Firefox/Snow Leopard color mystery - some clues, but no solution

[shewhorn]

So, when I view things in Firefox 6.x.x everything is oversaturated. Yes I have a wide gamut monitor and no, it's not what you think. :-) Well yes, it is what you think, I'm viewing sRGB images on a wide gamut monitor and the embedded profile isn't being honored. BUT, that shouldn't be happening.

gfx.color_management.mode = the default of 2
The website I'm looking at DEFINITELY has images that have been embedded with the sRGB working space

Here's some clues:

The problem seems to be limited to one user account. Create a new user account and the problem is gone. Well, that's a pretty darn good clue so I figured I'd just blow away the prefs in FF and all would be good. Nope... I've deleted...

The FireFox cache (users/theuser/library/caches)
Firefox prefs (users/theuser/library/preferences)
Firefox user profiles (users/theuser/library/Application Support/Firefox

Nada

I've deleted all of my profiles and reprofiled (tried version 2 and Matrix profiles)
I've delete the ColorSync Prefs

No Joy

Now it gets even more interesting... (or maybe not). This started immediately after an upgrade to Snow Leopard (and yes I have a backup... that was the first thing I did before the upgrade). Normally when I upgrade OSes I do a complete rebuild BUT, I needed to be up and running with Snow Leopard RIGHT NOW so I figured the fastest way would be to just do the upgrade instead of a fresh install. The Leopard version is still on the original disk it was on (I did a block level copy to a backup drive, booted from the backup to verify, and then did a block level copy from the original  drive to a brand new hard drive, and then removed the old drive... so getting back to a working version of Leopard can happen in about 60 seconds it takes for me to remove the tray and swap out drives).

So... after the Snow Leopard upgrade... ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE with Color Management. Total disaster. First thing I did was to profile both screens (an NEC 2690 and an HP LP3065), but the monitor on the secondary port (the NEC) was whackadoodle. Mid-tone greys would appear pink (so all of the PS palettes were a light pink). Tried a bunch of different stuff... eventually the solution to that problem was to put the secondary on the primary and the primary on the secondary. That cleared that problem. Then I had another problem... neither Photoshop, nor Bridge would honor ICC profiles. I forget the exact solution for that as I took the "I'm-using-a-bazooka-to-kill-a-fly" approach (it was probably either trashing the ColorSync Prefs or trashing the application cache (not the user assigned scratch disks)).

So... clearly something went terribly wrong on this machine.

Now, I have two relatively obvious paths to solving my problem... either create a new user account, or put the originally Leopard disk back in, blow away the Snow Leopard install, and install from scratch (that is ultimately what will happen as I need to be on SL now). I'm now just curious to know what went wrong. I'm usually pretty good at solving such mysteries and this one has stumped me which makes me really curious to know what went wrong, and where! Anyone have any ideas?

Cheers, Joe

[Mark D Segal]

Joe - the short answer is that Firefox used with Flash-based galleries does over-saturate the images and there is nothing straightforward and easily controlled you can do about it. Generate HTML galleries and the results are much better. That was my experience when I was using Windows and continues to be my experience using a Mac now.

[shewhorn]

Hi Mark,

It would be great if Flash could explain it but unfortunately it doesn't... if you take a direct link to any image it will be over-saturated. I have two other machines that have SL installed and they don't exhibit these issues. My ex-software engineer intuition tells me this is not necessarily a Firefox issue... I mean, initially the secondary screen had an incorrect profile assigned and Photohop/Bridge/any other color managed app wouldn't recognize the monitor ICC profile, or it was getting loaded incorrectly (if it was just seeing the wrong profile that should be resolved by going into the display prefs and re-selecting the correct profile).

Oooh... I haven't repaired permissions (usually I do that immediately after the install). It's a long shot but if for some reason FF can't access the resources it needs, that could certainly cause the color management to fail.

Cheers, Joe

[shewhorn]

No luck with the permissions repair. Sigh, I'd still love to know the exact mechanism of failure but... time to move on. The disk has been reformatted. Installing from scratch (time to get back to work).

Cheers, Joe

[Mark D Segal]

Joe, the reason why I suggested that is because on the advice of a person who knows this from the inside but must remain unnamed, I switched from making Flash-based galleries to HTML-based galleries and the problem went away. Have you tried this?

[shewhorn]

Joe, the reason why I suggested that is because on the advice of a person who knows this from the inside but must remain unnamed, I switched from making Flash-based galleries to HTML-based galleries and the problem went away. Have you tried this?

Hi Mark,

When I said:

"It would be great if Flash could explain it but unfortunately it doesn't..."

