Photoshop save for web color shift

[Baldy]

I think this is a simple question that should have a simple answer. We get the following question often and don't know what to say:

"I got my new Vista machine and all was well. Photoshop's working space is set to sRGB. Photos looked good in Photoshop and on the web. But seeking perfection, I hooked up a hardware calibration device, chose gamma of 2.2 and white point of 6500."

"Now, I see a big color shift when I choose Photoshop Save For Web. Photos on the web no longer look good or like my prints, only in Photoshop. What happened?"

I think I've read most of the color management books, but none that I've found answer the question. Can't seem to find it on the calibration vendor's sites. The color gurus we query say, "you have to view your photos in a color-managed application to be accurate." Unless I'm missing something, they haven't answered the question.

Can you?

[SloYerRoll]

I think this is a simple question that should have a simple answer. We get the following question often and don't know what to say:

"I got my new Vista machine and all was well. Photoshop's working space is set to sRGB. Photos looked good in Photoshop and on the web. But seeking perfection, I hooked up a hardware calibration device, chose gamma of 2.2 and white point of 6500."

"Now, I see a big color shift when I choose Photoshop Save For Web. Photos on the web no longer look good or like my prints, only in Photoshop. What happened?"

I think I've read most of the color management books, but none that I've found answer the question. Can't seem to find it on the calibration vendor's sites. The color gurus we query say, "you have to view your photos in a color-managed application to be accurate." Unless I'm missing something, they haven't answered the question.

Can you?What setting are most of your users "view settings" on?
VIEW>PROOF SETUP>?????

I had huge problems w/ this before and worked through all the issuesI had. Hopefully I can help out!

[arodney]

I think I've read most of the color management books, but none that I've found answer the question. Can't seem to find it on the calibration vendor's sites. The color gurus we query say, "you have to view your photos in a color-managed application to be accurate." Unless I'm missing something, they haven't answered the question.

Can you?

Photoshop is previewing the numbers correctly. ANY ICC aware application is also previewing the numbers correctly (including an ICC aware web browser).

A non ICC aware application is NOT previewing the numbers correctly. Where's the confusing?

ICC aware applications USE the display profile to produce a preview. Non ICC aware applications don't.

What version of PHotoshop? Save for Web in CS and CS2 don't automatically embed sRGB in the doc's (CS3 does).

[jdryan3]

"Now, I see a big color shift when I choose Photoshop Save For Web. Photos on the web no longer look good or like my prints, only in Photoshop. What happened?"

I'll leave it to Andrew the Color Guru to answer why, but I do know that over the years most PS threads say to use the "Save As..." function rather than the Save for Web. Mainly to embed EXIF data but I believe there were color issues also. I just convert my color space in PS to sRGB and save as a jpeg file.

[Baldy]

A non ICC aware application is NOT previewing the numbers correctly. Where's the confusing?The confusing thing for me is that most desktop machines can display the Internet pretty well right out of the box. It takes someone into fairly high-end photography or printing to say, "I need it better."

That person is willing to buy your book and a calibrating device. If they calibrate and discover that pages on the internet are further from what they should look like than they were before, that's a very unexpected outcome.

It just happened to Andy on his Mac and Steve Cavigliano on his Vista machine, two people who are asked often to help our customers solve this.

If the answer is, "The monitor profile that was created is bad," I can at least understand that calibration does not break the internets. Then we can spend time trying to figure out if the room wasn't dark and light leaked in, or there was interference from a pre-installled profile, or something.

But if the answer is, "Internet browsers are not ICC aware so the Internets can look more busted after calibration than before," then I are confuzzzzzd. :scratch

[SloYerRoll]

You said there was a color shift. You didn't say which way that shift was. I'd guess it's like the other 1000's of ppl and it's "lightens" up and looks a bit more washed out. SFW saves at 72ppi so it's stripping allot of the color data from the jump.

That's just the nature of SFW though, since it's designed to optimize for web use.

There's also a cool little globe icon button in the bottom right corner of the SFW dialog box. (see screen grab) View the image side by side w/ the same image that you previously saved for web. You should see that there's no difference between images. If that's the case. SFW is doing it's job and your expectations of it are too high for this wonderful yet very focused app.

Unless your test come up different than mine. Your best answer may be to, "stay away from SFW" and just have a write up on what your findings are jsut like that great writeup on sRGB color spaces you guys did :thumb

[colourbox]

You said there was a color shift. You didn't say which way that shift was. I'd guess it's like the other 1000's of ppl and it's "lightens" up and looks a bit more washed out. SFW saves at 72ppi so it's stripping allot of the color data from the jump.

There's nothing about 72ppi that would strip out any color. In SFW you can choose to keep all the colors (high quality JPEG or PNG) or strip out lots of colors (8-color GIF or low quality JPEG).

In Photoshop CS3 the number one cause of color shifts and "lightness" (contrast shift actually), has been solved. If you click the little round button to the right of the Preset menu, there's a new command, "Convert to sRGB" on that pop-up menu. As long as that's selected, images coming out of Save for Web viewed in browsers should be consistent with how they look in Photoshop. Although in some scenarios you may need to also use the Include ICC Profile option. But the key to everything is always converting to sRGB for the Web. Without that step, nothing else you do, Proof Colors or whatever, is going to help.

[SloYerRoll]

So please help me w/ this since it makes no sense to me.
How can an image that's 400ppi get converted to 72ppi and still have the same colors? At that point you have to be averaging colors and sampling them together. If not, how does that work?

[colourbox]

So please help me w/ this since it makes no sense to me.
How can an image that's 400ppi get converted to 72ppi and still have the same colors? At that point you have to be averaging colors and sampling them together. If not, how does that work?

Oh, well, now that you put it that way, there will be some color shifting among local pixels. If you're talking about pixel averaging, then I agree that it's happening at that level. But I think that if it's making the entire image shift or change brightness overall, that's something different.

[Baldy]

If you click the little round button to the right of the Preset menu, there's a new command, "Convert to sRGB" on that pop-up menu. As long as that's selected, images coming out of Save for Web viewed in browsers should be consistent with how they look in Photoshop.Good point and I should have mentioned that detail: the images we're dealing with are already in sRGB.

In Ted Padova and Don Mason's book, "Color Management for Digital Photographers for Dummies," they make an interesting point: unless you manually adjust your monitor to get it close before running a calibration, you probably won't get as good a result from calibration. I wasn't sure why that would be. Does the monitor profile only have limited ability to adjust the display color via the graphics card?

But the 30-inch Dells we are attempting to calibrate have no manual adjustments other than brightness.

And my confusion remains: why would the Internets look worse with a new custom profile than they did with the generic default one Dell provides? Andy's machine is a Mac, Steve's a Vista-based PC. Same monitors, same result: the new profiles made the Internets redder and more saturated. Andy did his calibration in New York with one puck, Steve in California with another.

[arodney]

The confusing thing for me is that most desktop machines can display the Internet pretty well right out of the box.

I can't put a metric on what "pretty well" means. I can tell you that a set of RGB or for that matter CMYK numbers define a specific color appearance. In ICC aware applications on machines of users who calibrate and profile their displays, everyone SEEs the colors the same way. That the colors may not appear to some or all is immaterial, the numbers are previewing correctly, identically and consistently. The only way for this to work is for users to have ICC aware applications AND calibrate and profile their displays.

One could ask, "If you think the image you're now viewing on the web looks too dark, why not just increase the brightness of your display"? And yes, that would make the image look better. That no one else would see this might be an issue (it certainly is for people who hope to show their images to others).

It takes someone into fairly high-end photography or printing to say, "I need it better."

There's better and then there's correct. Correct may not be better but at least the application isn't lying to you.

That person is willing to buy your book and a calibrating device. If they calibrate and discover that pages on the internet are further from what they should look like than they were before, that's a very unexpected outcome.

That the same numbers WILL appear the same with an ICC aware browser and the appearance correctly defines the numbers (that's all computers understand, numbers) what's the problem? Many here seems to want to defend stupid web browsers that lie to you about the color images they produce.

It just happened to Andy on his Mac and Steve Cavigliano on his Vista machine, two people who are asked often to help our customers solve this.

You solve it by using a web browser that treats your RGB images like your image processor.

If the answer is, "The monitor profile that was created is bad," I can at least understand that calibration does not break the internets.

Its possible for a profile to be "bad" but that's rare and not what's happening here. The display is in a fixed condition and defined by the profile but without the profile, the dumb web browser is even farther from the truth, its lying even more. What's broken is your web browser. I don't know why this is so difficult for many to understand.

But if the answer is, "Internet browsers are not ICC aware so the Internets can look more busted after calibration than before," then I are confuzzzzzd. :scratch

The web browser is broken, get over it. Would you be happier if Photoshop was lying to you? Or Lightroom, Bibble, Capture 1, or just about every application on the Mac OS?

Its not like you have to shell out huge sums of money for Safari (its free).

Bottom line: IF you care about color appearance, then you don't want to use a browser that takes RGB values and previews them to you incorrectly.

[arodney]

In Ted Padova and Don Mason's book, "Color Management for Digital Photographers for Dummies," they make an interesting point: unless you manually adjust your monitor to get it close before running a calibration, you probably won't get as good a result from calibration. I wasn't sure why that would be. Does the monitor profile only have limited ability to adjust the display color via the graphics card?

Based on that statement, the book probably is OK for dummies.

That's a really broad statement and since I don't have the book, I'll refrain from further saying, it depends.

On a CRT, you have physical adjustment over the behavior using RGB electronics. On an LCD, the ONLY control you have is over the intensity of the Fluorescent lights. There's nothing more you have to "adjust". Nor should you. Now if you're lucky enough to have a really high end LCD like my NEC 2690, it does adjustments in high bit (more than 8-bits) internally, NOT in the 8-bit graphic pipeline (doing so just adds banding to the display).

The calibration isn't all that important to ICC aware applications, the profile accurately defining the behavior IS. The profile does the adjustments in ICC aware applications such that multiple users all see the numbers the same way even though their displays absolutely do not behave the same way. And that's one reason why non ICC aware applications will look farther from the ICC aware applications, they don't understand the display profile and don't use it to adjust (compensate) so that identical RGB values produce the same color appearance on multiple users displays.

Say you're running Windows and I'm running a Mac and we both calibrate to a different Tone Response Curve (what most incorrectly refer to as Gamma). I'm at 1.8, you're at 2.2. ICC aware applications don't care. As long as your profile defines the display at 2.2 and mine at 1.8, the same set of RGB numbers preview the same on both our differing displays.

But the 30-inch Dells we are attempting to calibrate have no manual adjustments other than brightness.

NO CCFL LCD does.

And my confusion remains: why would the Internets look worse with a new custom profile than they did with the generic default one Dell provides? Andy's machine is a Mac, Steve's a Vista-based PC. Same monitors, same result: the new profiles made the Internets redder and more saturated. Andy did his calibration in New York with one puck, Steve in California with another.

You're asking the wrong question. The question should be, IN AN ICC AWARE application, do they look the same.

[Baldy]

Its not like you have to shell out huge sums of money for Safari (its free).But Safari only displays things correctly that have ICC profiles attached, correct? So all the HTML, the CSS, the Flash, videos, gifs, pngs, and jpegs with no ICC profiles (99.99% of all jpegs on the web) will all be rendered incorrectly?

It seems like the only conclusions are:

1. Manufacturers should do their best to ship computers that display the Internet standard correctly: gamma of 2.2, white point of 6500, sRGB. Seems like Microsoft and the manufacturers of consumer electronics like televisions have this right.

2. Makers of calibration hardware and software should make sure your resulting calibration adheres to the same Internet standard. If, after a calibration, you need to have Safari and jpeg images with ICC profiles attached to see correct colors on your display, that's color mismanagement and not what most people are expecting. Am I wrong?

[arodney]

It seems like the only conclusions are:

1. Manufacturers should do their best to ship computers that display the Internet standard correctly: gamma of 2.2, white point of 6500, sRGB. Seems like Microsoft and the manufacturers of consumer electronics like televisions have this right.

So you think all TV's display the data the same? Go into a TV store. All the TV's are getting the same numbers. Do they look the same? Nope.

We should cripple displays for the Web? I don't think so.

Displays are unstable devices. The same RGB numbers previewed today will not look the same in a year, or two years. That's why we calibrate them (and then profile them).

The internet is a huge wasteland, you have zillon's of users all working with different quality devices, with displays all in differing conditions. When the majority of web users feel about the consistency of images that those of use working in an ICC aware application like Photoshop do, we may get somewhere.

2. Makers of calibration hardware and software should make sure your resulting calibration adheres to the same Internet standard.

There IS no standard. And if people used the products above that you mention, it wouldn't matter. Its far, far easier for those who care about consistent color to simply use the right browser and of course, do what they've been doing to work in Photoshop and other ICC aware applications: Calibrate and profile their displays. Every month. More often with a newer unit.


If, after a calibration, you need to have Safari and jpeg images with ICC profiles attached to see correct colors on your display, that's color mismanagement and not what most people are expecting. Am I wrong?

No, your wrong. It works, it has since 1998 under Photoshop. Longer than that with other applications. You're making this far more complicated than it needs to be.

There are two groups at play here. Those who don't care what they see and those that do. Those that do use ICC aware applications and calibrate and profile their displays on a regular basis. Its worked well for a decade. Those who don't care (the vast majority of web users), well they don't care. Occasionally they return some product they purchased on the web because what they got and the colors they saw didn't sync up. Otherwise, they don't care. IF YOU CARE, you know what you have to do to fix the issue. Its simple and it works. We don't need (and I'd submit we don't want) displays trying to produce some standard, that hasn't worked from day one with the exception of very expensive reference devices (Barco, PressView, Artisan). If you can afford a $5K monitor, you certainly care about color consistency and you're not using Internet Explorer!

Now, what is going to happen in say 5 years (or less) when more and more users are working with wide gamut displays, those that approximate Adobe RGB (1998)? All the sRGB images on the web in non ICC aware browsers will look awful. All Adobe RGB (1998) images will look OK. That's happening more and more (the $5K wide gamut LED of two years ago is now $1800. An NEC 2690, "93%" of Adobe RGB is like $1200. Everything looks fine on Safari and like do-do on a non ICC aware browser. The sRGB color space is going to be history, a dinosaur very soon.

[Baldy]

So you think all TV's display the data the same? Go into a TV store. All the TV's are getting the same numbers. Do they look the same? Nope.They all look closer to each other than Photoshop's display looks compared to Firefox on Andy and Steve's machines after calibration.

I think it's suspicious that both machines were calibrated with Eye-One version 1 devices. Andy has the latest Eye-One coming today and is going to repeat the calibration. Maybe this is as simple as those devices are 4 years olde.

If you were to calibrate your TV and it no longer displayed your favorite shows as accurately as it did before calibration, I think you'd conclude the calibration was foul. I can't understand why the Internet should be different.

