Pages: [1] 2   Go Down

Author Topic: Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites  (Read 24788 times)

hubell

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1135
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« on: April 13, 2009, 02:34:38 pm »

I am having major difficulty with the way digital files with an embedded sRGB profile look in a Flash website on my wide gamut monitor.  I have been working on building a website using a Flash template from Foliolink and have been going crazy trying to figure out why my files look so completely oversaturated and color shifted in the trial website I have created. I use an NEC 2690WUXI monitor and edit my images in CS4 using a very wide gamut working space. I downsize the files in CS4 and convert them to sRGB, then save them as JPEGs with the ICC profile embedded. They look fine in both Safari and Firefox if I load the files into the browser, but horrible through the Flash website from Foliolink. They also look better in my non-color managed cheap LCD monitor at work. I tried downloading Flash 10.0 for viewing on the NEC but that did not help. (I had read that Flash 10.0 was capable of reading ICC profiles.) Any thoughts as to what is happening "under the hood" and how to deal with this issue?

Eyeball

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 150
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #1 on: April 13, 2009, 03:12:50 pm »

I am not a Flash expert but I do know this:

- Flash 10 was the first version to support any type of color management.
- Even in Flash 10, the designer or flash translator has to specifically turn on a color management flag of some sort.  As an example, to date I believe the flash web gallery generator in Bridge CS4 does NOT enable color management.
- The color management feature in Flash 10 only works for sRGB images.  It converts from sRGB to the monitor profile for the viewer.

I suspect that most Flash translators will not give you the access you need to enable the Color Management flag.  Here is a link to one of John Nack's blog entries that gives some details.  Maybe it will help you.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/10/get_b...rough_fp10.html
Logged

hubell

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1135
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #2 on: April 13, 2009, 03:39:26 pm »

Quote from: Eyeball
I am not a Flash expert but I do know this:

- Flash 10 was the first version to support any type of color management.
- Even in Flash 10, the designer or flash translator has to specifically turn on a color management flag of some sort.  As an example, to date I believe the flash web gallery generator in Bridge CS4 does NOT enable color management.
- The color management feature in Flash 10 only works for sRGB images.  It converts from sRGB to the monitor profile for the viewer.

I suspect that most Flash translators will not give you the access you need to enable the Color Management flag.  Here is a link to one of John Nack's blog entries that gives some details.  Maybe it will help you.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/10/get_b...rough_fp10.html

Thanks. Are you saying that Foliolink as the "Flash translator" needs to do do something under the hood to its Flash templates in order for the color management capability to be turned on. I wonder why this appears to be a problem with images that are viewed on a wide gamut monitor where the images were edited in a wide gamut working space on a wide gamut monitor before conversion to sRGB.

Eyeball

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 150
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #3 on: April 13, 2009, 09:33:43 pm »

Quote from: hcubell
Thanks. Are you saying that Foliolink as the "Flash translator" needs to do do something under the hood to its Flash templates in order for the color management capability to be turned on.

Yes.  Either that or you need to be able to modify the Flash files yourself.  I'm not enough of a Flash person to tell you although there are some details in the Nack article.  It looks to me like the change needs to be made before the SWF file is compiled.  Once compiled, it's too late to make the change.  If Foliolink gives you compiled Flash files, you are probably out of luck unless you can convince them to update their software.  Are you even sure that Foliolink is making the Flash using Flash 10?  If not, you're dead right there.  Perhaps a Flash expert can chime in and/or correct me.

Quote from: hcubell
I wonder why this appears to be a problem with images that are viewed on a wide gamut monitor where the images were edited in a wide gamut working space on a wide gamut monitor before conversion to sRGB.

If you are doing everything correctly in your color-managed workflow, the only people that are going to see your Flash gallery really bad and over-saturated is you and anybody else with a wide-gamut monitor.  Folks with standard monitors will see the gallery more-or-less OK (and you pretty much confirmed this with your work monitor).

The problem is NOT creation, you are creating to the sRGB standard colorspace.

The problem IS viewing.  People with wide-gamut monitors need color-managed applications to see the colors properly.  If the application (in this case, Flash) is not color-managed, then the colors will be off for those people.

The same problem exists for someone viewing your sRGB images in HTML in a non-color-managed browser (like Internet Explorer).  

Wide-gamut monitors are great but the software has some catching up to do (adding color management), particularly where viewing and web applications are concerned.
Logged

hubell

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1135
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #4 on: April 14, 2009, 09:18:07 am »

Quote from: Eyeball
The problem is NOT creation, you are creating to the sRGB standard colorspace.

The problem IS viewing.  People with wide-gamut monitors need color-managed applications to see the colors properly.  If the application (in this case, Flash) is not color-managed, then the colors will be off for those people.

The same problem exists for someone viewing your sRGB images in HTML in a non-color-managed browser (like Internet Explorer).  

