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Author Topic: Color management for online  (Read 16085 times)

calindustries

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Color management for online
« on: April 05, 2012, 05:57:40 pm »

Hello,
I have (for years now) fought with color profiling for web viewing.  Usually all of my images, once loaded to my site, tend to look over saturated. Well, actually I usually like my images slightly desaturated and when they get loaded online they are back to full saturation, or at least appear to me to be (to me and compared to when in photoshop/capture one/etc).

I have a calibrated system as far as my work flow. I have a Spectraview/i1pro calibrated NEC display and a i1pro spectrophotometer calibrated IPF5000. My color seems to be consistent throughout my process.

For online I've tried:
convert to sRGB and save jpg (ends up getting too saturated again)
save jpg with no embedded profile (still goes too saturated)
save for web with no embedded profile (goes too saturated)
save for web with sRGB embedded (goes too saturated)


I know that most threads I've read have just told people to learn color management. What resources are people using for color management information concerning displaying online? I mean resources that aren't 15 years outdated or people pulling wacky settings that "work for them". I realize that some browsers handle profiles and images differently, and lord knows that you can't predict others display settings, but this particular problem with saturation has driven me nuts for years and it seems I just get the runaround wherever I look.

Thanks,
Craig
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digitaldog

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2012, 07:14:17 pm »

By and large, the web isn’t color managed. Or I should say, the vast majority of users and their browsers are not color managed. If you work with a color managed browser, upload sRGB with an embedded profile, what you see in the browser and other ICC aware app’s should match. What everyone else see’s is not under your control.
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bill t.

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2012, 09:59:21 pm »

Your best option is to suggest on your page that it should be viewed with a color managed browser like Firefox, Safari, or Chrome.  And include instructions as to you how to enable color management in Firefox and Chrome, which are not color-managed by default.

Unfortunately, even though many PC apps now have great color management, Internet Explorer is not one of them.  People viewing your page on a wide-gamut monitor with Internet Explorer or many other non color-managed applications are going to see the Colors From Hell.  And there is nothing at all you can do from your end without the viewer's help.  No amount of ICC'ing or anything else is going to get you past missing color management.

The website building folks who have beat their heads against this are legion!  So don't feel bad.  Also, in your many experiments it is not impossible that you have created web files that are inherently double+ profiled, which will still look awful even on a fully color managed system!  Best go back to the originals as a source for your web reductions.
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Schewe

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2012, 10:17:50 pm »

I have a calibrated system as far as my work flow. I have a Spectraview/i1pro calibrated NEC display and a i1pro spectrophotometer calibrated IPF5000. My color seems to be consistent throughout my process.

There in lies the problem...a wide gamut display without color management will ALWAY over saturate your images in most web browsers...the ONLY wat to view what 99% of the wold's population will be seeing is to switch your high end display to emulate sRGB (I now call it stupid RGB because it's not "satanic" it's just "stupid").

In Photoshop you can soft proof what the image will look like on unmanaged displays (that assume sRGB) and you can tweak images intended for the web. Or you can just punt and say "screw it" and keep using sRGB (the correct web way) and quit obsessing over it. Clearly, you don't want to post Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB images to the web. It simply doesn't work. Maybe what you need to do is keep around a computer with sRGB as the display backbone (you know you CAN switch the NEC to emulate sRGB right?) and judge what others are seeing on that sRGB display. Or, just punt...quit obsessing and move on (which is what I do).
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Ernst Dinkla

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #4 on: April 06, 2012, 03:39:08 am »

By and large, the web isn’t color managed. Or I should say, the vast majority of users and their browsers are not color managed. If you work with a color managed browser, upload sRGB with an embedded profile, what you see in the browser and other ICC aware app’s should match. What everyone else see’s is not under your control.

Including tablets and phones without CM, browsers without CM, browsers with odd CM, browsers with good CM, users not aware of CM and the majority of displays used for web access not being wide gamut; stick to what Andrew wrote above.


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calindustries

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #5 on: April 09, 2012, 04:52:11 pm »

There in lies the problem...a wide gamut display without color management will ALWAY over saturate your images in most web browsers...the ONLY wat to view what 99% of the wold's population will be seeing is to switch your high end display to emulate sRGB (I now call it stupid RGB because it's not "satanic" it's just "stupid").