[arodney]

They all look closer to each other than Photoshop's display looks compared to Firefox on Andy and Steve's machines after calibration.


They all being the TV's in the electronics store? I'd take issue with that but I guess we'd need to agree on the store, the number of sets etc.

I think it's suspicious that both machines were calibrated with Eye-One version 1 devices. Andy has the latest Eye-One coming today and is going to repeat the calibration. Maybe this is as simple as those devices are 4 years olde.

Yes, we had a long phone conversation about this yesterday. I don't suspect the i1 is a problem and there IS a diagnostic utility that could tell us if the instrument is an issue.

If you were to calibrate your TV and it no longer displayed your favorite shows as accurately as it did before calibration, I think you'd conclude the calibration was foul. I can't understand why the Internet should be different.

What do you mean by the word accurate? A set of RGB numbers in a known color space should produce a known color appearance. That doesn't mean anyone will "like" it. You're confusing consistency and preferences in color.

As for the Web, it IS correct on my browser. Its not on yours apparently. The images I see in Photoshop, corrected to produce the color appearance I desire and believe to be correct look exactly that way in Safari. That's why the internet is different for you, but not for me.

Are you actually telling me that images you view in Photoshop are not desirable but when you view them incorrectly on the web, you now like them and therefore, Photoshop is wrong and the net is right? Because if so, you're confused by the role of these two applications (Photoshop and a browser). The numbers you see in Photoshop are correct. If you don't like them, change them; that's what Photoshop is designed to do. If you want the web to match that, you need an ICC aware browser to match.

I don't know why you insist in going around in circles when this is very simple stuff. I don't have the time for it.

Is Baldy the only one here who isn't getting the concept? If so, I need to move on.

[Juergen D]

"Now, I see a big color shift when I choose Photoshop Save For Web. Photos on the web no longer look good or like my prints, only in Photoshop. What happened?"
FWIW, there are some choices for the Save for Web output image. I believe for sRGB it works best setting it to Standard Windows Colors.

Juergen

[Baldy]

Are you actually telling me that images you view in Photoshop are not desirable but when you view them incorrectly on the web, you now like them and therefore, Photoshop is wrong and the net is right?No, my issue is that if I calibrate my monitor at 6500K and 2.2 gamma, I have an sRGB image, and my Photoshop working space is set to sRGB, then the display in Photoshop should equal the display in Firefox.

Medicine's mantra is, "First, Do No Harm." I don't see why the end result of calibration should be inaccurate colors in Firefox (and all but .01% of images be inaccurate in Safari).

[jfriend]

No, my issue is that if I calibrate my monitor at 6500K and 2.2 gamma, I have an sRGB image, and my Photoshop working space is set to sRGB, then the display in Photoshop should equal the display in Firefox.

Medicine's mantra is, "First, Do No Harm." I don't see why the end result of calibration should be inaccurate colors in Firefox (and all but .01% of images be inaccurate in Safari).

Ahhh, this is where I was confused when I had this issue.

If you have an LCD display, you may NOT be calibrating your display to a particular color standard.

You may be just profiling your display (measuring it's current color performance and characteristics) and dropping that profile in a standard location for color aware apps to find it. Firefox may not display any differently before or after profiling your display.

Photoshop will find that profile and use it to modify it's color display according to the display's profile to get your display to show accurate colors. Firefox, since it isn't color managed, just sends raw data to the screen and you get whatever the monitor produces from the factory. For LCDs, where there really isn't much true calibration that can be done (other than brightness), running one of these color calibrators/profilers just doesn't do much for Firefox other than make sure you get the brightness into the right range (which is helpful on LCDs because they usually ship too bright).

FYI, CRTs were different in this regard and they could be "calibrated" somewhat so that their default color display (for non-color-managed apps) was affecting by the calibration/profiling operation.

[arodney]

No, my issue is that if I calibrate my monitor at 6500K and 2.2 gamma, I have an sRGB image, and my Photoshop working space is set to sRGB, then the display in Photoshop should equal the display in Firefox.

Yes, you've lied to Photoshop, you've circumvented its ability to properly show you the numbers correctly. Do you feel better now? You've gone out of your way to sabotage color management in Photoshop. This doesn't make it now correct (it isn't) but it matches the incorrect preview in IE or whatever stupid browser you're using. So now neither application is previewing the data correctly.

In Photoshop 5.0, there was a setting that turned off Display Using Monitor Compensation, effectively doing the same thing. People used it, forcing Photoshop 5 to act stupid like Photoshop 4 and earlier (and other non ICC aware browsers). Adobe was smart enough to remove this hurt me button in subsequent updates.

Look, you can set your soft proof in Photoshop (customize proof setup) to Monitor RGB. Now it will match (incorrectly) your dumb web browser. Feel better? Now its showing you the numbers incorrectly.

Again, with all due respect, you don't get it. You want to force Photoshop to incorrectly match a web browser that by default, doesn't preview the numbers correctly. What good does that do you? Nothing. Instead of wasting our time here making Photoshop preview the data incorrectly, or installing the wrong display profile, why not just get a damn browser that works correctly?

Medicine's mantra is, "First, Do No Harm." I don't see why the end result of calibration should be inaccurate colors in Firefox (and all but .01% of images be inaccurate in Safari).

No, no no! Repeat after me: Safari is correct, Photoshop is correct. Firefox is not correct. Why do you keep insisting that the wrong preview is the one you want evey application to mimic? Why do you keep hitting your green head against the wall?

[arodney]

If you have an LCD display, you may NOT be calibrating your display to a particular color standard.

Its ironic that people get the incorrect impression that they are calibrating their display to sRGB. Maybe, if you've got a circa 1993 CRT with P22 phosphors.

They don't understand that sRGB isn't much of a standard when you consider its NOT based on any real world let alone modern display. Its based on a theoretical color space that circa 1993 might be possible IF you followed proper calibration (rare at the time) and if the display was in a specific ambient light surround, at a specific luminance (one way too low for any LCD to hit).

Its easy to verify too if you have tools to view ICC profiles in 3D. Calibrate your display as best you can, view the ICC profile of it next to sRGB. If they are identical gamut maps, I'll buy you an expensive dinner anywhere you like (they will not be).

Then there's the fact that we calibrate displays on a regular basis because they do change behavior over time. Some a great deal!

If you go back to a circa 1993 expensive reference display, the Radius Pressview, a unit that could be calibrated with (at the time) very expensive hardware, you'd find that it did not produce sRGB. It produced when properly calibrated, ColorMatch RGB. You ever hear of this working space? It was around YEARS before Photoshop had color management and working spaces. When you properly calibrated a PressView to its target aim points, you did not get sRGB, you got ColorMatch RGB. Now the two are not hugely different in terms of color gamut but they ain't the same! And you had to drop thousand of dollars (circa 1990 dollars) to get a reference display that always produced the same color (ColorMatch RGB).

Some of you guys need to get past this idea that you can get your displays to produce sRGB. You can't. And you don't need to. All you need to do is fingerprint the behavior you get with a profile. And let that profile be used to properly produce a preview. What, you don't have an application that has a bloody clue how to use the profile? Too bad. You don't have sRGB and in this case, you have incorrect previews.

You may be just profiling your display (measuring it's current color performance and characteristics) and dropping that profile in a standard location for color aware apps to find it. Firefox may not display any differently before or after profiling your display.

FireFox (at least the version that doesn't work with profiles) doesn't have a clue the profile exists or for that matter what a profile is. Just as if I write to you in German and you don't understand that language. Doesn't matter if what I'm saying is correct or not, you don't understand it. I can say your mother wears army boots or that you're the best looking person I've ever known, doesn't matter, you can't understand me. In this example, non ICC aware applications don't know a profile from a pickle. Get Safari or wait until FireFox understand what the profile is doing, we have a different situation.

Photoshop will find that profile and use it to modify it's color display according to the display's profile to get your display to show accurate colors.

Exactly!

Firefox, since it isn't color managed, just sends raw data to the screen and you get whatever the monitor produces from the factory.

Or whatever condition that display happens to be in (factory or otherwise).

For LCDs, where there really isn't much true calibration that can be done (other than brightness), running one of these color calibrators/profilers just doesn't do much for Firefox other than make sure you get the brightness into the right range (which is helpful on LCDs because they usually ship too bright).

FYI, CRTs were different in this regard and they could be "calibrated" somewhat so that their default color display (for non-color-managed apps) was affecting by the calibration/profiling operation.

Well yes, you had more control over a CRT but that's not an issue in this context. You can still muck around with LUTs on LCD's and make em look all kinds of different ways. CRTs did this using the electronics in the unit. So in this case, doesn't matter. What does matter, CRT or LCD is having a profile that defines the current behavior. Non ICC aware applications don't know what you've got in front of you with respect to what the display is doing. ICC aware applications do (if you've profiled the unit).

[jfriend]

Ahhh, this is where I was confused when I had this issue.

If you have an LCD display, you may NOT be calibrating your display to a particular color standard.

Here's a useful link on what the calibrating/profiling software is doing:
http://www.pnwcmug.com/images/Monitor_Calib_Slideshow_22707.pdf.

It sounds like with LCDs, you can adjust the brightness (we all knew that) and by manipulating the LUT on the video card, you can set an appropriate white point. If you choose to keep the native monitor white point, then no adjustments in the video card are done. If you choose a particular white point, then some adjustments in the LUT may be applied. That, however, is not a fine grained color adjustment. The rest of the accuracy is achieved by profiling the result and then letting color-managed apps use that profile.

Here's a useful link that describes the different "calibration" capabilities of CRTs, regular LCDs and high-end LCDs: http://www.imagescience.com.au/ColourControl/colourProducts/calibrationAndProfiling.html.

Another good article on "profiling vs. calibration" and CRTs vs. LCDs: http://www.thinck.com/howto-1.html.

So, the big question here is "how much actual calibration happens on a given LCD?" No matter how much calibration is done, if an accurate profile is generated, then Photoshop (and other color-managed apps) will probably show accurate color results. But, if not much calibration is happening, then non-color-managed apps don't really benefit from the whole calibration/profiling step at all. And, in fact, what happens is that now you are much more likely to see how Firefox and Photoshop differ. Before you profiled, Photoshop and Firefox might have been the same (not accurate, but the same) so many would not have noticed.

My guess is that the profiling step leads to Photoshop becoming accurate, but now different than Firefox. The difference is now much more noticable than the previous inaccuracy was.

Are there any solutions here? The only ones I know of for your own system so far are:

Use a browser that is color managed (Safari). Then, raw calibration doesn't matter since both browser and Photoshop are using the profile to correct the color display.
Use a monitor that can be truly calibrated with the right software (for LCDs, I think this is only very high LCDs). That should give non-color-managed apps displaying sRGB data a chance at being decently close.I'm looking around to see if there are any other practical answers. I don't yet understand what the limits are for LUT video card calibration on LCDs or what the various calibrator software packages even try to do on LCDs.

[arodney]

It sounds like with LCDs, you can adjust the brightness (we all knew that) and by manipulating the LUT on the video card, you can set an appropriate white point.

Or with far better and expensive units (NEC SpectraView, Eizo), you can do this in a higher bit depth within the panel itself (better).

[jfriend]

Its ironic that people get the incorrect impression that they are calibrating their display to sRGB. Maybe, if you've got a circa 1993 CRT with P22 phosphors.

Andrew, I believe that the root of the misunderstanding here is that people expected a thing they bought to do color calibration to "fix" their monitor so the browser (even a non-color-managed browser, but displaying sRGB images) displays accurate colors. That's what I expected when I first profiled my display. You and I know it is more limited than that and only really solves the problem when using fully color-managed apps, but most people didn't expect that limitation or understand that limitation.

Here's a blurb from the i1Display2 web page:

"The award-winning i1Display 2 delivers unrivaled color controls including Workgroup Match, Ambient Check and Match, Push Button Calibration and Validation—all essential tools for professional photographers and designers to attain accurate color throughout the digital workflow, whether in their own studio or in a collaborative production environment."

While it doesn't say you will get accurate colors in Firefox, it's pretty easy to understand how people might think that would be a result of using the product.

Furthermore, I think we're seeing that the average digital photographer is much more likely to complain about their system if Photoshop shows different colors than Firefox (even though Photoshop is being accurate). There's nothing we can do about that, I guess - it' s just human nature until you get educated enough to understand what is really going on or switch to a color-managed browser.

I'm hoping that the real end-game here is a series of software improvements over time that make this issue eventually go away:

Firefox becomes color-managed (we know they are working on this)
IE becomes color-managed (we don't know if they are working on this)
More color management support is built into windows
Flash gets color management
More of the web conserves ICC profiles in the images they serve
Browsers support more efficient ways of tagging images with ICC profiles than having to embed a profile in every tiny image
Safari switches to treat a profile-less image on the web as sRGB (or at least has a system preference for doing so). In the meantime, I guess all we can do is look for work-arounds and help explain why it is this way.

[arodney]

Sounds like a fair analysis.

[jdryan3]

Here's a useful link on what the calibrating/profiling software is doing:
http://www.pnwcmug.com/images/Monitor_Calib_Slideshow_22707.pdf. (http://www.pnwcmug.com/images/Monitor_Calib_Slideshow_22707.pdf.)

The link you post says the LED should use 'native' for the color temperature. What if that is not an option? What temp do folks use? I have seen 6000, 6200 and 6500, even occassionally 5000.

[jfriend]

The link you post says the LED should use 'native' for the color temperature. What if that is not an option? What temp do folks use? I have seen 6000, 6200 and 6500, even occassionally 5000.

Here's a recent discussion of that very topic: http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?128@@.3bc435af. Most of the folks in that thread (though it isn't unanimous) seem to say that D50 (~5000) seems to match the whites on photo paper the best, but I do also see the D65 (6500) recommendations. You can read yourself and see what you think. 5000 is typical "warm daylight". 5500-6000 is typical cool daylight. I'm amazed myself that there isn't one right answer to this question.

[jdryan3]

The internet is a huge wasteland, you have zillon's of users all working with different quality devices, with displays all in differing conditions. When the majority of web users feel about the consistency of images that those of use working in an ICC aware application like Photoshop do, we may get somewhere.

There IS no standard. And if people used the products above that you mention, it wouldn't matter. Its far, far easier for those who care about consistent color to simply use the right browser and of course, do what they've been doing to work in Photoshop and other ICC aware applications: Calibrate and profile their displays. Every month. More often with a newer unit.

I wonder if anyone saw this on the IEBlog (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/01/21/compatibility-and-ie8.aspx) re: IE8 and Acid2, plus the new IE8 Super Mode. What is interesting, since they are touting standards (specifically the W3C (http://webstandards.org/) standards and the European Union's atttiude towards web standards), is that I can find no reference to ICC or Color profiles in those web standards? XML, HTML, CSS -yes. ICC - nada!