Wide-gamut monitors are great but the software has some catching up to do (adding color management), particularly where viewing and web applications are concerned.

If the website was created with HTML instead of Flash, would the images look right on a wide gamut monitor when viewed through a color managed browser like Safari or Firefox? Do websites created with HTML "pass through" the ICC profiles that are embedded in the JPEGs on the website?
Thanks for your input.

martinreed22

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 50
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #5 on: April 14, 2009, 09:27:37 am »

Quote from: hcubell
If the website was created with HTML instead of Flash, would the images look right on a wide gamut monitor when viewed through a color managed browser like Safari or Firefox? Do websites created with HTML "pass through" the ICC profiles that are embedded in the JPEGs on the website?
Thanks for your input.

Yes.

Websites (or rather web servers) don't do anything special with the image files they serve up. If the image file contained a profile when you uploaded it, then a color managed browser will indeed do the right thing.

cheers, martin
Logged

Eyeball

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 150
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #6 on: April 14, 2009, 10:03:21 am »

I agree with Martin except that there may be certain hosting sites that re-sample the images on upload and/or strip the profile.  If so, those images would be assumed to be sRGB by Safari and Firefox.  If you created the images as sRGB, you would still be OK.

In general, I think it is still a good idea to use sRGB for the web anyway unless you have a special reason for using non-sRGB and are sure your important viewers will be using color-managed browsers (with the color management turned on).
Logged

hubell

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1135
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #7 on: April 14, 2009, 12:08:51 pm »

Quote from: Eyeball
I agree with Martin except that there may be certain hosting sites that re-sample the images on upload and/or strip the profile.  If so, those images would be assumed to be sRGB by Safari and Firefox.  If you created the images as sRGB, you would still be OK.

In general, I think it is still a good idea to use sRGB for the web anyway unless you have a special reason for using non-sRGB and are sure your important viewers will be using color-managed browsers (with the color management turned on).

Sure, my JPEGs are in sRGB. The problem is that my images that are converted into sRGB are still not displayed correctly by a Flash website on a wide gamut monitor. I am not sure if this is only true where the image is edited in a wide space on a wide gamut monitor before conversion to sRGB, or if it is also a problem with any sRGB converted image displayed by a Flash site on a wide gamut monitor. Perhaps someone like Andrew Rodney would know.

JonRoemer

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 135
    • http://www.jonroemer.com/
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #8 on: April 14, 2009, 01:04:18 pm »

post deleted
« Last Edit: April 14, 2009, 02:38:57 pm by JonRoemer »
Logged
Website:

Eyeball

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 150
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #9 on: April 14, 2009, 01:40:11 pm »

Quote from: hcubell
I am not sure if this is only true where the image is edited in a wide space on a wide gamut monitor before conversion to sRGB, or if it is also a problem with any sRGB converted image displayed by a Flash site on a wide gamut monitor. Perhaps someone like Andrew Rodney would know.

I think I already answered that but perhaps you are looking for other opinions to boost your confidence.  It is #2: it is a problem with any sRGB image displayed by a Flash site on a wide gamut monitor (unless using Flash 10 with the color management flag as has been previously mentioned).
Logged

Eyeball

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 150
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #10 on: April 14, 2009, 02:24:49 pm »

Here is a thread on the Adobe forum you might find interesting:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/946805#946805

In particular look at the last post from Ann Shelbourne.  She has some sample images, including a Flash gallery image.  Try comparing them in Safari and Firefox.
Logged

hubell

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1135
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #11 on: April 15, 2009, 03:52:48 pm »

Quote from: Eyeball
Here is a thread on the Adobe forum you might find interesting:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/946805#946805

In particular look at the last post from Ann Shelbourne.  She has some sample images, including a Flash gallery image.  Try comparing them in Safari and Firefox.

Thanks, I saw that post by Ann. I had already compared the way my images looked  in my Flash based website with the way they looked by directly loading them in the browsers.






Jonathan Wienke

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5829
    • http://visual-vacations.com/
Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #12 on: April 25, 2009, 09:57:27 am »

Quote from: hcubell
Sure, my JPEGs are in sRGB. The problem is that my images that are converted into sRGB are still not displayed correctly by a Flash website on a wide gamut monitor.