I should have clarified... I stopped using Flash about 3 years ago (Flash royally sucks for SEO and is pisses off iPhone users which all of my clients seem to have). So, Flash doesn't explain it because I'm not using Flash. 

We're talking about eliminating all other variables.... File->Open->Find-a-jpeg-with-an-embedded-profile.jpg That doesn't work! There's definitely something hosed in that user profile. Out of curiosity I imported that user profile and something in it gets hosed in the process.

Cheers, Joe

Cheers, Joe

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Do you have the same issue with Safari?

Best regards
Erik

So, when I view things in Firefox 6.x.x everything is oversaturated. Yes I have a wide gamut monitor and no, it's not what you think. :-) Well yes, it is what you think, I'm viewing sRGB images on a wide gamut monitor and the embedded profile isn't being honored. BUT, that shouldn't be happening.

gfx.color_management.mode = the default of 2
The website I'm looking at DEFINITELY has images that have been embedded with the sRGB working space

Here's some clues:

The problem seems to be limited to one user account. Create a new user account and the problem is gone. Well, that's a pretty darn good clue so I figured I'd just blow away the prefs in FF and all would be good. Nope... I've deleted...

The FireFox cache (users/theuser/library/caches)
Firefox prefs (users/theuser/library/preferences)
Firefox user profiles (users/theuser/library/Application Support/Firefox

Nada

I've deleted all of my profiles and reprofiled (tried version 2 and Matrix profiles)
I've delete the ColorSync Prefs

No Joy

Now it gets even more interesting... (or maybe not). This started immediately after an upgrade to Snow Leopard (and yes I have a backup... that was the first thing I did before the upgrade). Normally when I upgrade OSes I do a complete rebuild BUT, I needed to be up and running with Snow Leopard RIGHT NOW so I figured the fastest way would be to just do the upgrade instead of a fresh install. The Leopard version is still on the original disk it was on (I did a block level copy to a backup drive, booted from the backup to verify, and then did a block level copy from the original  drive to a brand new hard drive, and then removed the old drive... so getting back to a working version of Leopard can happen in about 60 seconds it takes for me to remove the tray and swap out drives).

So... after the Snow Leopard upgrade... ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE with Color Management. Total disaster. First thing I did was to profile both screens (an NEC 2690 and an HP LP3065), but the monitor on the secondary port (the NEC) was whackadoodle. Mid-tone greys would appear pink (so all of the PS palettes were a light pink). Tried a bunch of different stuff... eventually the solution to that problem was to put the secondary on the primary and the primary on the secondary. That cleared that problem. Then I had another problem... neither Photoshop, nor Bridge would honor ICC profiles. I forget the exact solution for that as I took the "I'm-using-a-bazooka-to-kill-a-fly" approach (it was probably either trashing the ColorSync Prefs or trashing the application cache (not the user assigned scratch disks)).

So... clearly something went terribly wrong on this machine.

Now, I have two relatively obvious paths to solving my problem... either create a new user account, or put the originally Leopard disk back in, blow away the Snow Leopard install, and install from scratch (that is ultimately what will happen as I need to be on SL now). I'm now just curious to know what went wrong. I'm usually pretty good at solving such mysteries and this one has stumped me which makes me really curious to know what went wrong, and where! Anyone have any ideas?

Cheers, Joe

[francois]

I understand that you profiled your monitor with version 2 ICC profile so it shouldn't be about version 4 incompatibilities.
Have you tried to delete all cache files or folders from your ~/Library folder and restart your Mac?
Have you tried to repair your profiles with the ColorSync utility app?
Is the issue still present if you change Gfx.color management.mode to 1 (enable color management for rendered graphics).

…
So... clearly something went terribly wrong on this machine.
…

I'm afraid that you are right, unfortunately.

[shewhorn]

I understand that you profiled your monitor with version 2 ICC profile so it shouldn't be about version 4 incompatibilities.
Have you tried to delete all cache files or folders from your ~/Library folder and restart your Mac?

I did that after just deleting the FF cache.

Have you tried to repair your profiles with the ColorSync utility app?

Didn't try that but the profiles were built with Color Eyes Display Pro. I nuked the old profiles and built some new ones. Also tried with BasICColor v4. Doubt both profiles were corrupt.

Is the issue still present if you change Gfx.color management.mode to 1 (enable color management for rendered graphics).

Didn't try 1, just 0 and the default of 2 (as well as supplying a direct path to the monitor profile).

I'm afraid that you are right, unfortunately.

Yep! Totally FUBARed!!! I've started from scratch. I had (still have) 2 separate copies of the Leopard install so no damage was done and I was able to get everything I needed off of the old install by a manual transfer.

Cheers, Joe