[jfriend]

No, my issue is that if I calibrate my monitor at 6500K and 2.2 gamma, I have an sRGB image, and my Photoshop working space is set to sRGB, then the display in Photoshop should equal the display in Firefox.

Medicine's mantra is, "First, Do No Harm." I don't see why the end result of calibration should be inaccurate colors in Firefox (and all but .01% of images be inaccurate in Safari).

After thinking about this some more, I wonder if the choice of color temperature for the monitor in the calibration/profiling process could be messing things up and actually making things worse for the monitor (with non-color-managed software) after calibration.

It appears that the one actual calibration step that can happen with regular LCD monitors is to manipulate the video card to set the color temperature. It stands to reason that if a wrong choice is made for the color temperature, then the default monitor display (w/o color management) could get worse rather than better. If that were true, then the inverse could be true also. It might be possible to actually tweak the color temperature setting until the non-color-managed display was pretty close to accurate (at least for one particular color range that you cared most about like caucassian skin).

Obviously, it wouldn't be as good a display as true color management because that requires more than just one linear variable (the monitor profile can be non-linear and vary by color channel). But, it should be possible to make it better. I might play with this on my monitor tonight. I also have a displeasing mismatch between Firefox and Photoshop for skin tone. If it's possible to tweak the monitor so this mismatch is smaller while still giving Photoshop an accurate monitor profile to work from, that would be nice.

Why we get to pick the color temperature or gamma at all still beffudles me. Why don't we just plug in the calibrator and tell it to just "do the right thing?"

[arodney]

Why we get to pick the color temperature or gamma at all still beffudles me. Why don't we just plug in the calibrator and tell it to just "do the right thing?"

Because the "right thing" varies depending on what the heck you're doing.

If you want to keep a native setting, well use that if your calibration allows it (Native White Point and Gamma). Then you don't introduce any LUT, you simply profile the display as it is (which may or may not be "right" depending on what you're trying to soft proof). Same with luminance.

[jfriend]

Because the "right thing" varies depending on what the heck you're doing.

This one has me confused.

Can you please explain why there isn't a single right answer for doing digital photography? When would the answer be 5000 and when would it be 6500 and when would it be something else? What do you choose and why?

Does the display of an image in Photoshop vary depending upon what color temperature setting in your calibration/profiling software you choose?

[arodney]

This one has me confused.

Can you please explain why there isn't a single right answer for doing digital photography? When would the answer be 5000 and when would it be 6500 and when would it be something else? What do you choose and why?

Does the display of an image in Photoshop vary depending upon what color temperature setting in your calibration/profiling software you choose?

The white point is based on viewing conditions of a print. Are you viewing them at D50? And even if you do, does D50 provide a good screen to print matching? Its a bit too warm? So you calibrate to D55.

Gamma is dumb, you should just use Native 99% of the time. I'd like the color management software companies to just do this automatically unless some expert preference is selected. But say you're on a Windows machine, using non ICC aware applications and you want to calibrate to a TRC gamma of 1.8 so it "looks" like a Mac. You're now given the opportunity to do so.

This goes back to Baldy's idea that somehow, out of the box, display’s should somehow conform to a fixed behavior, one as poor as sRGB so web users can sort of, maybe see the same color. That's removing all kinds of useful functionality that many users want to fix an issue that can be fixed by simply using the right browser.

Its like the guy who buys a $200,000 sports car capable of going 200mph but there's a speed limiter that only lets it go to 130mph.

We could enforce the speed limits in the US by simply forcing all auto's to only go a max of 75mph. How well do you think that would go over to the buying public?

[jfriend]

The white point is based on viewing conditions of a print. Are you viewing them at D50? And even if you do, does D50 provide a good screen to print matching? Its a bit too warm? So you calibrate to D55.

Gamma is dumb, you should just use Native 99% of the time. I'd like the color management software companies to just do this automatically unless some expert preference is selected. But say you're on a Windows machine, using non ICC aware applications and you want to calibrate to a TRC gamma of 1.8 so it "looks" like a Mac. You're now given the opportunity to do so.

This goes back to Baldy's idea that somehow, out of the box, display’s should somehow conform to a fixed behavior, one as poor as sRGB so web users can sort of, maybe see the same color. That's removing all kinds of useful functionality that many users want to fix an issue that can be fixed by simply using the right browser.

Its like the guy who buys a $200,000 sports car capable of going 200mph but there's a speed limiter that only lets it go to 130mph.

We could enforce the speed limits in the US by simply forcing all auto's to only go a max of 75mph. How well do you think that would go over to the buying public?

So, does the choice of color temperature influence how things look in Photoshop (e.g. in color-managed applications) too?

Can you point me to any scientific method (e.g. step by step method) for figuring out what color temperature is the right choice for a specific office setting? Is this covered in your book? Any online references? The EyeOne Display 2 software just assume you know the answer to this question and doesn't offer any help at all.

[arodney]

So, does the choice of color temperature influence how things look in Photoshop (e.g. in color-managed applications) too?

Yes.

Can you point me to any scientific method (e.g. step by step method) for figuring out what color temperature is the right choice for a specific office setting? Is this covered in your book?

Measure the color with a Spectrophotometer like an EyeOne Pro. You need to measure the area or viewing box where you'll view the prints. Then control other lighting so its not affecting this area. This is why companies like GTI make Fluorescent boxes for viewing transparencies and prints as does Solux.

Note that even a so called "daylight" Fluorescent box like those by GTI are not producing true, full spectrum daylight (impossible with a Fluorescent). And you may need to use a different correlated color temperature to produce a color match. For example, two weeks ago I was at photographer Art Wolfe's studio in Seattle setting them up. They have a GTI lightbox and a NEC 2690 display. Once we got the luminance of the two to visually match, we ended up calibrating the white point of the display to D55 to get a very close screen to print match. D50 was too warm, D65 too cool.

[jfriend]

Yes.



Measure the color with a Spectrophotometer like an EyeOne Pro. You need to measure the area or viewing box where you'll view the prints. Then control other lighting so its not affecting this area. This is why companies like GTI make Fluorescent boxes for viewing transparencies and prints as does Solux.

Note that even a so called "daylight" Fluorescent box like those by GTI are not producing true, full spectrum daylight (impossible with a Fluorescent). And you may need to use a different correlated color temperature to produce a color match. For example, two weeks ago I was at photographer Art Wolfe's studio in Seattle setting them up. They have a GTI lightbox and a NEC 2690 display. Once we got the luminance of the two to visually match, we ended up calibrating the white point of the display to D55 to get a very close screen to print match. D50 was too warm, D65 too cool.

OK, I understand what you're saying now. But, I'm amazed that this is the desirable way to calibrate a screen for general purpose use.

You are saying that you have to decide what print viewing conditions you want your screen to match and you have to calibrate your screen for that specific condition which is unique to your own little world. I get how there are some specific cases where this is the goal, but most people use their screen for a much wider variety of things than print viewing in one specific type of lighting.

What if I'm calibrating my screen primarily for web display and I want my screen to show the same thing that other people with calibrated/profiled displays will see when we all use color-managed tools? Can't I just ask for "accurate" color reproduction on my screen that matches a color standard?

What if I'm primarily using my screen to prepare prints for people that will view them in unknown lighting? What would I choose then?

[arodney]

OK, I understand what you're saying now. But, I'm amazed that this is the desirable way to calibrate a screen for general purpose use.

What's general purpose work?

You are saying that you have to decide what print viewing conditions you want your screen to match and you have to calibrate your screen for that specific condition which is unique to your own little world.

Well if your goal is to view a print and an emissive display and get them to match, yes. If you view a print alone (no display) outside in morning light, afternoon light and sunset, plus under a desk lamp, they don't look the same!

What if I'm calibrating my screen primarily for web display and I want my screen to show the same thing that other people with calibrated/profiled displays will see when we all use color-managed tools? Can't I just ask for "accurate" color reproduction on my screen that matches a color standard?

You can ask what everyone else is using and match that. Now consider that most users don't calibrate the display at all. And consider that the display is changing its behavior over time, as little as monthly. Then consider that you're asking that what you see and everyone of those users sees matches. See the problem? Worse, these people are not only not calibrating their displays the same way, they don't use an ICC aware web browser.

What if I'm primarily using my screen to prepare prints for people that will view them in unknown lighting? What would I choose then?

Guess. Good luck. This is why we try to limit the variables as much as possible. Calibration, profiling and using ICC aware applications make this far less variable but without communication with others, you're left guessing.

[jfriend]

What's general purpose work?



Well if your goal is to view a print and an emissive display and get them to match, yes. If you view a print alone (no display) outside in morning light, afternoon light and sunset, plus under a desk lamp, they don't look the same!



You can ask what everyone else is using and match that. Now consider that most users don't calibrate the display at all. And consider that the display is changing its behavior over time, as little as monthly. Then consider that you're asking that what you see and everyone of those users sees matches. See the problem? Worse, these people are not only not calibrating their displays the same way, they don't use an ICC aware web browser.



Guess. Good luck. This is why we try to limit the variables as much as possible. Calibration, profiling and using ICC aware applications make this far less variable but without communication with others, you're left guessing.

Wow, I'm surprised at the state of this technology. This whole process looks like it's designed for the professional who's producing a specific type of locally printed result viewed under controlled circumstances and will optimize their environment for that specific result. I expect that was the predominant marketplace for color calibration equipment 5 years ago, but I don't think that is the largest part of the marketplace any more.

There is a new breed of folks who are not professionals, do not have a color controlled viewing station for printers, but they are now trying to calibrate their displays to improve their color accuracy. Many of this new breed may not even print important prints themselves. Rather, they want to:

Produce images for the web that will display as good as possible for all viewers (at least no obvious color casts).
Produce images for the web that will display the same on their screen as for other people who have calibrated their screens and are using color-managed viewers.
Produce images that will be printed on ICC profiled printers at various printing services (either the local Costco/Wal-mart or one of the online Labs like MPIX or EzPrints).
Show people images or slideshows on their own computer.I'm coming to the conclusion that today's tools are not designed for this. They are designed to match print view in a particular lighting when you know the color temperature of that lighting.

It seems like the market would be ripe for a new set of calibration tools that would calibrate an emmissive display to a known color standard such that everyone who uses the tool on their emmisive display would see the same colors when using color managed applications. These new tools would not ask you a color temperature question because the goal is to match a color standard, not to match the lighting used for print viewing.

[arodney]

Yes and it would be great if we had star trek transporters

What you're asking for is that no matter what we view, where we view it, everything matches. And yet, we can't break the law of physics. If you agree that no matter what illuminant we use, it affects the perception of color on a print, how do we handle this automatic calibration? If we agree that everyone's display is different out of the box, let alone over time (or based on how they might adjust it), how does everyone sync up a new LCD producing 300cd/m2 in a dim room and someone with a 10 year old CRT sitting beside a pink wall and a large window?

What you're saying is, you'd like a prefect world and so would I. Now back to reality. We have tools today to produce pretty good print to screen matching considering one's reflective and the other emissive and using quite different technologies just to make the light. It requires tools and techniques (and some money).

The technology is just as much designed for pros as it's not. A $300 LCD and a $5000 LCD ain't the same in terms of who they are designed for and what they can provide.

It seems like the market would be ripe for a new set of calibration tools that would calibrate an emmissive display to a known color standard such that everyone who uses the tool on their emmisive display would see the same colors when using color managed applications. These new tools would not ask you a color temperature question because the goal is to match a color standard, not to match the lighting used for print viewing.

And it should be inexpensive and come with a brain probe to read the users mind because they can't possibly tell the product what ambient light conditions they are under, what products they are using and what their goals are.

Really, you're asking for something that today isn't possible at any cost. The market is ripe for a car that gets 99mpg and runs on water but it don't exist. So instead of writing about science fiction here, lets get back to what IS possible today with current technology.

IF you want your print to match your display and get a web page to match what you see in Photoshop, that's possible. I've described how. Now what?

[jdryan3]

There is a new breed of folks who are not professionals, do not have a color controlled viewing station for printers, but they are now trying to calibrate their displays to improve their color accuracy. Many of this new breed may not even print important prints themselves. Rather, they want to:

Produce images for the web that will display as good as possible for all viewers (at least no obvious color casts).
Produce images for the web that will display the same on their screen as for other people who have calibrated their screens and are using color-managed viewers.
Produce images that will be printed on ICC profiled printers at various printing services (either the local Costco/Wal-mart or one of the online Labs like MPIX or EzPrints).
Show people images or slideshows on their own computer.I'm coming to the conclusion that today's tools are not designed for this. They are designed to match print view in a particular lighting when you know the color temperature of that lighting.

It is typical of technology - 2 steps forward, 3, uh, 1 step back. I think there are 3 groups: those that care and are willing to do almost anything; those that care and are willing to do something, but not much ( look in the hlep, downlaod a patch, flip a setting); and those who not only don't care, they don't even notice. Absolutely indifferent.

Putting almost anyone in this forum in group one, I think the B*tching by group 2 is what will drive change. That and just the typical maturity of a technology. And I don't mean digital photography. I mean browsers as a primary means of communication. It is still in its infancy. More people do it but most aren't yet demanding a 'quality' experience.

Add in digital photography, HD DVD quality games, and HD TV... those thing will simply drive the end users to demand a quality experience across media. Only then will it happen.

It seems like the market would be ripe for a new set of calibration tools that would calibrate an emmissive display to a known color standard such that everyone who uses the tool on their emmisive display would see the same colors when using color managed applications. These new tools would not ask you a color temperature question because the goal is to match a color standard, not to match the lighting used for print viewing.
I think this plays right into Andrew's statements re: a lack of standards. If there were standards, you could eliminate the need for the ad hoc adaptive tools you mention. But as mentioned in the IEblog posting, MS wants to move that way, but leave no non-compliant enduser or their equipment behind, "like his mom."

So if you could even enable in the options to turn on/off the ability (default being ON) IE8 to use ICC profiles, it would go a long way to heading down that path. Those that even slightly care, will notice. Those that don't, well ...

:soapbox

[jfriend]

Yes and it would be great if we had star trek transporters

What you're asking for is that no matter what we view, where we view it, everything matches. And yet, we can't break the law of physics. If you agree that no matter what illuminant we use, it affects the perception of color on a print, how do we handle this automatic calibration? If we agree that everyone's display is different out of the box, let alone over time (or based on how they might adjust it), how does everyone sync up a new LCD producing 300cd/m2 in a dim room and someone with a 10 year old CRT sitting beside a pink wall and a large window?

What you're saying is, you'd like a prefect world and so would I. Now back to reality. We have tools today to produce pretty good print to screen matching considering one's reflective and the other emissive and using quite different technologies just to make the light. It requires tools and techniques (and some money).

The technology is just as much designed for pros as it's not. A $300 LCD and a $5000 LCD ain't the same in terms of who they are designed for and what they can provide.



