What happens when using wide gamut monitor on the internet?

[yalag]

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.

[digitaldog]

The better units have sRGB emulation. An ICC savy web browser helps.

[yalag]

Does the browser converts the gamut on the fly?

[D Fosse]

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.

[Lundberg02]

Evidently you haven't used Safari since version 5.  ColorSync takes care of everything very nicely in ver 7.

[D Fosse]

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.

[Simon Garrett]

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.)

[D Fosse]

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.

[elliot_n]

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.

[D Fosse]

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?

 

[digitaldog]

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.

[elliot_n]

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.

[D Fosse]

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.

[Alan Klein]

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?

[elliot_n]

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.)

[D Fosse]

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.

[Alan Klein]

Well I would switch to Native when editing and then convert to sRGB before posting on the Internet.  Right?

[D Fosse]

Right. Or you could use Firefox mode 1 and keep the monitor in full gamut.

[yalag]

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?

[digitaldog]

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.