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Author Topic: IE9 Beta Color Management  (Read 17629 times)

MBehrens

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IE9 Beta Color Management
« on: September 15, 2010, 09:37:51 pm »

IE9 Beta released today is supporting ICC V2 and V4 imbedded image profiles.

Browser Color Mgmt test site  http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Graphics/49ColorProfiles/Default.html

I've been using FireFox (3.6.x) for some time because of its color management features. But when I view images and even this this web site in IE9 the colors are very different from what is displayed in FireFox. The link above indicates that FireFox will only use ICC V2 profiles. The LuLa banner and side bar background is a brilliant green in IE9, in FF it is a drab - muted - green. In fact all colors seem much more saturated in IE9. Why the difference? Did FF get it wrong or is this a Beta issue for IE9?

IE9 Beta download site   http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/
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JeffKohn

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Re: IE9 Beta Color Management
« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2010, 10:41:55 pm »

After seeing your post I decided to download the IE9 beta and give it a try. The color management support is half-assed, and frankly useless for anybody with wide-gamut monitors. The only thing IE9 is doing is converting images that are tagged with a non-sRGB profile to sRGB, which is why the 4 quadrants of the ICC profile test seem to match up. But IE9 outputs everything to the display as sRGB and completely ignores your display profile. That means over-saturated colors on wide-gamut displays. This is the same hack that Apple did with their Windows version of Safari a couple years ago.

The fact that they've actually got that web-page bragging about IE9's color management support when they didn't even do it right is truly pathetic.

It just boggles my mind that in 2010 we still don't have a properly color-managed web-browser for Windows.
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Jeff Kohn
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Re: IE9 Beta Color Management
« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2010, 08:46:25 pm »

Basically, Jeff, because most people don't care.  The vast majority of web users aren't aware of the colour issues and so don't complain and so it doesn't get high on the radar.

I'd suggest putting feedback on IE9 back to MS.
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Phil Brown

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Re: IE9 Beta Color Management
« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2010, 08:53:37 pm »

>>> It just boggles my mind that in 2010 we still don't have a properly color-managed web-browser for Windows.

We do ... Firefox. :-)

As a maker of software myself, I can understand why a company like MSFT ignores a tiny little issue (in their mind) like this that impacts a TINY portion of THEIR market.

Firefox was smart to implement it ... it created a whole new market-segmentation and differentiation for their browser.  57% of the people that visit my photography site use Firefox ... unfortunately, I use Flash which fouls up all the color management ...

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JeffKohn

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Re: IE9 Beta Color Management
« Reply #4 on: September 17, 2010, 01:04:08 pm »

Basically, Jeff, because most people don't care.  The vast majority of web users aren't aware of the colour issues and so don't complain and so it doesn't get high on the radar.

I'd suggest putting feedback on IE9 back to MS.
Wide-gamut monitors are becoming more prevalent, and not just for photographers, now that companies like HP and Dell are selling moderately-priced displays that exceed sRGB. IMHO over-saturation on wide-gamut displays is a much bigger issue than the occasional web image tagged with something other than sRGB, because the overwhelming majority of images on the web are either sRGB or untagged (probably well over 90%).

And if this is a feature that MS doesn't care about, why did they create a web page/site bragging about the new ICM support in IE9 when it's clealry half-baked at best?
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Jeff Kohn
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JeffKohn

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Re: IE9 Beta Color Management
« Reply #5 on: September 17, 2010, 01:10:18 pm »

>>> It just boggles my mind that in 2010 we still don't have a properly color-managed web-browser for Windows.

We do ... Firefox. :-)

As a maker of software myself, I can understand why a company like MSFT ignores a tiny little issue (in their mind) like this that impacts a TINY portion of THEIR market.

Firefox was smart to implement it ... it created a whole new market-segmentation and differentiation for their browser.  57% of the people that visit my photography site use Firefox ... unfortunately, I use Flash which fouls up all the color management ...
I was including FireFox in my assessment, due to the fact that they dropped support for ICCv4 profiles in 3.5.x (it was supported in 3.0). As an EIZO user, I find this frustrating and lame (ColorNavigator doesn't support ICCv2). ICCv4 standard was published in 2001, there's no excuse for not supporting it in 2010.
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Jeff Kohn
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digitaldog

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Re: IE9 Beta Color Management
« Reply #6 on: September 17, 2010, 03:09:11 pm »

As an EIZO user, I find this frustrating and lame (ColorNavigator doesn't support ICCv2). ICCv4 standard was published in 2001, there's no excuse for not supporting it in 2010.