And it should be inexpensive and come with a brain probe to read the users mind because they can't possibly tell the product what ambient light conditions they are under, what products they are using and what their goals are.

Really, you're asking for something that today isn't possible at any cost. The market is ripe for a car that gets 99mpg and runs on water but it don't exist. So instead of writing about science fiction here, lets get back to what IS possible today with current technology.

IF you want your print to match your display and get a web page to match what you see in Photoshop, that's possible. I've described how. Now what?
Andrew, I don't know why you decided to stop being helpful and go off into Star Trek land and science fiction. I'm working really hard here trying to keep the conversation with you on a productive level and I'm trying to add a perspective that you may not live every day of the photographic prosumer who uses the web a lot and doesn't do their own printing (which happens to represent a lot of the users here on dgrin and customers of Smugmug).

To that end, I don't think I asked for nuclear fusion here. All I asked for was the ability to push a button (with a hardware puck attached and with no question asked about color temperature) and have an emissive display calibrated to produce a standard set of colors such that if a non-color-professional on the other side of the world does the same thing with their display, both our displays will look the same when using color-managed apps.

I explicitly excluded anything to do with prints or print lighting. If you think that's not possible, I'd like to know why. If we need to turn off all ambient lighting so that all light is coming from the emissive display, I'm even willing to stipulate to that.

Is this technically impossible? If it is, please explain why you think it's impossible rather than just telling me it's an unreachable thing to wish for with 99 mpg car analogies.

Also, I do not believe you have described how one goes about setting up a display so that my view of a web page matches what another color-calibrated professional sees in their view of a web page. As you've described it so far, if the two of us choose different color temperatures, our views of that web page will be different even if we do everything else you've recommended. So, the only way Baldy and I can calibrate our displays to match is to communicate on picking the same color temperature? Or if we don't communicate and I pick 5000 and Baldy picks 6500, then he will view my images a lot cooler than I do (given all apps are color-managed)?

[arodney]

Andrew, I don't know why you decided to stop being helpful and go off into Star Trek land and science fiction.

Because what you're asking for is highly unrealistic. There's what we'd like to have and what we currently have. What we currently have isn't perfect but it works, it has for over a decade. It does require certain work and an expense by the user but so does a display, an ISP and something to digitize images to place on the web. I've stated how we can produce matching color appearance in all ICC aware applications. Wishing that some display out of the box that conforms to some as yet undefined "standard" will make the web appear to everyone the same way isn't going to happen any time soon and its currently not necessary.

I'm working really hard here trying to keep the conversation with you on a productive level and I'm trying to add a perspective that you may not live every day of the photographic prosumer who uses the web a lot and doesn't do their own printing (which happens to represent a lot of the users here on dgrin and customers of Smugmug).

I don't pretend to know what all consumers or Pro's want or need. I don't know that anyone can. I know what I need in terms of color matching and getting it isn't really difficult and by 1998 standards, pretty inexpensive.

As I've said here in the past (and beautifully expressed by jdryan3 above), there are three basic types of users and two are not a problem (one doesn't care, the other does whatever they have to do to make things work). Group #2 is the PITA.

To that end, I don't think I asked for nuclear fusion here. All I asked for was the ability to push a button (with a hardware puck attached and with no question asked about color temperature) and have an emissive display calibrated to produce a standard set of colors such that if a non-color-professional on the other side of the world does the same thing with their display, both our displays will look the same when using color-managed apps.

We kind of have this but the problem is, there's no guarantee its going to work enough for camp #1 because we don't have any idea how they will view the prints. If all you want to do is calibrate a display inexpensively with the least amount of color geek speak, there's the Pantone huey. It works, it asks as few questions of the user as possible and doesn't try to deal with terms like "gamma" and "White Point". Its a step in the right direction. Its not going to fly for camp #1, its pretty close to making camp #2 happy (the jury is out here as there's no way we'll please all the people in camp #2 all the time).

Also, I do not believe you have described how one goes about setting up a display so that my view of a web page matches what another color-calibrated professional sees in their view of a web page.

In the context of camp #2, you get a huey and you set it for Web viewing (that's what they call it) then you hope everyone else you deal with does the same.

[jfriend]

Because what you're asking for is highly unrealistic. There's what we'd like to have and what we currently have. What we currently have isn't perfect but it works, it has for over a decade. It does require certain work and an expense by the user but so does a display, an ISP and something to digitize images to place on the web. I've stated how we can produce matching color appearance in all ICC aware applications. Wishing that some display out of the box that conforms to some as yet undefined "standard" will make the web appear to everyone the same way isn't going to happen any time soon and its currently not necessary.



I don't pretend to know what all consumers or Pro's want or need. I don't know that anyone can. I know what I need in terms of color matching and getting it isn't really difficult and by 1998 standards, pretty inexpensive.

As I've said here in the past (and beautifully expressed by jdryan3 above), there are three basic types of users and two are not a problem (one doesn't care, the other does whatever they have to do to make things work). Group #2 is the PITA.



We kind of have this but the problem is, there's no guarantee its going to work enough for camp #1 because we don't have any idea how they will view the prints. If all you want to do is calibrate a display inexpensively with the least amount of color geek speak, there's the Pantone huey. It works, it asks as few questions of the user as possible and doesn't try to deal with terms like "gamma" and "White Point". Its a step in the right direction. Its not going to fly for camp #1, its pretty close to making camp #2 happy (the jury is out here as there's no way we'll please all the people in camp #2 all the time).



In the context of camp #2, you get a huey and you set it for Web viewing (that's what they call it) then you hope everyone else you deal with does the same.

Thanks. If you had some other calibration brand (besides a Huey) that asks for a white point temperature and you are most interested in web viewing, do you have any recommendation for what temperature setting to set it to? Do we know what the Huey decides to use in that case?

[arodney]

Thanks. If you had some other calibration brand (besides a Huey) that asks for a white point temperature and you are most interested in web viewing, do you have any recommendation for what temperature setting to set it to? Do we know what the Huey decides to use in that case?

D50.

As for the huey:

http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200605_pantonehuey.pdf

[Baldy]

If you have an LCD display, you may NOT be calibrating your display to a particular color standard.

You may be just profiling your display (measuring it's current color performance and characteristics) and dropping that profile in a standard location for color aware apps to find it. Firefox may not display any differently before or after profiling your display.John, you're the master of clarity. Thanks!

I haven't read the links you referenced yet but will, hopefully tonight. One hypothesis Andy and I talked about was that, depending on your monitor/graphics card combo, the OS has limited control over how much color change it can make via controlling the hardware, whereas Photoshop has more latitude via software.

The thing that's throwing us is when you change the monitor profile, Firefox's display changes (as does Photoshop's). On my Mac, I can flip between the sRGB profile Apple includes, the sRGB profile Adobe includes, the profile Dell includes, and the Eye-One profile from the hardware calibration/profiling--and FF renders the same photo quite differently for all 4 (the Eye-One profile makes web pages look too red and too saturated).

And Andrew has said on our forums that the browser uses the monitor profile. In his book he says, "Most products ensure the profile is placed in the proper location on your hard drive and set this profile for use by the operating system (unless told not to)."

The other color management books say, "As the OS is booting you'll see a shift in color. That's the OS putting the monitor profile to work."

One confusing point to me is Andrew's book also says, "Apple's Safari running under OSX also is able to recognize embedded profiles and/or assume sRGB so it should preview images correctly." I'm assuming that's old/bad info from Apple.

Yeah, I know I'm daft, but getting great clarity on this will do the world a big favor. I'll write it up as a help section if we can nail it. You see photographers everywhere on the forums struggling with this (and blaming SmugMug for making photos from their newly-calibrated monitors look like bletch).

[Baldy]

No, no no! Repeat after me: Safari is correct, Photoshop is correct.Sorry to be daft, but can you show me some example web pages that Safari displays correctly? I get the feeling you're going to show us pages that are jpeg-only with ICC profiles attached. I can see how that satisfies photographers who are only focused on photos, but I think I speak for all web designers when I say we think the rest of the page should display correctly too.

[arodney]

The thing that's throwing us is when you change the monitor profile, Firefox's display changes (as does Photoshop's).

Of course it does, as I explained to Andy. When you load the profile, a LUT is loaded into the graphic card (if a LUT exists, not all profiles do this). Now go into Photoshop and if you are quick, you'll see yet another redraw. That's Photoshop using Display Using Monitor Compensation based on the new profile. You will NOT see this in non ICC aware applications, they don't know the profile exits.

And Andrew has said on our forums that the browser uses the monitor profile.

ICC aware browsers do, non ICC aware browsers do not.

The other color management books say, "As the OS is booting you'll see a shift in color. That's the OS putting the monitor profile to work."

No, that's the LUT being loaded.

One confusing point to me is Andrew's book also says, "Apple's Safari running under OSX also is able to recognize embedded profiles and/or assume sRGB so it should preview images correctly." I'm assuming that's old/bad info from Apple.

OS X used to allow you to pick a profile for untagged documents OR assume sRGB. That was if memory serves me, the OS before Tiger. Tiger forward now assumes Monitor RGB (which is dumb). The functionality described on page 277-279 in my book is no longer available, you can't select what profile to use for untagged docs (step in the wrong direction). Look at figure 8.1 in my book and what you now have in OSX and you'll see that the Preference button and those options are now gone.

[arodney]

Sorry to be daft, but can you show me some example web pages that Safari displays correctly? I get the feeling you're going to show us pages that are jpeg-only with ICC profiles attached. I can see how that satisfies photographers who are only focused on photos, but I think I speak for all web designers when I say we think the rest of the page should display correctly too.

Every web gallery I've got matches what I see in Photoshop and Lightroom:
http://digitaldog.net/ARsAmazonPicks/
http://www.digitaldog.net/GormanMendo07/index.html

And so on...

And then there's this:
http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter

By all means, speak for web designers, I'm not one. I'm also not viewing the boarders and stuff around images of web pages in Photoshop (nor do I really care).

[Andy]

nor do I really care).

I think this is the bit that is making some of us bristle at your comments and line of reasoning.

You are talking about a world where everyone has Safari - or goes and gets it ... but in reality, 90+% of the viewers of photos ( made by digital photographers who use Dgrin, SmugMug, Flickr, et. al., or their own websites or blogs) are in a world based on reality, that reality being a browser that is not Safari.

And we (photographers who display our photos on the web, and order / sell prints from them, said prints made from a lab affiliated with our website) are looking for ways to mitigate the huge difference in display.

[bwg]

Every web gallery I've got matches what I see in Photoshop and Lightroom:
http://digitaldog.net/ARsAmazonPicks/
http://www.digitaldog.net/GormanMendo07/index.html


so, i've been lurking trying to soak all this in.

The galleries you linked are in Flash, a non-color managed application.

Based on what i've understood so far, those photos may look completely different to you and me even though I'm using safari and have a calibrated/profiled monitor. Correct?

[Baldy]

Every web gallery I've got matches what I see in Photoshop and Lightroom:
http://digitaldog.net/ARsAmazonPicks/ I saw those. They're beautiful, Andrew. I dunno what shade of gray you're using and it doesn't sound like it's important to you. I know you know this, but who knows what that gray is gonna be on different monitors?
And then there's this:
http://www.color.org/version4html.xalterYikes, that's really scary. I'm assuming you used that as an ultra-ironic example of how bad it can get.

The International Color Consortium doesn't care enough about color on its pages to use an ICC profile on the jpeg of crayons. Their logo, CMYK color swatches, and the color checker on the bottom are all mystery gifs.

Not even Apple attaches an ICC profile to its banner for Aperture on its own pages:

http://images.apple.com/aperture/images/index00.jpg

If even the ICC and Apple won't use ICC profiles in their own pages, web designers have to find a better way. I think John's suggestion of tags makes a lot of sense.

[arodney]

I think this is the bit that is making some of us bristle at your comments and line of reasoning.

You are talking about a world where everyone has Safari - or goes and gets it ... but in reality, 90+% of the viewers of photos

I'm talking about anyone today who has the need for a color managed browser. Hopefully other's will follow. But what you say is moot since you either care what you view is correct or you don't. If you do, its not brain surgery to download Safari, it cost nothing.

If of the 90% of those you specify, 80% don't care, fine. You only need to deal with the 10% that do.

This really is a straw man argument on your part Andy. We have products that don't work properly and those that do. Those that care will use the appropriate products.

Something like 33% of Americans are over weight or obese and the masses love MacDonalds. With your reasoning, the rest of the population is doomed because you assume they are not intelligent enough to eat well and exercise. That 90% of your users don't work with Safari may be factual. But the question is, how many care about the images they preview and how many know that the browser they use is the cause of the mismatch? Instead of crying about how many don't use Safari, why not spend some energies educating those that DO care but don't know why the current browser they use is providing incorrect previews?

[arodney]

I saw those. They're beautiful, Andrew. I dunno what shade of gray you're using and it doesn't sound like it's important to you. I know you know this, but who knows what that gray is gonna be on different monitors?

Thanks. Maybe its luck or coincidence but the gray bkdng on the Amazon web galleries and the gray in LR.'s web module (Lightroom Flash Gallery) are the same. But you're right, I don't care all that much. If it were pink, I'd care!

[Andy]

I'm talking about anyone today who has the need for a color managed browser. Hopefully other's will follow. But what you say is moot since you either care what you view is correct or you don't. If you do, its not brain surgery to download Safari, it cost nothing.
Ahh actuall it would cost a fortune :D How much do you think Microsoft has spent to keep it's dominant browser market share? The sad truth is, the majority of people out there don't even know there are other browsers, and don't know you can have more than one. They are afraid of anything different.

If of the 90% of those you specify, 80% don't care, fine. You only need to deal with the 10% that do.

Not really wise when you have millions of visitors and customers hitting the site. Do you see where we are coming from now?

This really is a straw man argument on your part Andy. We have products that don't work properly and those that do. Those that care will use the appropriate products.

Something like 33% of Americans are over weight or obese and the masses love MacDonalds. With your reasoning, the rest of the population is doomed because you assume they are not intelligent enough to eat well and exercise. That 90% of your users don't work with Safari may be factual. But the question is, how many care about the images they preview and how many know that the browser they use is the cause of the mismatch? Instead of crying about how many don't use Safari, why not spend some energies educating those that DO care but don't know why the current browser they use is providing incorrect previews?
See above - it's a monumental task :)

[arodney]

Ahh actuall it would cost a fortune :D How much do you think Microsoft has spent to keep it's dominant browser market share? The sad truth is, the majority of people out there don't even know there are other browsers, and don't know you can have more than one.

Tell them. Show them the differences. Or do you guys work for MS? I haven't used an MS browser on the Mac for years (and for good reason) but if memory serves me, it was free then and I'd have to assume its free now.

But lets say people who us MS browsers, as you say, will go kicking and screaming before they switch. We have to assume then that the color appearance of images on the web is less important. Let em have the non color managed browser. That's not a hill worth dying on.

