What happens when using wide gamut monitor on the internet?

[D Fosse]

The two rollovers at the top of that page aren't the most instructive as they compare different source spaces.

If you scroll down a bit there's one comparing tagged and untagged sRGB, and this one goes straight to the heart of the matter. These two should be dead identical.

Users with standard gamut monitors should check this out too, because if you have a "traditional" browser setup (untagged material not color managed), they show you the difference between sRGB and your monitor's native color space. Even with an "sRGB" monitor, that difference can be surprisingly big in terms of how specific colors are rendered, as well as rendering of shadow detail.

[yalag]

The two rollovers at the top of that page aren't the most instructive as they compare different source spaces.

If you scroll down a bit there's one comparing tagged and untagged sRGB, and this one goes straight to the heart of the matter. These two should be dead identical.

Users with standard gamut monitors should check this out too, because if you have a "traditional" browser setup (untagged material not color managed), they show you the difference between sRGB and your monitor's native color space. Even with an "sRGB" monitor, that difference can be surprisingly big in terms of how specific colors are rendered, as well as rendering of shadow detail.

In addition to that test, it doesn't test page elements. Can we have a test for that? It would similar to what this page is talking about if you scroll down http://www.laszlopusztai.net/2012/08/04/color-managed-browsing-on-the-mac/

[elliot_n]

If you scroll down a bit there's one comparing tagged and untagged sRGB, and this one goes straight to the heart of the matter. These two should be dead identical.

Yes, the rollovers are identical with Safari (Mac) and Firefox (mode 1).

[Alan Klein]

With IE, the colors do not change on left.  They change on the right set and match the set on the left when you put the cursor on t right set.  So what does that mean? I'm running IE 11.

[Mac Mahon]

+1

[D Fosse]

So what does that mean? I'm running IE 11.

IE is a very special case because of the way they botched color management there. I sort of missed the punchline in how I described it above, which is that the whole color management engine is up and running and functional - except when it's supposed to hit the display profile it uses sRGB instead. So it's not that isn't color managed; it is. It just consistently uses the wrong display profile.

So with IE you will always see the difference between sRGB and native monitor space. There's no way around it. With a standard gamut display - or a wide gamut one in sRGB mode - it's not too alarming. But with a wide gamut display in native mode there's just no way, it'll all come out screaming.

[manfred1]

Hi,

I am confused.

Since years I use Firefox, always with gfx.color_management.mode set to 1.  Since years I see oversaturated colors, using usual Web pages, Flash pages or HTML5 pages.

I am on Win 7 Ultimate, 64 bit. I use two wide gammut monitors: an EIZO SX2462W and a NEC PA301W. Both monitors are profiled separately and use their own display profiles.

When using natives modes, colors in Photoshop CC or Lightroom 5 look fine, colors are not oversaturated.

When using natives modes, colors in Firefox often are oversaturated on BOTH displays, even with gfx.color_management.mode set to 1.

When switching e.g. the EIZO to sRGB mode, then colors look right, not oversaturated.

So, am I missing something? Why are my colors often oversaturated while other people say the colors are OK with gfx.color_management.mode set to 1?

Thanks.

Manfred

[D Fosse]

That's odd; that shouldn't happen.

One limitation in Firefox is that it only color manages one display. AFAIK if you move it to the second display it will still use the profile from the primary.

I certainly don't see this on an Eizo CG246 (native mode), everything displays correctly, but it's the only display here so I can't test dual monitor behavior.

[TonyW]

I do not have a dual monitor set up but I think that D Fosse is correct that it only uses the primary display.  If you drag the FF window to span both monitors what happens and what happens in other applications such as PS?

A stab in the dark which may be of no help but have you calibrated your display to ICCv2 or ICCv4?  ICCv2 seems to be the safer route?

Firefox does offer ICCv4 support and needs to be set in About:config

gfx.color_management.enablev4 value should be true

[manfred1]

Hi,

thanks for the suggestions.

(1) Using an image with very saturated colors, if I drag the Firefox window to span both monitors then the colors look oversaturated on both displays.

(2) If I do the same with Lightroom instead of Firefox, then the colors look natural, not oversaturated, on both displays.

Regarding V2 vs. V4 icc display profiles: I always use V2 profiles, never V4 profiles.

Manfred

[yalag]

Can anyone please test Safari on osx for things that are not images as well? That's what I'm concerned with, I already know it works for untagged images.

[Eyeball]

One thing I have observed recently (although it may have existed for some time) is that Firefox seems pretty picky about what monitor profiles it will use.  That can cause some real confusion when you're trying to figure out if FF is doing color management or not.

