Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Colour Management => Topic started by: yalag on August 12, 2014, 10:55:06 pm
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Since most images on the internet are sRGB, what happens when you use a monitor that is set to adobe rgb mode? I'm about to replace my sRGB monitor with a monitor that can do almost adobe rgb. I mostly use mac with safari for web browsing.
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The better units have sRGB emulation. An ICC savy web browser helps.
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Does the browser converts the gamut on the fly?
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No problem with a wide gamut monitor for web use, but you must use Firefox, and you must set its color management to mode 1 (which is not the default).
Safari is totally useless, as is Chrome and IE.
The thing is that you must have a full and complete color management chain; an embedded document profile, converted/transformed to a valid display profile (one that is an accurate description of the display). A lot of material on the web is untagged (no document profile), and then the CM chain breaks down in most browsers. That's when you get the oversaturated colors on screen.
What Firefox does in mode 1 is to assign sRGB to all untagged material, including graphic page elements. This allows the color management chain to operate.
Type "about:config" in the address bar and hit refresh. Scroll down to gfx.color_management.mode, and change the value from 2 to 1.
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Evidently you haven't used Safari since version 5. ColorSync takes care of everything very nicely in ver 7.
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Does Safari actually assign sRGB to untagged material now? Because that's what is needed, specifically.
If this is true I'd like to see screenshots demonstrating it, so the issue can be put to rest. I've perceived it as common knowledge that only Firefox does this.
I'm on Windows so I haven't tried the Mac version, but I have tested the Windows version of Safari recently, and that certainly didn't handle untagged material any differently than all other browsers - untagged material just goes straight through unmanaged.
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Safari 7 does not colour-manage untagged graphics, not on a PC anyway. That means colours generally look too saturated on a wide-gamut monitor.
As D Fosse says, if you use a wide gamut monitor (unless you can switch to an sRGB mode, as Andrew says) then the only browser that displays untagged graphics correctly is Firefox, and then only if you set option gfx.color_mangemement.mode to 1 (its default value is 2). Google for how do do that if unsure.
This matters because most graphics elements on most web pages are not images and do not contain embedded profiles.
A wide-gamut monitor can be very useful, but either:
- you need to browse the web in an sRGB mode, if it has one
- or use Firefox with the option set as above
- or you get the wrong colours
Note: if you have an sRGB mode on the wide gamut monitor (most do now, I think) then remember to calibrate and profile in wide-gamut mode, and use wide-gamut mode for photo work. Switch to sRGB mode for web browsing if you're not using Firefox, but remember that colour-managed applications will then show the wrong colours in that mode. (I'm not sure if any monitors have software to switch not only monitor gamut mode but also profile - in which case the last caveat wouldn't apply.)
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Right. That's exactly the way it is - unless the Mac version of Safari behaves differently than the Windows version. Could any Mac users with wide gamut displays test this, just to get it established once and for all?
As for using the sRGB mode on the monitor, Eizo Colornavigator handles this very well. In addition to changing calibration target it also switches to the corresponding profile on OS level, so that color managed apps will display correctly. But you still have to relaunch the application (Lr or PS), so that it can pick up the new profile at startup. I haven't tried this in Spectraview II (but I'm using a standard-gamut P232 there, so it's not really an urgent issue. I'm sure it's possible).
Still, it's much more convenient to have the browser deal with it without any user intervention at all, as FF mode 1 does.
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I only use my Eizo CG275 for Photoshop work, but when I first got it a couple of years ago browsing the internet with Safari (Mac) was a psychedelic experience. I've just fired up Safari again and the internet now looks totally normal. Also various OS elements (e.g. dock icons) seem to have been tamed.
I'm not particularly technically savvy, so it's possible I might have got a setting wrong, but it seems to me that Apple has addressed some of the issues regarding wide gamut monitors.
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OK, thanks. If your CG is at native gamut and everything in Safari looks normal (not just tagged images, but untagged ones and page elements as well), then it does indeed seem to be addressed.
In that case Lundberg is right and I should apologize for not taking his word right away :)
Still, this is the first I've heard of it and I should think this is a pretty big deal. I know it was a problem that generated a lot of noise. Why isn't it more widely known?
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I only use my Eizo CG275 for Photoshop work, but when I first got it a couple of years ago browsing the internet with Safari (Mac) was a psychedelic experience.