Again, I keep saying this over and over, and the replies are (forgive me) lame. You have people who care about color consistency and those that don't. I'd like a dollar for all the posts I've made here and elsewhere from Photographers who want to know why images they see in their browsers don't match what they see in Photoshop (or Lightroom, Aperture, Bibble, Elements etc). I have to assume they care. They did notice and they do want the two to match. The solution is really damn simple. What isn't, is having to spend far too much time writing all this crap and convincing people that their beloved browser is totally brain dead about previewing images. Of course that's not the case with Mac users because thankfully (despite criticism of how they may upload images to the web), the browsers are color managed as a default install. So at least those that "think different" can be kept out of this goofy equation.

Not really wise when you have millions of visitors and customers hitting the site. Do you see where we are coming from now?

No I don't! You apparently host a site where images and how they preview are important? Have you gone to similar pages where someone has a link that shows a gray ramp in a somewhat ineffective effort to convince the viewer that the display isn't correct? You simply need a banner "do you want to see these images correctly?" or something like that. "No, I could care less, lets get to the photo's" one group will say. The other will say "yes, damn straight I want to view the images correctly" then you tell them how.

Of you can assume they are mind readers. Or dismiss education because someone might have to switch to a new browser.

Seriously, I get the idea that you'd like to bitch about his issue but nothing more. What are you going to do to educate your clientele about this issue of mismatching previews? You take ads? How about asking X-rite or Color Vision to pop up one for their colorimeter? Whatever. But to say "Its too hard" or "Too many users are on MS browsers, we're doomed" is not acceptable. Personally I don't care what you do. But I suspect YOU do.

Or we can wait on that star trek perfect world. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

[pathfinder]

Not only are there viewers who do not know the different way browsers display colors, there are lots of folks who view the web at work through the only browser they are allowed to use IE 6 or IE 7. DAMHIK:D

Needless to say, I work with a Mac and Safari on a calibrated monitor when allowed. Like at home.

[Baldy]

Your galleries are in Flash, a non-color managed application.He's right, Andrew. Your galleries are not color managed. They look the same in Safari, IE and Firefox, and different than your photos do in Photoshop. Safari has no choice but to ignore the ICC profile you're attaching, so it's only serving to slow down image loads.

[jdryan3]

As I've said here in the past (and beautifully expressed by jdryan3 above), there are three basic types of users and two are not a problem (one doesn't care, the other does whatever they have to do to make things work). Group #2 is the PITA.

My groupings, his opinion. But not mine. I love your passion and have learned a lot from your postings. Your advocacy is needed. You are not tilting against windmills.

But Group #2 isn't just Baldy & Andy's concern. They are the people who buy images from the photographers who are SmugMug account holders -regular up to Pro accounts.

I'll agree most people who use SmugMug to host their images need to be educated. But based upon the online help SmugMug provides and the many threads in Dgrin about Soft proofing, calibration, and related topics, I think they (we?) have the photographers covered. Yeah, there are those who ask the question, get the answer and say "Oh, I'm not laying out $79 for Huey. I'll just eyeball it/compare to some print/ blah blah blah". But those folks in reality are Group 3's. Indifferent.

The harder one to deal with is those photgrapher's customers. Who is responsible for them? Remember: a lot of those people are going to mypictures.smugmug.com, not dgrin. I do like the idea of a graybar in the footer of the page - I think I'll add one to mine. And maybe Baldy/Andy will consider having it load as part of the website template default.

But we do live in an IE world. Period. End of conversation. Netscape lost, the Phoenix of Mozilla/Firefox not withstanding. Oops! Firefox is not ICC aware. Apple only last year came out with a version of Safari for the PC. Are you positive it is ICC aware? Or is only the Mac version? Apple has <10% of PC market worldwide. Do the SmugMug account holders and stakeholders just ignore them, send them off to Fl*ckr?

Baldy is trying to find a way to resolve the issue of printed product differing from what is online. And I doubt we are talking slight color shifts. Someone on another thread was talking about green hair recently. Between my camera, post processing, loading to SmugMug and some person who I never met but liked my work at a benefit show ordering prints, there are at least 4 touch points where color management comes into play. I can control 3, some with SmugMug's help. But that last one, the customer ordering the print, I can't. Not gonna happen. But, unlike you, I do care. And I'm glad Baldy does too, enough that he puts it out there to try and find out what HE can do. Or at least find out enough to be able to tell those folks/ post on the order form/ include in the online help for buyers what the issues may be.

:whew

[SloYerRoll]

Here's a link for the rest of the world that's reading this thread and wonders what the real pecentages of web browser use is:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

[arodney]

He's right, Andrew. Your galleries are not color managed. They look the same in Safari, IE and Firefox, and different than your photos do in Photoshop. Safari has no choice but to ignore the ICC profile you're attaching, so it's only serving to slow down image loads.

As far as I know, LR is embedding sRGB in the documents. And the previews perfectly match what I see in Safari on my machine to LR (and Photoshop).

I may upload a gallery not using Flash (I don't really care if its a Flash gallery or not, that's just the LR default I've used a few times) to see if there's a difference.

Color managing Flash IS something Adobe is working on. More I can't say due to NDAs.

[arodney]

But Group #2 isn't just Baldy & Andy's concern. They are the people who buy images from the photographers who are SmugMug account holders -regular up to Pro accounts.

We could say the same thing about the masses who purchase stuff on the web, pick colors and either keep what they purchased or don't (and complain). You'd think that if MS thought this was a huge issue for the masses, they'd fix the browser. So maybe this isn't a big deal. Well it is a big deal for camp #1 or anyone who notices and makes a stink. And those are the people we can address.

Yeah, there are those who ask the question, get the answer and say "Oh, I'm not laying out $79 for Huey. I'll just eyeball it/compare to some print/ blah blah blah". But those folks in reality are Group 3's. Indifferent.

We can't dictate to others what is or isn't an important product to use to get results we think are more important than they do. If they don't want to calibrate their displays even with a huey, fine. Let them eyeball it. If they have a problem with color matching after that experience, they have to decide if the product is now a good expenditure or not. I'm not suggesting we force anyone to do anything. We do however need to have a simple, well written reply to those who have problems. Its called tech support (something I do every day for my company). I have people that are really smart and those that sometimes I feel shouldn't own a computer. But they have a problem and I have to tell them how to solve it as simply as possible. If they don't like the way Photoshop runs because they don't have enough ram and don't want to buy more, well we're done once I tell them what's absolutely required to speed up Photoshop. But its their money. Its their time.

What I don't accept is the idea that there's no solution to the problem because people will not switch browsers or calibrate their display. That is primarily the fix. After I tell them how to fix the problem, I'm done, they can decide to take the advise or not.

The harder one to deal with is those photgrapher's customers. Who is responsible for them? Remember: a lot of those people are going to mypictures.smugmug.com, not dgrin.

The people selling them something are responsible.

I do like the idea of a graybar in the footer of the page - I think I'll add one to mine. And maybe Baldy/Andy will consider having it load as part of the website template default.

So when the user see's it looks like crap, now what? Alter the crude controls on the display? Showing them a mismatch is only the first start. Now do they fix the issue (correctly)? There's the link to the ICC I posted that shows a mismatch on non ICC aware browsers. Its too geeky a page for this group but someone could build a similar presentation and explain how to fix the issue.

But we do live in an IE world. Period. End of conversation.

Just as we live in a MacDonalds (Fast Food Nation). I don't have to eat there. That's not an excuse not to at least try to educate users who care about what they see on their browsers. It doesn't matter how many people use IE. It matters how many care about what they view and will do something about it. I'm no more likely to run into people's homes and install Safari as I am about to run into MacDonalds and pull Big Mac's out of people's mouths.

Baldy is trying to find a way to resolve the issue of printed product differing from what is online.

I told him how.

And I doubt we are talking slight color shifts. Someone on another thread was talking about green hair recently.

We can only speculate. Brown hair that looks green is a major screw up, its more than a browser or color management issue. The link Andy sent me is a good illustration. On the phone he told me there was big differences in the previews (how do we define big differences without measuring and using a metric like DeltaE?). I saw the link and wrote back that there were differences, I didn't think they were huge and what I expected to see with a ICC and non ICC aware browser. But nothing like green hair.

Between my camera, post processing, loading to SmugMug and some person who I never met but liked my work at a benefit show ordering prints, there are at least 4 touch points where color management comes into play. I can control 3, some with SmugMug's help. But that last one, the customer ordering the print, I can't. Not gonna happen.

Correct. We have no idea where they will view the print and under what illuminant or surround (pink walls?).

[Baldy]

As far as I know, LR is embedding sRGB in the documents. And the previews perfectly match what I see in Safari on my machine to LR (and Photoshop).I think what that says is you have a good monitor calibration that makes Photoshop match the web. Shipping versions of Flash ignore ICC profiles. And your gallery looks identical in Safari, IE and FF.

[arodney]

I think that proves that a good calibration makes what you see in Photoshop and the web match, as it should. Flash is not color managed today, so even if LR is attaching a profile, it's not being used by Safari.

It can but there's no guarantee.

Now things get interesting when I view my Flash galleries on a wide gamut display (93% of Adobe RGB (1998)). FireFox and Safari match. This probably indicates that the upload from LR doesn't contain a profile. They don't match LR there's a difference in saturation but its not a lot (which I wouldn't have expected). In fact, at least with some of the images I compared, I don't personally mind what I'm seeing on the web pages. A bit more Velvia look to them but nothing I mind. Hue seems to be well maintained, its saturation that is altered. I'm viewing the shot of the man washing his green boat. Adobe RGB (1998) is larger in green primary gamut than sRGB (that's its biggest difference). Looks fine to me. This display is calibrated far from what we'd be calling "sRGB" both in terms of its gamut, luminance etc.

The 23" Cinema display, calibrated and profiled to native gamma and white point looks identical in the three applications. This may be a good point to calibrate such displays to (native/native) where no LUT is being affected.

Unfortunately, not all calibration packages provide this.

[bwg]

It can but there's no guarantee.

Now things get interesting when I view my Flash galleries on a wide gamut display (93% of Adobe RGB (1998)). FireFox and Safari match.

Match what? Each other or Lightroom?

They *should* match each other regardless of monitor because neither one is being color managed.

[arodney]

OK, here is an HTML web gallery test:

http://tinyurl.com/ysbfuu

We have an (original) LAB image, sRGB and Adobe RGB (1998) image with lots of colors.

I see a difference between Firefox and Safari (again, its saturation). Safari matches LR previews on a standard sRGB calibrated and profile display and on a wide gamut display. FireFox doesn't on either.

Note on viewing. Ideally when comparing images, you should do so at 100% (1:1), especially when dealing with Photoshop. Not really possible here due to the size of the web images. But at the very least, attempt to size the comparisons to the same size on screen. Or download the full rez images and resize to match the web.

The full rez image in Lab can be found at:

http://homepage.mac.com/billatkinson/FileSharing2.html

It's 51mb!

The two RGB images are in a folder on my public iDisk called RGB Test Images and are about 12mb:

My public iDisk:

thedigitaldog

Name (lower case) public
Password (lower case) public

Public folder Password is "public" (note the first letter is NOT capitalized).

To go there via a web browser, use this URL:

http://idisk.mac.com/thedigitaldog-Public

[arodney]

Match what? Each other or Lightroom?

They *should* match each other regardless of monitor because neither one is being color managed.

Browser's match each other with Flash, don't with HTML.

[bwg]

Browser's match each other with Flash, don't with HTML.
Right, so why was it interesting when they matched on your wide gamut display?

[jfriend]

I did a bunch of measurements today to see how my monitor behaves in Firefox, Safari and Photoshop with a bunch of different monitor profiles. These are the things I was hoping to gather some info on:
How do Safari, Firefox and Photoshop compare with different calibration profiles?
How does the color temperature setting in the calibration process affect the colors that are displayed in each app
Can I learn anything that might help mitigate the difference between Firefox and Photoshop?
Which color temperature setting is the best for my monitor if my objective is to see accurate color (not a representation of printed output)?Summary of procedure
Get a color chart (once with somewhat standard blocks of color on it)
Make sure it's in sRGB and tagged that way
Resize the image so three copies of it fit at 100% on my screen
Do a particular color calibration of my screen (details below for which ones I did)
Load the image into each app
Position all three apps so I can see all three at the same time
Use my camera as a poor mans color measuring tool by taking a picture of the screen
Load that picture into Photoshop and use the eye dropper to read the color values off 6 different color swatches in the image
Record all those values in both sRGB and LAB (using the info palette in Photoshop)
Calibrate the screen for the next color temperature
Reload all the apps
Take picture, repeat process for each color calibration
Put all results into a spreadsheet
Decide what conclusions I can draw from the data
Write up resultsConclusions

Here are some of the conclusions I can confirm:
The detailed color measurements are in this table (http://jfriend.smugmug.com/gallery/4224024) if you want to see them yourself. I personally find it easier to look at the LAB numbers.
The color temperature setting does indeed affect how a calibrated, profiled screen looks in Photoshop so this color temperature number is very important if you want to see accurate colors
Safari and Photoshop display very similar colors when viewing this ICC profile tagged image (easily within the margin of error of my measurements)
Firefox varies signficantly from Safari and Photoshop (no surprise here)
Firefox displays quite differently after calibrating/profiling than before and how it displays depends a lot on the color temperature number you pick for the calibration process. Since Firefox is not using my monitor profile for monitor compensation (like color-managed apps use), that means the Eye One Display 2 must be changing the default monitor display (probably with LUT values) according to the color temperature setting.
I saw some small luminosity fluctuations between swatches that were otherwise nearly the same color. I don't know exactly why that is, but it could be explained either by slight fluctuations in the backlighting on my monitor or by some light fall-off with my lens.
With this set up, I am unable to assess absolute color accuracy, but I can measure differences between the three different apps. This is because of unknown white balance settings and uncalibrated RAW converter color interpretation. But, the measurements are consistent so they can be used to look at color differences between scenarios, just not absolute color accuracy.
I see the smallest difference between the Firefox colors and the Photoshop colors in either the "native" calibration of the 6000 degree color temperature calibration, though there are still significant differences. The whites/grays are pretty close in Firefox at this temperature, but most of the other colors are significantly different.
There's no good setting that can make skin colors in Firefox get close to Photoshop. I picked the pink and peach color swatches because they were in the same neighborhood of skin color, but they are always different - consistently showing similar luminosity, but higher numbers in both A and B channels.
Looking at the 6000 degree calibration as the one I will probably use, we see that in all swatches measured, Firefox shows A and B values further from zero (more positive and more negative). It's as if, the monitor has "cranked up the color" and the calibrated view through Photoshop has brought it back to reality. This might explain why some people like the Firefox view better than the Photoshop view. It appears to have richer colors.
"Native" for my monitor is almost identical to the 6000 degree calibration. I assume this is monitor dependent.Details of the experiment
Monitor: HP LP3065 (30" LCD).
Windows OS, Vista 32-bit Home Premium
Gretagmacbeth EyeOne Display 2 USB calibrator puck and software
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS video card

In more detail, here's what I did. I started with an image that has a color chart in it. Andrew has one linked from his site on this page (http://www.digitaldog.net/tips/), so I started with that one. It was in the colormatch colorspace so I converted it to sRGB and then downsized it so three simultaneous versions of it would fit on my screen at 100%. Here's what a small version of the image looks like:

http://jfriend.smugmug.com/photos/247018656-M.jpg

While there are lots of colors on this that I can look at to subjectively evaluate, I decided to focus only on the solid colors in the color patch below the photo of the lady as those are easiest to consistently measure with the eye dropper and info palette in Photoshop.