The key phrase here is "wide gamut monitor". Most monitors are designed to approximate sRGB (or perhaps it is the other way around, with the profile being designed to emulate an "average" monitor, I forget which), and as a result, non-color-managed images look reasonably good on most monitors, even in the absence of any pretense of color management. This is not the case for wide-gamut monitors, whose whole raison d'etre is to break out of the restrictive gamut of sRGB. One of the side effects of having a wider-than-sRGB gamut is that good color management becomes mandatory, or everything displayed will exhibit markedly increased color saturation.
Logged

David Eichler

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 823
    • San Francisco Architectural and Interior Photographer
Re: Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #13 on: April 28, 2013, 12:44:09 am »

I am having major difficulty with the way digital files with an embedded sRGB profile look in a Flash website on my wide gamut monitor.  I have been working on building a website using a Flash template from Foliolink and have been going crazy trying to figure out why my files look so completely oversaturated and color shifted in the trial website I have created. I use an NEC 2690WUXI monitor and edit my images in CS4 using a very wide gamut working space. I downsize the files in CS4 and convert them to sRGB, then save them as JPEGs with the ICC profile embedded. They look fine in both Safari and Firefox if I load the files into the browser, but horrible through the Flash website from Foliolink. They also look better in my non-color managed cheap LCD monitor at work. I tried downloading Flash 10.0 for viewing on the NEC but that did not help. (I had read that Flash 10.0 was capable of reading ICC profiles.) Any thoughts as to what is happening "under the hood" and how to deal with this issue?


I am wondering whether the OP is using a Mac of PC system. I am no expert on this, but it appears to me that, even though Adobe Flash is now capable of some color management, that doesn't apply when viewing on a Mac or any system with less than 32 bit color resolution, per this article from Adobe: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/quickstart/color_correction_as3.html  "Note: Currently, SWF file color correction is not supported on Linux/Unix systems or systems with less than 32-bit color resolution. On these systems, the Stage.colorCorrectionSupport property value is always unsupported."

One more reason to loath Flash.
« Last Edit: April 28, 2013, 12:46:11 am by David Eichler »
Logged

Schewe

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 6229
    • http:www.schewephoto.com
Re: Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #14 on: April 28, 2013, 01:40:41 am »

Not for nothing, but you realize that you are responding to a thread whose last post was on  April 25, 2009?

If you've got something to say about stuff happening now, it would be useful to start a new thread...
Logged

David Eichler

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 823
    • San Francisco Architectural and Interior Photographer
Re: Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #15 on: April 28, 2013, 01:46:03 am »

Not for nothing, but you realize that you are responding to a thread whose last post was on  April 25, 2009?

If you've got something to say about stuff happening now, it would be useful to start a new thread...

Hi Jeff, I saw the warning about the old thread, and I know that a lot can change with the technology in the course of a few years, but it seemed to me that in this case the OP's original issue was still largely relevant today. If you think things have changed substantially, then I would be glad to start a new thread.
Logged

Schewe

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 6229
    • http:www.schewephoto.com
Re: Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #16 on: April 28, 2013, 01:55:27 am »

Well, Flash is a depreciated technology at this point...what exactly did you want to know about it now?
Logged

David Eichler

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 823
    • San Francisco Architectural and Interior Photographer
Re: Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #17 on: April 28, 2013, 02:06:12 am »

Well, Flash is a depreciated technology at this point...what exactly did you want to know about it now?

Well, if that is the case, I guess I want to know why so many photographers (myself included) are still using Flash websites, when (if I understand it correctly) their photos are being viewed without color management on a large number of computers, including their own (if they are using a Linux-based system). Also, I wonder why Flash is a depreciated technology when there doesn't yet seem to be anything to replace it. Of course there has been the html alternative, but that has been there for awhile, yet I still see many photographers who are very concerned about technical quality using Flash websites to present their work.
Logged

Schewe

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 6229
    • http:www.schewephoto.com
Re: Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #18 on: April 28, 2013, 02:12:14 am »

If you convert to sRGB before making a Flash based web site, color management isn't really an issues, is it?

And since many web sites have been redesigned to to work with iPads (which doesn't support Flash–remember, Steve didn't like Flash), I'm not sure why photographers are still using Flash...HTML5 is what has replaced Flash. The fact that some photographers have been slow to move towards current tech isn't really surprising.
Logged

David Eichler

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 823
    • San Francisco Architectural and Interior Photographer
Re: Color Management(or Not) in Flash Websites
« Reply #19 on: April 28, 2013, 02:27:33 am »

If you convert to sRGB before making a Flash based web site, color management isn't really an issues, is it?

And since many web sites have been redesigned to to work with iPads (which doesn't support Flash–remember, Steve didn't like Flash), I'm not sure why photographers are still using Flash...HTML5 is what has replaced Flash. The fact that some photographers have been slow to move towards current tech isn't really surprising.

Well, I do convert to sRGB before adding the photos to the website; however, they look exactly as though there is no color management going on when viewing the Flash version of my Livebooks website in all the major browsers on my calibrated (xRite) Mac monitor. They look reasonably color managed with the mirror html version of my site on my iPad, although they will never look perfect there since the iPad can't be calibrated. As I understand that Adobe article I cited above, with Linux based machines it is irrelevant whether the images are sRGB. However, I am not an expert in these matters, so maybe I am misunderstanding. If I have misunderstood, then I want to know why the images look non-color managed as I describe above, in which case I guess I should start another thread.
Logged
Pages: [1] 2   Go Up