In Photoshop you can soft proof what the image will look like on unmanaged displays (that assume sRGB) and you can tweak images intended for the web. Or you can just punt and say "screw it" and keep using sRGB (the correct web way) and quit obsessing over it. Clearly, you don't want to post Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB images to the web. It simply doesn't work. Maybe what you need to do is keep around a computer with sRGB as the display backbone (you know you CAN switch the NEC to emulate sRGB right?) and judge what others are seeing on that sRGB display. Or, just punt...quit obsessing and move on (which is what I do).

Best answer Thanks!   I forgot that this is an issue with my Spectraview. I realized this after I posted the initial query and then looked at the images on a different workstation with our a wide gamut display.

Thanks!
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D Fosse

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #6 on: April 10, 2012, 08:06:10 am »

Quote
There in lies the problem...a wide gamut display without color management will ALWAY over saturate your images in most web browsers...the ONLY wat to view what 99% of the wold's population will be seeing is to switch your high end display to emulate sRGB

Actually there is a way, but only using Firefox:

Type about:config in the adress field, and scroll down to gfx.color_management.mode.

The default value is 2, which means Firefox will color manage tagged content, but send anything untagged straight through to the display. With a wide gamut monitor that means it will appear oversaturated.

If you change the value to 1, something interesting happens. Firefox will now assign sRGB to any untagged material. That enables color management to get to work, and convert to the display profile. The net effect is even better than using an sRGB monitor (which will display untagged material correctly only insofar as the monitor space matches sRGB exactly), because now everything will be properly color managed for the display. Assuming of course that untagged images are created in sRGB.

I know of no other browser where this is possible. Safari doesn't have this "switch" AFAIK. Don't know about Chrome. And the less said about Internet Explorer the better (they decided in their wisdom to convert everything to sRGB, but ignore the display profile. On a wide gamut monitor that means everything is oversaturated, tagged or no tagged).
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rasworth

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #7 on: April 10, 2012, 12:54:07 pm »

Actually as of IE9 Internet Explorer is color managed, using the default monitor profile.  And also Windows photo viewer.

Richard Southworth
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bjanes

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #8 on: April 10, 2012, 01:39:05 pm »

Actually as of IE9 Internet Explorer is color managed, using the default monitor profile.  And also Windows photo viewer.

Richard Southworth


Yes, indeed. One can test for color management by loading this image from the ICC web site. The IE Ver 9 on my system is fully color managed, as is Firefox and Safari. Surprisingly, my Chrome supports none of the 4 protocols.

Regards,

Bill
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D Fosse

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #9 on: April 10, 2012, 03:26:34 pm »

I haven't used IE in ages, but there was a long thread in the Adobe forum about this. What came out of it was this:

IE9 converts everything to sRGB, whatever the original profile, v2, v4, whatever - and then sends those sRGB numbers directly through to the display.

The thing is that if you have a standard gamut monitor it will look perfectly OK. It's only a problem on wide gamut displays.

Anyway, I'll double-check this on my wide gamut monitor at work tomorrow. I think I have IE9 somewhere on that machine  ;)
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D Fosse

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #10 on: April 11, 2012, 05:23:56 am »

Confirmed. This is how IE9 and Firefox (mode 1) appears on my calibrated wide gamut monitor. IE9 ignores the monitor profile, sending sRGB numbers straight through.

Of course IE9 looks even more garish in reality, since the screenshot is sRGB (I first assigned the monitor profile, then converted to sRGB).

So to get back to my original point, the only usable browser option for people with wide gamut displays, is to use Firefox set to mode 1. It will display everything correctly. IE9 (and 10) will display everything oversaturated. All other browsers will display tagged material correctly, but untagged material oversaturated.

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rasworth

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #11 on: April 11, 2012, 10:10:29 am »

I have a very well behaved monitor, good gamma curve and pretty much dead-on sRGB with no profile.  So to check your assertion I substituted a very bad monitor profile, one that causes images within Photoshop to display obviously wrong.  I then brought an image with a ProPhoto embedded profile into IE9, and it displayed ok.  When opened in Photoshop with the bogus monitor profile it was way off.

So I agree, IE9 is apparently properly converting all images to sRGB and then sending directly to the monitor without using the monitor profile.  I can see Microsoft's logic, trying to at least provide a reasonable representation of embedded profile images for the non-color managed world, but certainly not to my expectations.

Richard Southworth
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Ethan_Hansen

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #12 on: April 11, 2012, 03:06:53 pm »

None of the major browsers fully implement a color managed workflow. Correctly displaying color-managed images on-screen requires:
  • Determining the image color profile. Use sRGB for untagged images (being the standard on the web).
  • Determining the monitor profile.
  • Converting the image from its color space to the monitor profile.