Then, I set a particular color calibration on my screen. For the "uncalibrated view", I used the HP monitor profile that comes with my monitor which is presumably some factor supplied standard monitor profile. For the other color temperatures, I did a full screen calibration using the Eye One Display2 system that I have. I tried to place the puck in the same part of the screen for each calibration. I made the room as dark as possible and even shielded the screen from any stray light through the blinds. I tested all of the following color temperature settings in my color calibration software:
Native
5000 (fairly warm)
5500
6000
6500 (cooler)Then, after setting a particular color calibration, I loaded the test image into each of the three apps. I positioned the apps on the screen so that I could see all three at once.

With my Nikon D2xs and 105mm macro lens on a tripod, set for manual exposure (so the exposure would be exactly the same for all photos), set for fixed sunlight white balance (so we'd have a consistent WB setting for all photos), I took a picture of the screen in RAW.

I noticed that if I focused on the screen to make the image sharp, I would get a lot of moire. This is likely because the pitch of the pixels on the screen is somewhat close to the pixel pitch on my sensor at the distance I was at. I figured the moire would be a really bad thing for consistent color measurement so I decided to just defocus the image slightly. This makes the moire go away (because it blurs the screen pixels to a larger size so they no longer match the sensor pixel pitch) and, as long as the blur isn't too bad, it shouldn't really affect a color swatch measurement in the center of the swatch. I thought about doing the blur in post processing, but decided it was better to just never have moire in the image in the first place.

Here's what one of those pictures looks like (purposely slightly out of focus). Firefox is on the left, Safari in the middle and Photoshop on the right:
http://jfriend.smugmug.com/photos/247033569-L.jpg

I repeated this process for each of the different color calibrations, so that I ended up with 7 test images, each with a different monitor profile. The resulting test images after converting to JPEG are all here (http://jfriend.smugmug.com/gallery/4224315).

I then loaded the RAW file into ACR, turned off all auto adjustments so all images got the exact same settings in ACR and opened them one at a time in Photoshop. In Photoshop, I took color readings using the eye dropper from the image in Photoshop off six different color swatches for each app and I recorded the numbers in both RGB and in LAB (just using the info palette) in a big table. That's 18 color measurements, recorded in both RGB and LAB, for each image. I realized that the LAB values would be useful for seeing differences in luminosity separately from color.

Data

Here are all the color measurements: http://jfriend.smugmug.com/gallery/4224024.

Here are the screen photos after default conversion to JPEG with no auto settings: http://jfriend.smugmug.com/gallery/4224315.

Discussion

By looking at the numbers in the table, I can see that the 6000 degree numbers are very close to the native numbers. I think that means that my monitor is natively around 6000 degrees.

In this test, it is possible to get the neutrals in Firefox and Photoshop to line up pretty well (~6000 degrees), but even when they line up, the other colors are off. I think this proves that the monitor does indeed need calibration and the calibration that it needs is not as simple as uniform color shift.

There are so many numbers in this table that I was trying to figure out if there was some graphical way to represent it to perhaps see some sort of trend that it's hard to see in the numbers, but I didn't come up with any immediate ideas for what to show. I also made the mistake of entering each color triplet into a single cell in the spreadsheet so it would take some busy work to change the numbers so they could be graphed. I did wonder about trying to quantify the color differences between Firefox and Photoshop with some sort of formula based on the differences between the color patch measurements, but I did try it yet.

In every single case I looked at, the Firefox numbers were "more saturated" than the Photoshop numbers. I'm guessing that's because more saturated monitors sell more so they crank it up in the design of the monitor. The monitor compensation that Photoshop does actually serves to "dull" the colors a bit. I believe it's probably doing the accurate thing, but I can now see why some people say they prefer the Firefox version of the image over the Photoshop version. How much this happens is presumably monitor-dependent, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a common industry norm.

The LAB numbers are a lot easier for me to draw conclusions from because you can easily see luminosity separate from the A and B color channels. If you aren't familiar with the LAB color space, then it's probably worth a quick read of this Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_color_space) and there are many other articles on the web if you search on Google.

Comments? Questions? Any other conclusions you can draw from the numbers?

[arodney]

Yes, the color temp of a calibration will absolutely affect the previews (that is being applied in the LUT). The profiles uses this too.

6000K may be ideal for your display. Don't know if that's true for every display. The luminance will likely alter this sweet spot too. And I'd refrain from using kelvin from calibration and instead focus on the standard illuminants as at least you're taking about a single color.

Unless I missed something, I'm not sure how you got the Lab values (did you measure with the colorimeter?).

The native white point of various displays might be all over the map.

[Baldy]

I did a bunch of measurements todayWHOA!!!!

:bow :bow :bow Very impressive.

I am going to spend some quality time with this over the weekend (along with the other links you referenced), but for the moment I've been swept into the world of video formats.

John, you realize we have a beeg problem to face in the next few days, and it's your fault (well, you and Andrew)? We're converting our built-in slideshow from Javascript-based to Flash by popular demand. So what's gonna happen is you'll be browsing your galleries in Safari and because we now attach profiles to all images (unlike, for example, the International Color Consortium, Apple and Adobe) you'll see your photos in all their glory (unlike, for example, with Andrew's Flash-based galleries).

And then you'll click the slideshow button and presto, the color will shift because now your photos are displayed in Flash, which doesn't know for color management.

And our customers are not gonna blame Adobe, Apple, John and Andrew... The shrill emails coming to our support heroes are gonna say, "SmugMug wrecks my photos!" :cry :cry :cry

[DavidTO]

WHOA!!!!

:bow :bow :bow Very impressive.


His new user title should be "6000 Degrees of Calibration"

[jfriend]

WHOA!!!!

:bow :bow :bow Very impressive.

I am going to spend some quality time with this over the weekend (along with the other links you referenced), but for the moment I've been swept into the world of video formats.

John, you realize we have a beeg problem to face in the next few days, and it's your fault (well, you and Andrew)? We're converting our built-in slideshow from Javascript-based to Flash by popular demand. So what's gonna happen is you'll be browsing your galleries in Safari and because we now attach profiles to all images (unlike, for example, the International Color Consortium, Apple and Adobe) you'll see your photos in all their glory (unlike, for example, with Andrew's Flash-based galleries).

And then you'll click the slide show button and presto, the color will shift because now your photos are displayed in Flash, which doesn't know for color management.

And our customers are not gonna blame Adobe, Apple, John and Andrew... The shrill emails coming to our support heroes are gonna say, "SmugMug wrecks my photos!" :cry :cry :cry

I was hoping to uncover more useful conclusions in the testing, but at least I've verified a bunch of things that were talked about and I think I understand what's going on much better now. The two big misunderstandings that I've run though in the last 6 months are:

1) Calibrating your screen doesn't do much calibrating at all. It mostly profiles and it's up to a color-managed app to use the profile to make accurate colors. So, calibrating doesn't really help Firefox/IE at all. Ask 20 people who bought a color calibrator in the last year and I bet 19.99 of the 20 think that their screen will display more accurate color even in Firefox and IE after calibrating it.

2) These calibration/profiling tools have a design center around matching a printed page and that's why they make you pick a color temperature. They do not have a design center around giving you accurate emissive color so your screen will look the same as mine when we both use color-managed tools. If we happen to coordinate and pick the same color temperature, they should come close, but if we don't or don't even know each other, they won't match. I hope this industry offers tools for "web viewing" that are centered around color accuracy for web viewing rather than color matching to a print in your specific lighting. That's probably the larger market going forward as the market for color calibration goes mainstream.


On all the color issues, The big lesson to me here is that for the majority of the public (which is not very educated about color stuff), color differences between the same image displayed two different ways are way, way more noticeable than color accuracy issues. Thus a difference between Photoshop and your browser is way more visible than both being the same, but wrong. When you're striving for color accuracy and the tools your viewers are using to view the web are only half way there, what a pain! I feel for the predicament. I guess you'll just have to take a few scars for heading this way now and the tools will catch up over time. The only other choice is to wait until the entire installed base of tools gets upgraded over time and that would be a long ways out, so you've probably got to get in before everything is there anyway. I feel a big color FAQ coming.

Any idea what the ETA is for color-management in Flash? I've heard that it's coming sometime and I can certainly see how it's in Adobe's interest to do so, but I've not heard when.

[Baldy]

Firefox displays quite differently after calibrating/profiling than before and how it displays depends a lot on the color temperature number you pick for the calibration process. Since Firefox is not using my monitor profile...John, I read your references for calibrating & profiling and they made tremendous sense. I don't think anything surprised me but they created a lot of clarity.

I'm not sure I understand your twin statements about FF displaying quite differently after calibrating/profiling and it not using the monitor profile. Can you explain? I'm assuming you mean FF doesn't but the OS does. Else why would the net result be different?

Are we discounting Gary Ballard's views (http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html)? I ask because the Aperture team and Apple's pages reference him on these issues, and his views and mine are very close (but presented with compelling data, I'll change).

His pages are long and multi-topic so I'll extract the key points to make this easier:

"Obviously there is nothing we can do about all the computers in the real world that use bad monitor profiles on uncalibrated systems, but good 2.2 gamma, 6500/D65 monitors will display sRGB with the most faithful appearance with the best, truest color possible."

"If untagged sRGB displays incorrect color in Safari or FireFox, I would say you have a bad monitor profile or bad operating system, software bug or odd approach to monitor profiling."

"If Photoshop working color is set to sRGB and the monitor profile was created for 2.2 gamma and 6500K, color shifts in Save For Web result from a bad monitor profile."

The catalyst for this thread was that Andy and Steve calibrated/profiled their monitors and after doing so untagged sRGB images looked worse (oversaturated). It's hard for me to understand how that sacrifice has to be made to make Photoshop accurate. Photoshop has nearly unlimited latitude to change the image.

If Eye-One's shoddy code or cheap spectrometer is creating a display profile that doesn't cause the viewer to see accurate color, what's to stop us from using the photo spectrometer I own, displaying a digital Gretag color chart of known RGB values, and writing our own profiles? Then we can check the thing we haven't checked yet: are we creating accurate calibration/profiles?

[arodney]

I'm not sure I understand your twin statements about FF displaying quite differently after calibrating/profiling and it not using the monitor profile. Can you explain? I'm assuming you mean FF doesn't but the OS does. Else why would the net result be different?


Here we go again.

ICC aware uses profile to preview. Non ICC doesn't. What you should be assuming is FF doesn't use profile, Safari does, not the OS.

The assumption is, if you calibrate a display, that's a fixed preview for all applications but of course its not. Calibration affects all applications but ICC profile compensation only affects some. So its perfectly normal that the two don't match.

[jfriend]

John, I read your references for calibrating & profiling and they made tremendous sense. I don't think anything surprised me but they created a lot of clarity.

I'm not sure I understand your twin statements about FF displaying quite differently after calibrating/profiling and it not using the monitor profile. Can you explain? I'm assuming you mean FF doesn't but the OS does. Else why would the net result be different?

Are we discounting Gary Ballard's views (http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html)? I ask because the Aperture team and Apple's pages reference him on these issues, and his views and mine are very close (but presented with compelling data, I'll change).

His pages are long and multi-topic so I'll extract the key points to make this easier:

"Obviously there is nothing we can do about all the computers in the real world that use bad monitor profiles on uncalibrated systems, but good 2.2 gamma, 6500/D65 monitors will display sRGB with the most faithful appearance with the best, truest color possible."

"If untagged sRGB displays incorrect color in Safari or FireFox, I would say you have a bad monitor profile or bad operating system, software bug or odd approach to monitor profiling."

"If Photoshop working color is set to sRGB and the monitor profile was created for 2.2 gamma and 6500K, color shifts in Save For Web result from a bad monitor profile."

The catalyst for this thread was that Andy and Steve calibrated/profiled their monitors and after doing so untagged sRGB images looked worse (oversaturated). It's hard for me to understand how that sacrifice has to be made to make Photoshop accurate. Photoshop has nearly unlimited latitude to change the image.

If Eye-One's shoddy code or cheap spectrometer is creating a display profile that doesn't cause the viewer to see accurate color, what's to stop us from using the photo spectrometer I own, displaying a digital Gretag color chart of known RGB values, and writing our own profiles? Then we can check the thing we haven't checked yet: are we creating accurate calibration/profiles?

Let me try to explain. When you calibrate your display, there are potentially two things going on (and I see both of these happening in the measurements of my system).

1) The default display colors are changed.
2) The resulting screen is then measured and a monitor profile which describes it's behavior is created and then put in a well known system location.

There are a couple of ways that the first item is accomplished depending upon your technology. The way that I understand is that a "look-up table" often called a LUT is created and given to the video driver. I don't understand the mechanics of this, but it happens at the OS/driver level. This will change the colors the monitor produces when fed a given RGB value. That means that non-color-managed apps like Firefox are directly affected by this. Unfortunately, these LUT changes aren't really fine calibration settings. They don't successfully "calibrate" your monitor for non-color-managed apps. I don't really know this for sure, but I think all they are trying to do is to get your monitor in the right ballpark so the the corrections specified in the monitor profile are more managable and not too far off.

Then, once these LUT values are put into place, the resulting screen is measured for accuracy and those results are recorded into the monitor profile. You can think of the monitor profile as an "color error map" as it can be used to understand the existing color display errors in the default display. A color-managed app then grabs the monitor profile and uses that to figure out how it must change the numbers it sends to the screen in order to get the actual color it wants.


Now, to your questions.

I'm not sure I understand your twin statements about FF displaying quite differently after calibrating/profiling and it not using the monitor profile. Can you explain? I'm assuming you mean FF doesn't but the OS does. Else why would the net result be different?

The LUT values set in item #1 above cause the screen to change what color it displays for a given RGB value. This means that non-color-managed apps like Firefox will have their colors affected with the LUT values. You can see in the actual Firefox color measurements (http://jfriend.smugmug.com/gallery/4224024) I took that indeed, it displays different colors for each color calibration even though it's not using the monitor profile. Since Firefox is not color-managed, it isn't doing anything differently across these different calibrations/monitor profiles. It's the LUT values that are set differently and causing the display to show different colors.

