens.
Kev,
So, this is what I'm seeing...the first image is the home page image dragged and dropped into Photoshop and assigning sRGB for the untagged image. This is what I think you meant the image to look like, right?
(http://schewephoto.com/test/LuLa-Pics/01-HP-IMG_1467-Bryce-1.jpg)
This is a screenshot of how the image appears in the blog post on Safari on Mac. This one pretty well matches the sRGB above...
(http://schewephoto.com/test/LuLa-Pics/02-Bryce-blog.jpg)
So, far, all good if you are on color managed browser with an image tagged as ProPhoto RGB. But the problem comes when you hit different situations. The image below is what I see on my NEC display using an Adobe RGB speced color space and profiled.
(http://schewephoto.com/test/LuLa-Pics/03-Bryce.jpg)
Because the image on LuLa is untagged, the browser does not do color management and passes the image to the vid system. It becomes over blown because Safari is assuming the image will be displayed on a screen similar to sRGB but in fact, it's Adobe RGB.
The last image is what a ProPhoto RGB version will look like on non-color managed displays...
(http://schewephoto.com/test/LuLa-Pics/04-blog-bryce-magic-2.jpg)
So, there you have it...the good, the bad & the ugly...
The problem boils down to the lack of cross-platform color management and how to handled tagged and untagged images. I don't fault you for using Save For Web and stripping out the sRGB profile. But, it means people with wide gamut displays are gonna be seeing something other than what you expect. I've gotten used to the issue and live with it...
I do fault you for posting images in ProPhoto RGB with the profile embedded because then anybody with a browser that isn't color managed is gonna be seeing crap looking images.
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That was a helpful discussion. Thanks for doing it in public.
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Thanks for bringing up the blog, I would not have found it otherwise.
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Perhaps this document proves useful for some readers here as well:
http://www.poynton.com/Poynton-color.html (http://www.poynton.com/Poynton-color.html)
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Here is a recent presentation that is comparing a variety of different media color spaces, such as cameras from 1DX over D800 to A7R - be prepared for a jaw drop if you haven't seen this before! ;D - printing papers etc. and visually explains about sRGB Adobe RGB and ProPhotoRGB.
Jeff, I can not remember the software that he used to plot into LAB, do you happen to know?
http://vimeo.com/96582689 (http://vimeo.com/96582689)
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So,.....Which rendering is actually 'like' Bryce Natinal park? I have never been there so I would like to know.....Does it have peaks of Edinburgh rock and icing sugar shaded in coral pink?...or what?
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Thanks Jeff! I'll call you later on other matters. I will change the next image that goes up. Let's see how that works. The ProPhoto RGB I was told didn't matter when the import happened but now see otherwise. I think this can all be fixed with a small change in the workflow prior to getting an image ready for the web no matter where it goes.
The top two images in Jeff's post are the ones that are pretty accurate.
Kevin
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So how come 'save for web' is saving in profoto? I thought it automatically saved as sRGB. If not in more recent versions of PS I have to keep an eye out.
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So how come 'save for web' is saving in profoto? I thought it automatically saved as sRGB. If not in more recent versions of PS I have to keep an eye out.
I stopped using "save for web" a while ago because it wasn't doing what it was supposed to. I think I first tried it in CS5, now in CS6. So now when I want a web version, I first make a copy (so I don't screw up the printable tif), then convert the profile to sRGB, and then save as a jpeg.
This could all be put in an action if I wanted to spend the few seconds necessary.
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Save for web only converts to sRGB if that box is checked in the Save For Web dialog. If it is not checked it retains the color space that you were working in.
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Lightroom is the photographers workbench in my opinion. Anything you do in an external application (e.g. Photoshop) is imported into Lightroom if you invoke that application from Lightroom. So for publishing to the web, you either use publish for those websites having a plugin for Lightroom (.e.g. Smugmug and Zenfolio) og have an export template for the JPG you want to upload manually. In both cases Lightroom has options for the file format, color space, size and output sharpening. Why would anybody use manual steps in Photoshop these days when having Lightroom. Like who prints from Photoshop these days when Lightroom does it so much better?