IE9 performs the first two steps, correctly figuring out the image profile, which can be either a V2 or V4 profile. Untagged images are assumed to be sRGB. Instead of reading the profile for the monitor in use, IE9 converts the image to sRGB and sends the results to the screen. On standard gamut monitors calibrated to a 6500K white point and 2.2 or L* gamma, the results are close. Viewing images on wide gamut screens with IE9 produces varying degrees of hyper-saturation.

Chrome goes to the trouble of determining the profile for the active monitor (step 2) and converting images to it for display (step 3). After all that, the Google geniuses assume all images - tagged or not - are sRGB. If true, they display correctly. If not, they don't.

Firefox 9 successfully completes all three steps -- unless there is a V4 profile in the mix in which case no conversion is performed. Untagged images are assumed to be sRGB.

Safari works with V2 and V4 profiles but falls in pre-Lion versions apart on untagged images. In all versions prior to Lion, untagged images are assumed to be Monitor RGB. Unlikely at best. On Lion, Safari has it right. Finally, we have a winner: untagged images are presumed sRGB and all three steps are implemented. Given the tiny market share, not something you want to depend on to have your images appear the way they should.

D Fosse

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #13 on: April 11, 2012, 05:39:36 pm »

Quote
Firefox 9 successfully completes all three steps -- unless there is a V4 profile in the mix in which case no conversion is performed. Untagged images are assumed to be sRGB.

V4 profiles are not enabled by default, but can be in the settings under "about:config". See attachment.

I'm a little unsure what you mean by "assume", so this just to clarify: Firefox, provided color management is set to mode 1, assigns sRGB to untagged images. It's almost like a working space in Photoshop. That means the color management chain can kick in and convert sRGB to the monitor profile, so that it displays correctly on wide gamut monitors.

As I mentioned there was a very long thread in the Adobe Photoshop forum about this (can't find it now), and lots of people were testing different things. But nobody could ever find a way to make Safari behave the same way for untagged images, which is not to say that it's not possible. I have Safari 5 for Windows installed, but haven't found it. Untagged images are always oversaturated on wide gamut.

 
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Ernst Dinkla

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #14 on: April 12, 2012, 02:52:59 am »


On Lion, Safari has it right. Finally, we have a winner: untagged images are presumed sRGB and all three steps are implemented. Given the tiny market share, not something you want to depend on to have your images appear the way they should.


Progress for Apple developers though; admitting they were wrong before.


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D Fosse

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #15 on: April 12, 2012, 03:28:51 am »

The Windows version 5 of Safari still displays untagged material oversaturated on a wide gamut monitor (just checked). Does it behave differently on Mac?

On Windows at least, only one browser displays untagged material correctly on wide gamut monitors: Firefox set to mode 1. All other browsers (and Firefox mode 2) oversaturate.

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mac_paolo

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #16 on: July 15, 2012, 03:16:22 am »

First of all thanks to D Fosse for the Firefox trick. I now have a browser which actually shows the colors correctly on a wide gamut display.

My question is: why exporting images with a Lightroom web gallery with sRGB space doesn't work?

It really seems that browsers take those images as untagged, while they are. The trick shouldn't be needed as no other space/profile should be assigned to a sRGB photo.
I'm confused...  ???
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digitaldog

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #17 on: July 15, 2012, 12:36:06 pm »

My question is: why exporting images with a Lightroom web gallery with sRGB space doesn't work?

If you export a Flash web gallery no. Well not under LR3 and under LR4, not under Windows unfortunately.
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mac_paolo

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #18 on: July 16, 2012, 01:43:29 am »

I'm on a Mac (Mac Paolo! :)) and the new flash galleries really seem to be color corrected. I even read that on the M. Evening Lightroom bible.
No, I'm really asking myself why doesn't it work on a Mac. Hey, it's just an easy HTML web gallery. What are the browsers thinking?
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xpatUSA

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Re: Color management for online
« Reply #19 on: July 17, 2012, 01:59:41 am »

it should be viewed with a color managed browser like Firefox, Safari, or Chrome.  And include instructions as to you how to enable color management in Firefox and Chrome, which are not color-managed by default.
Chrome isn't color-managed on my PC (XP Pro, SP3) and can't find any relevant settings.

Ted
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best regards,

Ted
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