"Obviously there is nothing we can do about all the computers in the real world that use bad monitor profiles on uncalibrated systems, but good 2.2 gamma, 6500/D65 monitors will display sRGB with the most faithful appearance with the best, truest color possible."

We are all not finding this true in practice. The monitor's Andy calibrated didn't show this to be true and no calibration I did on mine (and I've tried it a whole bunch of different ways) found this to be true. Mine's not far off, but skin-tones are noticably different. For this to be true, one of two things would have to be true.

1) Either the native monitor color would have to be very close to sRGB.
or
2) The LUT calibration would have to be able to make the monitor produce very good sRGB such that when it's fed a given RGB value (anywhere in the color spectrum), it produces the right sRGB color on the screen.

The color numbers in my measurements show this not to be the case for my configuration. My monitor produces oversaturated colors when uncalibrated and at all calibration temperatures. I don't know if it's possible to use the LUT to make the default display match sRGB better or not, but my software is not doing it.

"If untagged sRGB displays incorrect color in Safari or FireFox, I would say you have a bad monitor profile or bad operating system, software bug or odd approach to monitor profiling."

That's what I thought would be the case when I first started calibrating my system, but practice doesn't show that to be true. As in the previous section, I'd like to know if it's possible for the LUT calibration changes to make the default display more like sRGB or not, but regardless my Eye One Display 2 software is not doing that. This is not theory here, just actual measurements.

"If Photoshop working color is set to sRGB and the monitor profile was created for 2.2 gamma and 6500K, color shifts in Save For Web result from a bad monitor profile."

Same argument as the previous two sections. This assumes that the default display has been "calibrated" to be close to sRGB either because it came that way out of the box or with the LUT changes. None of ours are that way after calibration. I wish it was true, but in practice we aren't find it to be true.

The catalyst for this thread was that Andy and Steve calibrated/profiled their monitors and after doing so untagged sRGB images looked worse (oversaturated). It's hard for me to understand how that sacrifice has to be made to make Photoshop accurate. Photoshop has nearly unlimited latitude to change the image.

The default display (what non-color-managed apps display) is clearly being changed when we calibrate out displays. You can see that from the color numbers in my measurements. Just look at the Firefox color values for the Peach color. They are significantly different at each color temperature and all different from the unprofiled setting. My screens is oversatured by default and it stays that way at each calibration setting. I don't know whether I can conclude that the Firefox view looks "worse" after calibration or not. I know that it's different and no more accurate than it was before. It seems like it would be possible to have calibration software that did no LUT management at all and thus didn't change your default display at all, so Firefox was completely unaffected by the profiling process, yet still created a completely accurate monitor profile so color managed apps could apply the right correction and display accurate color. This should be theoretically possible if the monitor wasn't natively too far off. If we could get the right software engineer who knows how the Eye One Display 2 software works in a room for two hours, we could get those answers.

If Eye-One's shoddy code or cheap spectrometer is creating a display profile that doesn't cause the viewer to see accurate color, what's to stop us from using the photo spectrometer I own, displaying a digital Gretag color chart of known RGB values, and writing our own profiles? Then we can check the thing we haven't checked yet: are we creating accurate calibration/profiles?

As I hope I explained above, the monitor profile doesn't change the screen for Firefox at all. It's the LUT values in the video driver that do that. With different software design goals, it might be possible to create calibration software that would set the LUT values to make the default display get as close to sRGB as possible so that non-color-managed apps had much more accurate color. I don't know for sure. I'll do some searching on LUT calibration and see if I can learn anything. One thing I would expect is that if you tried to make LUT calibration produce sRGB, you might be squashing some of the colors that the monitor can produce. Certainly if this was done for a monitor capable of producing most of AdobeRGB, you'd be ruining that with a LUT that squished it down to sRGB.

[arodney]

John, bingo, you got it! Nice summation.

This illustrates a number of critical points:

1. Calibration alone isn’t enough. That's WHY we have the ICC architecture we do where profiles are necessary for the Display Using Monitor Compensation process. We've seen this historically. The ONLY displays I've ever seen that can be calibrated to visually identical spec's are true reference displays. Radius Pressviews calibrated to ColorMatch RGB, Barco Reference V etc. We're talking (in 1990 dollars) units that cost $3-5K.

2. No amount of calibration makes a unit exactly into an sRGB device. Lets recall that sRGB is a theoretical color space based on a specific device but not necessarily on a real device. Its probably possible to take an old CRT display with P22 phosphors and place it into the surround specified as sRGB (the ambient light conditions in terms of intensity and color) and make it mimic very closely sRGB. Your modern LCD isn't going to do this. Its been designed to get "close" and it takes a lot going on internally for this to happen. We must have a profile that defines the current device behavior and an ICC aware application to produce the visual effect of sRGB on differing units.

Bottom line is, no matter how you calibrate that modern display, it might get close but not exactly produce sRGB. Just look at the rather huge differences in the light source of the two emissive technologies and I think you'll see how difficult this is. Also look at the huge differences in the maximum lumanice of even a new CRT (maybe 100cd/m2) and a new LCD (many can easily hit 300). The sRGB spec had no idea these devices would exist when designed (again solely from simple math).

The only way to get multiple dissimilar displays to produce the same color appearance is to fingerprint their conditions using a profile and let the profile compensate on the fly in the application. Or expect every user to have a true reference display. But getting close outside ICC aware applications isn't necessarily a bad idea UNLESS you've got to screw around with the 8-bit LUTs to the degree you move very far from the native condition, then the result is more banding on-screen. Newer units with high bit internal adjustments over come this. But then, ask your self if forcing a non sRGB behaving display into an sRGB behavior is a good idea? Usually not. And if you're talking about newer units that exceed sRGB gamut, forcing them into sRGB is even more pointless.

We need to move away from sRGB as some kind of useful, well defined standard. Its not 1993! And even more shocking is that of all the digital imaging technologies since then (cameras, scanners, processors, software), the one technology that hasn't moved anywhere as quickly is display technology. That's changing (slowly). sRGB is a dinosaur.

[jfriend]

OK, a little more info on the LUT. The LUT values can be stored in the monitor profile, but are acted upon by external software (either in the OS or something that runs at startup) and applied to the video card. One source (http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html)I've read suggests that the LUT values are used by most software to get the monitor to a proper gamma and not used to calibrate the color.

Here's a thread from earlier this year (http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2554&page=2) where Andrew share's his view on LUT manipulations.

I've found several other discussions that say that you get the best color reproduction in color-managed apps if the LUT value changes are minimized. This happens if you set your calibrator for native color temperature.

If you start manipulating color in the LUT too much, you start dminishing the colors that can be produced on the monitor and this can also lead to banding (if you lose the ability to produce certain colors on your monitor). Part of this is because most LUTs are 8-bit and multiple 8-bit manipulations on an 8-bit display starts to cause rounding errors which leads to errors in the lowest bits which manifests itself as banding.

I've also found a whole slew of articles that say that Windows Vista has all sorts of problems with losing the LUT values once they've been set. Here's one particular article (http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/windows-vistas-gamma-table-bug/). Apparently they can get lost after your screen times out and gets turned off (if you have it set that way) and whenever Vista dims your screen to ask for permission to do something. What a mess! Maybe this will get fixed in the Vista update due this quarter.

[Baldy]

I pinged Gary Ballard this a.m. but dgrin's anti-spammer artillery kept him at bay so he asked me to post this:

Chris,

I don’t know anything about the rocket science, but the short answer is the ‘problem’ monitor hardware displays higher gamun that the sRGB space, hence the saturation boost when the monitor profile is applied/assigned/assumed to sRGB.

The issue is very easy to nail in Photoshop:

1) Convert to sRGB in Photoshop
2) go to View> Proof SetUp: Monitor RGB

That should show the saturation boost you are seeing exactly as untagged sRGB will display in Mac web browsers.

I think calling the monitor manufacturer and the hardware calibrator tech supports and asking them WHY this is happening is more time productive…this exact problem was beat to death in the Photoshop forum recently http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?14@@.3c053066/0

G BALLARD

[arodney]

I pinged Gary Ballard this a.m. but dgrin's anti-spammer artillery kept him at bay so he asked me to post this:

Chris,

I don’t know anything about the rocket science, but the short answer is the ‘problem’ monitor hardware displays higher gamun that the sRGB space, hence the saturation boost when the monitor profile is applied/assigned/assumed to sRGB.

The issue is very easy to nail in Photoshop:

1) Convert to sRGB in Photoshop
2) go to View> Proof SetUp: Monitor RGB

That should show the saturation boost you are seeing exactly as untagged sRGB will display in Mac web browsers.


Do you understand what View>Proof Setup: Monitor RGB does? Cause it doesn't solve any of the issues we've discussed.

This setting tells Photoshop to use it's ICC aware capabilities to view an sRGB (in this case) as if Photoshop were a dumb web browser. Its doing an sRGB to Monitor RGB (YOUR specific monitor) conversion. The only thing this soft proof setting is useful for is showing you how the sRGB doc would look if you viewed it on YOUR machine in a non ICC aware application on your machine. But you could do this by simply opening the sRGB document in IE on your machine. But Photoshop wants to provide a soft proof of this for you while you're in Photoshop.

No one but you will see this preview. Photoshop has no way to understand what any other user's display is doing (certainly without that display and a profile for it). So you're back to square one.

[jfriend]

I pinged Gary Ballard this a.m. but dgrin's anti-spammer artillery kept him at bay so he asked me to post this:

Chris,

I don’t know anything about the rocket science, but the short answer is the ‘problem’ monitor hardware displays higher gamun that the sRGB space, hence the saturation boost when the monitor profile is applied/assigned/assumed to sRGB.

The issue is very easy to nail in Photoshop:

1) Convert to sRGB in Photoshop
2) go to View> Proof SetUp: Monitor RGB

That should show the saturation boost you are seeing exactly as untagged sRGB will display in Mac web browsers.

I think calling the monitor manufacturer and the hardware calibrator tech supports and asking them WHY this is happening is more time productive…this exact problem was beat to death in the Photoshop forum recently http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?14@@.3c053066/0

G BALLARD

Two things could explain why this problem seems to have gotten more prominent lately. First, LCDs have taken over the world and most of them really can't be color calibrated much at all (they get profiled for color-managed apps). CRTs could get calibrated.

Second, some of the newest generation of monitors is a wider gamut than the oder generations which, Gary explains, causes more of a mismatch when the monitor is assumed to be sRGB (because the monitor is actually further from sRGB than older ones).

This is, of course, only an explanation for what's happening and still offers no new ideas on how to set things up to minimize the difference between non-color-managed Firefox/IE and Photoshop/Safari.

[Baldy]

This is, of course, only an explanation for what's happening and still offers no new ideas on how to set things up to minimize the difference between non-color-managed Firefox/IE and Photoshop/Safari.And the Gretag/Eye-One/Huey people are still staying mum, at least to me.

Maybe it doesn't make a good ad to say, "Now YOU can see the Internet in wonky color as never before! Go from suntan to sunburned without even stepping on a beach!"

"But don't worry, you can always go look over the shoulder of the accountant, who has just a regular Dell. The Internet looks natural on it because you didn't think to use the Eye-One for the QuickBooks machine."

[Baldy]

Well, I have news for owners of the Dell 30" monitors like we use at SmugMug. While info on the i1 is sparse on X-rite's site (they bought Gretag), one point they did make is how important it is to use the monitor's manual controls to get a good calibration, and they have a mode to assist in that. But our monitors only have brightness controls.

However, I read a review of the just-released Dell 30" and they said they learned from the previous version...the one we own. Now they've gone control-crazy with individual controls for almost everything and, importantly, an sRGB preset.

Behold:
http://www.hothardware.com/articles/Dell_UltraSharp_3008WFP_30inch_LCD_With_DisplayPor t/?page=4

They said it took them time but with those controls they were able to dial in accurate color.

I saw other posts for the model we have and this was a typical response, from this page (http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/06/27/review-dell-30-inch-lcd-display):

-------------------------------------------------------------

Paul, I would like to ask you do an experiement for me if you would.

1) Would you open a browser window of some website with some good photography.

2) Take a screen shot and while viewing the image at the website, view the screen shot in Photoshop side by side but make sure to have the color management settings on “North American Web / Internet” for Photoshop. This will ensure the PS image is displayed correctly in sRGB.

From what I have read about other high gamut monitors, none of them display colors outside of coloraware programs like Photoshop correctly. I want to see if this happening with Dell as well.

What happens with the other monitors is everything appears oversaturated. The reason is because the default profile for the monitor wide gamut but although sRGB is the default profile for Windows and the web, all images are displayed in the same wide gamut unless using a coloraware program. What this does is map the colors incorrectly resulting in appearing oversaturated. Right now with monitors only being 92% is the effect is some what subtle but has the gamuts rise to 100-120 next year I suspect at some point people are going stop thinking they are seeing new colors and realize something is wrong.

------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm feeling like we're getting down to it now. You?

[arodney]

However, I read a review of the just-released Dell 30" and they said they learned from the previous version...the one we own. Now they've gone control-crazy with individual controls for almost everything and, importantly, an sRGB preset.

Before you get too excited, please keep in mind what you're getting.

No CCFL LCD's have physical control over RGB, its a LUT. The LUT can be 8-bit at the graphic card (not useful) or with newer, better, more expensive units, internally in higher bit (more useful). The only LCD that allows true control over RGB are the two I know of that use LED backlight with three colored LEDs (Samsung and NEC).

Lots and lots of CCFL LCD's have all kinds of controls, many called RGB. You need to look at where and how the adjustments are being conducted. Messing around with 8-bit LUTs might give you the impression you've altered the color, the results are almost always a lot of banding on the display (a step forward, a step back).

When you view an image, its nice to know if banding is in the actual document or the result of the video system. The later is not useful nor desired.

What happens with the other monitors is everything appears oversaturated. The reason is because the default profile for the monitor wide gamut but although sRGB is the default profile for Windows and the web, all images are displayed in the same wide gamut unless using a coloraware program.

You've got to get past this idea that sRGB is somehow a default for stuff and right. Its not. Your display isn't produce sRGB. There's no default profile for the monitor that expects this (the so called default profile for the monitor should reflect the conditions of the monitor and be used in applications and the OS). I thought we made that pretty clear.

On a Mac, with my wide gamut display, using the myriad of ICC aware applications and OS, everything looks just fine (not under or over saturated). And we know why. Yes, a wide gamut display is farther from the elusive 'goal' of sRGB so on a dumb web browser, the saturation looks different than a lower gamut unit.

The bottom line is, if you don't have an ICC aware application, things are not going to match. If you're using a wide gamut display outside an ICC aware application, you have to ask yourself why you are doing this or why you spent the extra money for a wide gamut display.