Really they don’t support V2? That is super lame. They should support V2 for a number of reasons. And yes, there is no excuse for the lack of adoption of V4 but that happens to be where we are at (and what one can expect when technology for end users is implemented by committee of competing companies).
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feppe

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Re: IE9 Beta Color Management
« Reply #7 on: September 17, 2010, 03:15:16 pm »

>>> It just boggles my mind that in 2010 we still don't have a properly color-managed web-browser for Windows.

We do ... Firefox. :-)

We certainly don't - FF color management is a half-assed effort. See my findings here, and test for yourself here.

I wrote about my findings to an FF developer who posted about FF's color management elsewhere, but never heard back from him.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2010, 03:20:43 pm by feppe »
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JeffKohn

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Re: IE9 Beta Color Management
« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2010, 05:49:54 pm »

Really they don’t support V2? That is super lame. They should support V2 for a number of reasons. And yes, there is no excuse for the lack of adoption of V4 but that happens to be where we are at (and what one can expect when technology for end users is implemented by committee of competing companies).
I agree it would be nice if ColorNavigator supported both. They probably just figured there's no point in producing v2 profiles, when v4 has around for so long. I've always made my printer and display profiles as v4 for as long as I can remember, and have never had a single problem on Windows with software not supporting them (until FireFox).

What's lame is that FF changed color libraries for v3.5 to some crappy one just because it was a little faster and they were worried about having pages render .001s quicker for bragging rights or something. I was just fine with the rendering speed of FF 3.0, so I don't see why they felt they had to make this change.
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Jeff Kohn
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JeffKohn

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Re: IE9 Beta Color Management
« Reply #9 on: September 17, 2010, 06:33:33 pm »

Since I've already installed one beta, I decided to go ahead and try the latest beta of FireFox 4. It works with v4 profiles, but in most other respects I think calling it a beta is being generous. Most extensions and themes don't work, and the browser itself is rough around the edges. They've still got a lot of work to do, but at least once FF4 goes final those who need true ICCv4 support should have a viable option.
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Jeff Kohn
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WombatHorror

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Re: IE9 Beta Color Management
« Reply #10 on: October 01, 2010, 02:03:50 am »

After seeing your post I decided to download the IE9 beta and give it a try. The color management support is half-assed, and frankly useless for anybody with wide-gamut monitors. The only thing IE9 is doing is converting images that are tagged with a non-sRGB profile to sRGB, which is why the 4 quadrants of the ICC profile test seem to match up. But IE9 outputs everything to the display as sRGB and completely ignores your display profile. That means over-saturated colors on wide-gamut displays. This is the same hack that Apple did with their Windows version of Safari a couple years ago.

The fact that they've actually got that web-page bragging about IE9's color management support when they didn't even do it right is truly pathetic.

It just boggles my mind that in 2010 we still don't have a properly color-managed web-browser for Windows.

Agreed! Completely ridiculous that after all of this time they still are doing nothing useful in terms of color management!
And photo hosting forums insist they will forbid posting of anything but sRGB until other formats become more standard and yet that will never happen if IE remains in the past.
I also think it is ridiculous that zenfolio and smugmug categorically forcibly remap any images you post to sRGB even if you specifically are trying to set up a special wide gamut gallery!
It also insures that prints of fall foliage and sunsets will come out totally muted from those hosting sites.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2010, 02:07:35 am by LarryBaum »
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Eyeball

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Re: IE9 Beta Color Management
« Reply #11 on: October 03, 2010, 06:35:01 pm »

For anyone who cares and wants to take the time to give Microsoft a nudge, a bug has been reported on this to the IE9 team and you can add your "I can reproduce this" flag to the bug report.

The easiest way (and I use "easiest" rather loosely) is to sign on directly to the Microsoft Connect system.  It requires a Windows Live (Hotmail) ID.

The link is http://connect.microsoft.com/ .

The bug ID is 598901 and the report is titled "Color management problem when using wide gamut monitor".

You can leave a comment in addition to your "I can reproduce" flag if you wish.

I have hope that they will get this fixed before final release for two reasons:
- The Windows Photo Viewer in Win7 works correctly and uses the monitor profile so they can do it if they want to.
- Initial publicity for IE9 seems to imply the IE9 team intended for this to work.  They mention compatibility with both V2 and V4 ICC profiles and it doesn't make much sense emphasizing that unless they are going to use the monitor profile.

Firefox just seems to get slower and slower for me and it sounds like the new version of FF is going to take a while to make it out of beta.
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