It isn't on this end, on Mac with a PA272W. Even with a color managed browser, there is still content that isn't fully color managed, Flash comes to mind depending on the version. IMHO, it isn't a big deal, even when something looks a bit too saturated, it's the internet, I'm not doing color work on said images and I could always turn sRGB emulation on. The benefits of a wide gamut display in a fully color managed image editing context is far more important to me then the occasional CNN video or such looking off and I've never seen a psychedelic rendering.
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I've just checked and my Eizo is at native gamut, and everything in Safari, including untagged images, looks normal. (I'm looking at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ which when I first got my Eizo looked totally out of whack.)
If I pull one of these untagged images into Photoshop, selecting the checkbox 'Leave as is (don't color manage)' then the image is rendered with lurid colours.
Lundberg is right. Apple has fixed things.
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Seems to be final then. On Mac, use Safari or Firefox mode 1. On Windows, Firefox mode 1 is the only option.
With that out of the way, it should be noted that this isn't only relevant for wide gamut displays, but all of them. It's just a little more urgent with wide gamut. With browsers configured this way, you actually get full and unconditional color management on the web, right on the money, and no more of this "close enough" nonsense.
So there's no longer any real reason to say "it's just the web anyway".
Flash is still an exception I gather. But it seems to be on its way out anyway.
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I use a PA242W and have it calibrated with Spectraview II and set to sRGB emulation when monitoring photos on the web with IE. I haven't noticed any issues with colors. Am I missing something?
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Seems to be final then. On Mac, use Safari or Firefox mode 1. On Windows, Firefox mode 1 is the only option.
Yes, I just downloaded Firefox to test it out. In its default state (mode 2), colours are over-saturated. Following your instructions I switched to mode 1 and now colours are normal (i.e. they match colours in Safari). (N.B. Firefox must be restarted for the colour management changes to take effect.)
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I use a PA242W and have it calibrated with Spectraview II and set to sRGB emulation when monitoring photos on the web with IE. I haven't noticed any issues with colors. Am I missing something?
Well, no, not as long as the PA is in sRGB mode. But it still isn't entirely right. Set to native, it would be all neon - tagged, untagged, all of it.
What they did in IE has to qualify as the single insanest policy decision in the entire known history of computing since Alan Turing. What IE does is throw out the display profile and use sRGB instead. This way, nothing is displayed correctly, ever. Not a chance.
On a standard gamut display the result is the old familiar "close enough", but on a wide gamut display it's madness. God knows what they were smoking thinking.
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Well I would switch to Native when editing and then convert to sRGB before posting on the Internet. Right?
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Right. Or you could use Firefox mode 1 and keep the monitor in full gamut.
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Guys, I really appreciate the help of all of you. But went through all the replies and it's so conflicting that I'm a bit lost.
What is the consensus, does the latest Safari on Mac, color managed? For both tagged, and untagged images, and graphic elements?
You easily test this using this page http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html
If anyone with a mac and a WG monitor please try and report back?
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If anyone with a mac and a WG monitor please try and report back?
Under Safari, no difference in image on left with roll over. On image on right, slight difference with roll over.
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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.
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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/
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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).
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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.
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+1
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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...
(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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
If you look at the metadata in the profile from EasyPix, it shows v4. EasyPix does not have any v2 settings like ColorNavigator.
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Well, that is a surprise.
Anyway, it shows that v4 support isn't as poor as some would have it. I used EasyPix on one of my two systems for quite some time, and never had any problems. Indeed it remains one of my favorite calibrators, for its simple efficiency in spite of the obvious limitations.
But then I've always enabled v4 support in Firefox. Once you're down there in the basement flipping switches, it sits right next to the color management mode switch.
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Guys, I really appreciate the help of all of you. But went through all the replies and it's so conflicting that I'm a bit lost.
What is the consensus, does the latest Safari on Mac, color managed? For both tagged, and untagged images, and graphic elements?
You easily test this using this page http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html
If anyone with a mac and a WG monitor please try and report back?
I checked using Safari and Firefox with colormanagement mode set to 1. The left image does not change at all where the right one does quite a bit for untagged Adobe RGB (which will be tagges by the browser as sRGB since it will assume sRGB with no profile). Also Apple RGB is darker and quite different. For untagged sRGB the right one is the same as the left one in both browsers.
Doing the same with the latest Chrome version the left does not change, but the untagged ones are not correct.
I'm using a profiled Dell U3014 monitor attached to my MBP 15" retina late 2013 model.