Two examples:
- I was working with a POTN member on a problem he was seeing using a stock Benq v2 profile.  Since I have the same monitor, I took a look and came to the conclusion that FF was ignoring the stock profile while it would use my custom-made profile using basiccolor just fine.  I verified that the stock Benq profile was a v2 matrix profile using Colorthink.  Colorthink also failed to find any errors with the profile.
- I also tried the "CX_Monitor_weird.icc" profile from this site http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Stunt_Profiles and again FF would fail to use it.

In both of the above cases, Photoshop and Lightroom used the indicated profiles without a problem.

If anyone has any guesses or information about why this happens with FF, I would like to hear it.

I suppose that one difference is that Adobe products are using the ACE color management engine and FF is for sure not, but that doesn't really explain why FF would ignore the profiles.  FF may also be detecting weird or broken profiles and ignoring them but that would apparently only explain the second case and not the first.

[TonyW]

...
(1) Using an image with very saturated colors, if I drag the Firefox window to span both monitors then the colors look oversaturated on both displays.

Could it be that FF is actually not aware of either monitor profile? 

There is another section in About:Config to make FF use your monitor profile gfx.color_management.display_profile.  The string value should point to the location of your monitor profile. 

In Windows this will usually be located C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\***.icc.

As an example from my system FF config. 
gfx.color_management.display_profile; String Value = C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\LCD2090UXi 88102802ZB.icc

[manfred1]

Hi,

Thanks for the hint regarding gfx.color_management.display_profile. I already tested it (with the absolute path to the profile of my main monitor) but it did not help.

According to the Mozilla documentation, if gfx.color_management.display_profile is not set then the default display profile is used.

Still confused about what happens here...

Manfred

[Simon Garrett]

Yes, it should not normally be necessary to set gfx.color_management.display_profile, and I'd say it's a bad idea to do so unless you have a specific need.  Otherwise, next time you reprofile your monitor, unless you remember to change the setting, Firefox will use the wrong profile. 

One reason to set it is if you don't want FF to use the the profile for the main monitor.  As others have said, for simplicity (or laziness in coding, perhaps) FF and all other browsers that do colour management use only the main monitor profile.  That means colours on any other monitor will be rendered incorrectly.  If you want FF to get colours right on monitor 2 for example (rather than the main monitor) then you have to set this option.  Otherwise much better to let FF use the system default. 

[alfin]

Hi,

thanks for the suggestions.

(1) Using an image with very saturated colors, if I drag the Firefox window to span both monitors then the colors look oversaturated on both displays.

(2) If I do the same with Lightroom instead of Firefox, then the colors look natural, not oversaturated, on both displays.

Regarding V2 vs. V4 icc display profiles: I always use V2 profiles, never V4 profiles.

Manfred

How do you calibrate your Eizo SX2462W? If you are using Eizo's own EasyPix solution to hardware calibrate the monitor, it only creates V4-profiles, you can't choose V2. Hence; you must set FF gfx.color_management.enablev4 to true in that case.

[D Fosse]

If you are using Eizo's own EasyPix solution to hardware calibrate the monitor, it only creates V4-profiles, you can't choose V2.

Are you really sure about that? I don't have EasyPix installed now, but since it doesn't give you a choice I'd think it highly unlikely that it produces v4 (they're a pretty conservative company).

ColorNavigator has v2 as default, with v4 as an option. But it's a pretty obscure setting and you have to look for it.

[manfred1]

Hi,

>How do you calibrate your Eizo SX2462W?

I use an i1Display Pro with i1Profiler 1.5 and let i1profiler generate V2 icc profiles.

Manfred

[D Fosse]

It seems every new post in this thread sends it off in a different direction...maybe we should try to sum it all up eventually. But for now:

The SX2462 should come with bundled EasyPix software and EX-1 sensor. EasyPix, despite its somewhat silly name, is a very solid and reliable calibrator that is basically a simplified ColorNavigator. I suspect it has much of the same underlying code.

Above all, it has one crucial property that renders it far superior to i1Profiler: it talks directly to the monitor's internal high-bit 3D LUT. It doesn't tweak the video card in 8 bit depth like i1Profiler does. This gives you much higher precision and much better control. Particularly the white point which you can adjust independently along the green-magenta axis in addition to the blue-yellow Kelvin scale.

The drawback is that it's tied to the EX-1 sensor, which is a rebranded Spyder 3 and not as good as the i1 Display Pro sensor. But the EX-1 sensors are probably "hand-picked" by Eizo as their other components are. So I'd compare the two, and if they both seem to be essentially correct, I'd ditch i1 and use EasyPix instead.

[elliot_n]

Can anyone please test Safari on osx for things that are not images as well? That's what I'm concerned with, I already know it works for untagged images.

Everything looks fine on Safari, except for some components of Flash movies. If there's a specific test you want me to look at, please provide a link.