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Why would anybody use manual steps in Photoshop these days when having Lightroom. Like who prints from Photoshop these days when Lightroom does it so much better?
+1. That said, LR doesn't appear to strip out as much metadata as SFW (you can't not put a copyright in although I guess you should). Other than that, making a suite of LR export presets for this work just makes life easier and does the job faster.
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+1.
Erik
+1. That said, LR doesn't appear to strip out as much metadata as SFW (you can't not put a copyright in although I guess you should). Other than that, making a suite of LR export presets for this work just makes life easier and does the job faster.
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So,.....Which rendering is actually 'like' Bryce National park? I have never been there so I would like to know.....Does it have peaks of Edinburgh rock and icing sugar shaded in coral pink?...or what?
Depends on the day. Depends on the time of day. Anyway, when it comes to tonality photography is IMO an interpretive pursuit. :)
-Dave-
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It can be time-consuming to produce correctly profiled images at numerous sizes for the web. My solution has been the following: upload to server full-size jpegs in their original profile with full meta-data. Then use a script running on the server to automatically prepare images for the web. This includes resize, sharpen, convert to sRGB, embed sRGB profile, strip out unwanted metadata, add caption & copyright meta-data, add border. All of that can be done by the Imagemagick command-line "convert" which is easy to install on any linux server.
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Lightroom is the photographers workbench in my opinion.
Pretty good chance Kevins MFDB workflow would involve C1 through photoshop. Although from C1 it’s pretty easy to create a processing recipe for web jpegs ...
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It can be time-consuming to produce correctly profiled images at numerous sizes for the web. My solution has been the following: upload to server full-size jpegs in their original profile with full meta-data. Then use a script running on the server to automatically prepare images for the web. This includes resize, sharpen, convert to sRGB, embed sRGB profile, strip out unwanted metadata, add caption & copyright meta-data, add border. All of that can be done by the Imagemagick command-line "convert" which is easy to install on any linux server.
I just wanted to chime in on this one as well (I didn't see it until today). The poster above has nailed it on the money.
For users that are running things like Wordpress, etc on a *nix based server and care about the image quality and colorspace and proper downsampling, etc ... make sure you are using Imagemagick (as above) in the WP backend and not GD. GD is probably one of the worst things out there in terms of mangling profiles -- it honestly just doesn't seem to know about them or care, it has some horrible horrible algorithms for downsampling and dithering, etc. Imagemagick, on the other hand, is probably the best "server-side" option out there in terms of converting images.
But then if you're a purist like me, you would rather prepare all the sizes of the image(s) needed for web yourself ;)
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Hi,
Pretty much the way I work with my own web site. I export from Lightroom at full size and use ImageMagick to downscale.
It is really simple:
- I first exports all images as DNG (or IIQ :-( )
- I also export the same images as JPG from Lightroom
- I use "rsync" to upload images to my webserver that is running Linux
- On the webserver I run a small program called "Dirscanner" to generate an "index.html" file
- On the web server I run a small script to generate necessary size images using ImageMagick
Best regards
Erik
I just wanted to chime in on this one as well (I didn't see it until today). The poster above has nailed it on the money.
For users that are running things like Wordpress, etc on a *nix based server and care about the image quality and colorspace and proper downsampling, etc ... make sure you are using Imagemagick (as above) in the WP backend and not GD. GD is probably one of the worst things out there in terms of mangling profiles -- it honestly just doesn't seem to know about them or care, it has some horrible horrible algorithms for downsampling and dithering, etc. Imagemagick, on the other hand, is probably the best "server-side" option out there in terms of converting images.
But then if you're a purist like me, you would rather prepare all the sizes of the image(s) needed for web yourself ;)