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Author Topic: Color Management of Major Web Browsers  (Read 9008 times)

David Eichler

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Color Management of Major Web Browsers
« on: January 13, 2014, 08:14:18 am »

I thought that Safari, Firefox and Chrome all performed color management now. However, trying out a new website, I find that the gallery thumbnails do not appear to be color managed with Chrome and Safari, but do appear color managed with Firefox. The full size images look color managed in all. Are there some browser settings that I am missing?

Viewing with a profiled NEC PA241W monitor.
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Simon Garrett

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Re: Color Management of Major Web Browsers
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2014, 09:06:59 am »

Firefox, Safari, and Chrome (as of late 2013) all do proper colour management - but Safari and Chrome colour manage only if the image contains an embedded profile.  Otherwise they don't do any colour management. 

Firefox is the same by default, but you can change that to colour-manage even images with no embedded profile (it assumes that images with no embedded profile are sRGB, a fair guess).  It does this if setting "gfx.color_management.mode" is 1 (default is 2).  You get at this setting (in Firefox) by entering the URL "about:config" ( i.e. enter about:config in the URL bar instead of www....)

It sounds as if either the images you are looking at don't have embedded profiles, or the new web site you are using strips out embedded profiles (perversely, some web sites do that - I assume it's because the web site managers are colour-blind).  The NEC PA241W is wide gamut, so without colour management sRGB colours are too vivid. 

(IE - even IE10 - screws up colour management, which won't work - can't be made to work - on a wide gamut monitor such as the PA241W.)
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digitaldog

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Re: Color Management of Major Web Browsers
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2014, 11:11:25 am »

And just because a web browser is color managed, there are bits and pieces that are not (like many Flash Galleries and such). It's a crap shoot.
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http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

David Eichler

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Re: Color Management of Major Web Browsers
« Reply #3 on: January 13, 2014, 06:55:24 pm »

Forgot to mention that the website in question is HTML, not Flash, and I am uploading images with embedded profiles (if I were not, the full size images wouldn't look color managed either).

Why would a website that is not stripping the profile for the full size images do so for the thumbnails (assuming that is what is happening)?
« Last Edit: January 13, 2014, 06:57:01 pm by David Eichler »
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Farmer

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Re: Color Management of Major Web Browsers
« Reply #4 on: January 13, 2014, 11:31:13 pm »

Because it's generating thumbnails on the fly or upon upload into a DB and that generating/conversion is stripping it.  When it uploads the base image, it's not touching it - just putting it in a folder or a DB.
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Phil Brown

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Re: Color Management of Major Web Browsers
« Reply #5 on: January 14, 2014, 08:56:45 pm »

Why would a website that is not stripping the profile for the full size images do so for the thumbnails (assuming that is what is happening)?

Also, if it's a high volume site, all those 3k profiles start to add up in both traffic and storage. I imagine the engineers think nobody will notice in thumbnails or the percentage of people who notice is small enough that it doesn't matter.

Here's an interesting post about the compromise Facebook make with profiles:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-the-hood-improving-facebook-photos/10150630639853920
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David Eichler

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Re: Color Management of Major Web Browsers
« Reply #6 on: January 14, 2014, 09:12:52 pm »

Also, if it's a high volume site, all those 3k profiles start to add up in both traffic and storage. I imagine the engineers think nobody will notice in thumbnails or the percentage of people who notice is small enough that it doesn't matter.

Here's an interesting post about the compromise Facebook make with profiles:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-the-hood-improving-facebook-photos/10150630639853920

Thanks for the explanation. Perhaps it is not such a big deal when the thumbnails are very small. However, when they start getting big enough to compare them more easily with the full size image, drastic differences in color and contrast will become disconcerting, and something needs to be done about it. The quality of the thumbnails doesn't have to be that high, since they are relatively small, but the drastic differences I describe are, imo, unacceptable for a high-quality portfolio website. The Facebook example shows that the problem is easily solved, and it is puzzling that it has taken so long for someone to bother to figure this out.
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D Fosse

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Re: Color Management of Major Web Browsers
« Reply #7 on: January 15, 2014, 03:30:32 am »

Don't forget that your wide gamut monitor exaggerates this to a "big deal" - for most people the difference is quite subtle. People who have wide gamut monitors usually know what they're looking at and know the explanation for the oversaturation.

As Simon Garrett pointed out in the first reply, use Firefox in mode 1. Everybody who owns a WG display should do that in any case. In fact everybody should do that period, because it's the only browser configuration that ensures full color management in all scenarios. Why the other browsers haven't caught on to this is a mystery to me.
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Gary Damaskos

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Re: Color Management of Major Web Browsers
« Reply #8 on: January 18, 2014, 07:46:35 am »

Firefox, Safari, and Chrome (as of late 2013) all do proper colour management - but Safari and Chrome colour manage only if the image contains an embedded profile.  Otherwise they don't do any colour management. 

Firefox is the same by default, but you can change that to colour-manage even images with no embedded profile (it assumes that images with no embedded profile are sRGB, a fair guess).  It does this if setting "gfx.color_management.mode" is 1 (default is 2).  You get at this setting (in Firefox) by entering the URL "about:config" ( i.e. enter about:config in the URL bar instead of www....)

It sounds as if either the images you are looking at don't have embedded profiles, or the new web site you are using strips out embedded profiles (perversely, some web sites do that - I assume it's because the web site managers are colour-blind).  The NEC PA241W is wide gamut, so without colour management sRGB colours are too vivid. 

(IE - even IE10 - screws up colour management, which won't work - can't be made to work - on a wide gamut monitor such as the PA241W.)

Thank you for the Firefox information!
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