[Baldy]

Before you get too excited, please keep in mind what you're getting.

No CCFL LCD's have physical control over RGB, its a LUT. The LUT can be 8-bit at the graphic card (not useful) or with newer, better, more expensive units, internally in higher bit (more useful). The only LCD that allows true control over RGB are the two I know of that use LED backlight with three colored LEDs (Samsung and NEC).

Lots and lots of CCFL LCD's have all kinds of controls, many called RGB. You need to look at where and how the adjustments are being conducted. Messing around with 8-bit LUTs might give you the impression you've altered the color, the results are almost always a lot of banding on the display (a step forward, a step back). Very interesting and useful description.
You've got to get past this idea that sRGB is somehow a default for stuff and right. Its not.I can't, Andrew. It is the default for the web and right for 99.99% of the Internet's pages. Our customers don't want to surf the Internet and have color mismatches and oversaturated colors.

They want to see QuickTime movie trailers on Apple's site in the colors Spielberg intended.

[jfriend]

You've got to get past this idea that sRGB is somehow a default for stuff and right. Its not. Your display isn't produce sRGB. There's no default profile for the monitor that expects this (the so called default profile for the monitor should reflect the conditions of the monitor and be used in applications and the OS). I thought we made that pretty clear.

On a Mac, with my wide gamut display, using the myriad of ICC aware applications and OS, everything looks just fine (not under or over saturated). And we know why. Yes, a wide gamut display is farther from the elusive 'goal' of sRGB so on a dumb web browser, the saturation looks different than a lower gamut unit.

The bottom line is, if you don't have an ICC aware application, things are not going to match. If you're using a wide gamut display outside an ICC aware application, you have to ask yourself why you are doing this or why you spent the extra money for a wide gamut display.

Andrew, we get your point. If you want accurate color, profile your display and use color-managed apps. You do not need to repeat that any more - we get it. That is not the issue we are working on.

Given that there are hundreds of thousands of Smugmug viewers (many are not customers and many are people that Smugmug has never spoken to and will never speak to), we are working on what is the best tactic to understand, mitigate or explain their experience if possible. We know it won't be accurate color, but we're working on understanding what things, if any, could be done to give them the best possible experience. That is the majority of the viewing public today and for awhile, so it seems like a worthwhile endeavor for a business that is trying to serve them. If you think that is pointless, then that's fine and you can bow out of the conversation and let us continue until we reach our own conclusion.

Maybe you're right (that there's no worthwhile mitigation of any kind that we can do), but we aren't done understanding our options yet and we're on our own journey to understand how all this stuff works. In the very least, we're gaining an understanding of why things are the way they are when they aren't color managed so we can at least explain it to folks who ask (and perhaps motivate them to get color managed).

So far, I see pretty good progress on our end:

Smugmug is now serving ICC profiles upon demand to ICC aware browsers.
We have a much better understanding for why these newer LCD monitors look more saturated when not color managed.
We understand the role of color temperature in the calibration/profiling process.
We understand the difference between calibration and profiling and now have a better understanding of what to expect when non color-managed.
We are starting to understand what Firefox 3 is implementing and how profiles might be served even more efficiently to that browser.
We're getting enough of an understanding that maybe we can even make some suggestions to the right people for future versions of a couple browsers.

[arodney]

I can't, Andrew. It is the default for the web and right for 99.99% of the Internet's pages. Our customers don't want to surf the Internet and have color mismatches and oversaturated colors.


Its not! If you understand that few people's displays, even when calibrated as you and Andy and others have tried, do NOT produce the same color appearance when viewing sRGB images as seen in Photoshop, how can you say everyone is seeing sRGB?

IF what you believe is true, then we'd all be seeing the same color appearance by simply uploading sRGB. Clearly that's not happening.

Upload an sRGB image or open an sRGB image on two different machines using two different displays in a non ICC aware application. If possible, do this on a Mac and a Windows box. Do they look identical? No. So how can sRGB be some kind of standard, correct assumption for a document that you KNOW is in sRGB?

You have to stop drinking this MS koolaid about sRGB. Yes, it is the closest color space for the zillion's of CRT displays out there (lack of calibration not withstanding) but they are not producing sRGB. If they did, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Think of sRGB like the Government specified ratings for miles per gallon. YMMV (and it will).

I keep hoping you're getting it, only to be side tracked by this belief system about sRGB. Again, the only device that can really produce sRGB is a circa 1993 CRT with P22 phosphors. And even if we had 5 such CRTs, they change over time (the reason we frequently have to calibrate all displays). Or someone mucks around with the OSD controls of the display, bingo, the old sRGB behavior is no longer.

[arodney]

Andrew, we get your point. If you want accurate color, profile your display and use color-managed apps. You do not need to repeat that any more - we get it. That is not the issue we are working on.

I still wonder if everyone does 'get it' when they keep repeating this nonsense about sRGB. See above post.

The only way we can possibly get close to this sRGB behavior (display technology not withstanding) is using calibration even without the access to a profile.

I simply can't imagine why folks think that out of the box, all the display systems are producing sRGB based on what you've all done to test this so far. Then we have displays that are 3 years old, ones running 150cd/m2 differently than another, one costing $1800 with the other costing $300, or with all the mucking around people do to their displays to make them look "right". They are all producing sRGB? Not on your life.

The sRGB color space doesn't make a difference here. Its the closest color space we have to most displays (well certainly the slew of old CRTs). But we all know the same color numbers in sRGB uploaded to the web absolutely do not produce the same color appearance for all users. So how is sRGB useful here? Its the best target of which we are trying to hit on a very broad side of a barn. Hitting the barn and hitting bulls-eye are two very different things.

Of course, (for the last time) we know that we can produce the same color appearance from the same numbers from any color space, not just sRGB and we know by now what's required of users to get this. Otherwise, all bets are off.

[jdryan3]

Still a great thread. Nice work John, especially on the status and how you are moving thru options to deal with this.

Think of sRGB like the Government specified ratings for miles per gallon. YMMV (and it will).
A very good analogy. Those are actually just benchmarks, and are relevant only when compared to other vehicles MPG. Nothing more. Heck, this year they did a wholesale change in how they are calculated and went back to reatate older MPGs.
EPA tests are designed reflect "typical" driving conditions and driver behavior, but several factors can affect MPG significantly:

How & Where You Drive
Vehicle Condition & Maintenance
Fuel Variations
Vehicle Variations
Engine Break-In
Therefore, the EPA ratings are a useful tool for comparing the fuel economies of different vehicles but may not accurately predict the average MPG you will get. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/why_differ.shtml
Hmmmm. Vehicle (monitor) variations, Engine (monitor) break-in,...
Think about it. How many people have you met who are shocked, if not downright PO'ed their mileage does vary from that window sticker?

You have to stop drinking this MS koolaid about sRGB. Yes, it is the closest color space for the zillion's of CRT displays out there (lack of calibration not withstanding) but they are not producing sRGB. If they did, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Apparently we have HP to blame as much as MS (http://www.w3.org/Graphics/Color/sRGB). Such interesting reading on how they specifically dis ICC profiles being embedded:

Currently, the ICC has one means of tracking and ensuring that a color is correctly mapped from the input to the output color space. This is done by attaching a profile for the input color space to the image in question. This is appropriate for high end users. However, there are a broad range of users that do not require this level of flexibility and control. Additionally, most existing file formats do not, and may never support color profile embedding, and finally, there are a broad range of uses actually discourage people from appending any extra data to their files. A common standard RGB color space addresses these issues and is useful and necessary.
We expect application developers and users that do not want the overhead of embedding profiles with documents or images to convert them to a common color space and store them in that format. Currently there is a plethora of RGB monitor color spaces attempting to fill this void with little guidance or attempts at standards. There is a need to merge the many standard and non-standard RGB monitor spaces into a single standard RGB color space. Such a standard could dramatically improve the color fidelity in the desktop environment.
{emphasis added}
It looks like the HP/MS chickens have come home to roost.
Besides changes in display technologies, today you have more people moving from our previously mentioned Group #3 to Groups #2 & #1. Heck, there are simply more users. And in 1993-1996 most people were using Lotus 1-2-3 and Word Perfect on their Windows 3.11 PCs, maybe Win 95, on Netware 3.11 networks at work. The only thing left from then? sRGB! (OK, I do know folks who still have WordPerfect and Netware - 4 of them)

Another observation: Besides applications, monitor mfg, calibration/profiling tools, what about the video card manufacturers?

[DavidEgolf]

Hello Everyone,

I have been reading and digesting all the great research and ideas.

On the original problem with the Dells I would point you to an article from Eizo about monitors with extended gamut. We use Eizo for our soft proofing stations.

http://www.eizo.com/support/wp/pdf/wp_06-001A.pdf

I think the main problem here is a mismatch with your calibrator software and the total gamut of the monitor. Profiles created with a calibrator don't change a color only translate it to the output. If the curve mapping in the calibrator software does not match the total gamut of the monitor then the translation will not be accurate. I have noted some new calibrators that are designed to be used with HDTV's and I wonder how one of those would work on your Dell models.


I really enjoyed the comparison tests with the three up images on screen. We do this all the time with profiles and call it a round trip of the profile. We do it with printer profiles and not display but I believe the theory is the same.

I will include a link to gamutvision which can be used for this type of testing and will give you allot of the same numbers.

http://www.gamutvision.com/docs/roundtrip.html

Discussion on white point and lack of direction from anyone on what is the best setting.

I think the biggest point here is what is your intent and setup for your monitor. If no color management is going on and out of the box you want to know where the white point should be I would say 6000-6500 because the average viewer thinks this looks good. White is white and at normal screen brightness levels most people would say 5000 is dark and warm or yellow. Now if you are using this monitor as a calibrated piece of equipment with print matching and controlled viewing boxes that is a different story. We use high quality viewing stations that are set to 5000 and as such we must have our white point set to match this in order to soft proof properly. If we did not do this then everything would look too warm comparing the prints in the viewing station and the screens.

We also match the brightness of the viewing stations to the brightness level of the screen so our density judgments are not thrown off.

I still am not sure if everyone who reads this understands sRGB and color spaces. It is not the easiest concept to get your arms around. For that matter profiles themselves are pure math in action and we all know how exciting that is to talk about at parties. I'll save this for another post if anyone is interested.

One thing that is most important with profiles is white point as it is from end to end in digital photography and old analog photography as well.

Something everyone might want to ponder is from ages gone by when a new film came out, say velvia as I think this was mentioned it had allot of color saturation more than allot of other films but did we say after looking at velvia that the other films were out of calibration? No, this was the look of Velvia and either you liked it or you didn't and maybe you used it for some projects and not for others. This also applies to digital and color spaces and calibrations. Remember that in the end all output devices have a set gamut and can only produce within that range. We have to interpret in the image what the real life color was and then translate that to something the output can reproduce perceptually pleasing and what our memories tell us it looked like. This is the function of profiles to squeeze all of that data into whatever space we need to get the job done.

Well probably I've created more questions than answers.

Carry on netCitizens :D

[Baldy]

Given that there are hundreds of thousands of Smugmug viewers (many are not customers and many are people that Smugmug has never spoken to and will never speak to), we are working on what is the best tactic to understand, mitigate or explain their experience if possible. We know it won't be accurate color, but we're working on understanding what things, if any, could be done to give them the best possible experience.5.4 million unique viewers/month according to Google analytics. 3.6 million uniques/month according to Quantcast, who can't measure them all.

John, you're a master at keeping the most important goals in focus.

I've gotten a few emails from the Apple guys saying my old boss would like to see an email from me with a really crisp suggestion for what to do about this mess we've created. As this thread points out so clearly, all of us have points of confusion despite how much time we've devoted to it. Imagine the plight of the consumer.

Here's a trial balloon for what we should tell Steve:

1. Let's ship the Mac with gamma set to 2.2. It's the Internet and TV standard. No Apple person is defending 1.8 anymore and the web is full of people suggesting 2.2, including Apple's own pages and the monitor calibration vendors.

I'll show him a Pixar clip on an iPhone, which seems to have a 2.2 gamma (can someone confirm?) and looks good, compared to Macs where his films look washed. That oughta cause his head to explode all over the room.

Spielberg and Lucas spend gobs finessing over getting their films just right for TV. Yet the owner of his own film studio is the guy most responsible for making their films looked washed.

(I'm intimately familiar with the decision to go 1.8 gamma, 'cus I worked for Steve in the days of dim monitors and color gurus who envisioned the web as a pre-press medium instead of the consumer medium it has become.)

2. Create a tag for color space info. Glomming a bunch of fatty ICC profiles on a page would be like Andrew handing out a chapter of his book instead of his business card to people he meets. Anyone who writes code and Steve have gotta say, "no brainer."

3. Default to sRGB for untagged elements. HTML and CSS only know for sRGB, so rendering them in something else is expressly rendering them in something the designer did not intend. Same for all Flash designed to this point, 99.999% of all jpegs, and pretty much all gifs and pngs.

If people want aRGB or ProPhoto, they can tag their images. That .1% of the population would know how.

One. Two. Three. Simple. Respects the consumer network the Internet is and the standard that artists create their work for, and yet lets people with wider gamut lust have wider gamut.

No?

[jfriend]

5.4 million unique viewers/month according to Google analytics. 3.6 million uniques/month according to Quantcast, who can't measure them all.

John, you're a master at keeping the most important goals in focus.

I've gotten a few emails from the Apple guys saying my old boss would like to see an email from me with a really crisp suggestion for what to do about this mess we've created. As this thread points out so clearly, all of us have points of confusion despite how much time we've devoted to it. Imagine the plight of the consumer.

Here's a trial balloon for what we should tell Steve:

1. Let's ship the Mac with gamma set to 2.2. It's the Internet and TV standard. No Apple person is defending 1.8 anymore and the web is full of people suggesting 2.2, including Apple's own pages and the monitor calibration vendors.

I'll show him a Pixar clip on an iPhone, which seems to have a 2.2 gamma (can someone confirm?) and looks good, compared to Macs where his films look washed. That oughta cause his head to explode all over the room.

Spielberg and Lucas spend gobs finessing over getting their films just right for TV. Yet the owner of his own film studio is the guy most responsible for making their films looked washed.

(I'm intimately familiar with the decision to go 1.8 gamma, 'cus I worked for Steve in the days of dim monitors and color gurus who envisioned the web as a pre-press medium instead of the consumer medium it has become.)

2. Create a tag for color space info. Glomming a bunch of fatty ICC profiles on a page would be like Andrew handing out a chapter of his book instead of his business card to people he meets. Everyone who writes code and Steve have gotta say, "no brainer."

3. Default to sRGB for untagged elements. HTML and CSS only know for sRGB, so rendering them in something else is expressly rendering them in something the designer did not intend. Same for all Flash designed to this point, 99.999% of all jpegs, and pretty much all gifs and pngs.

If people want aRGB or ProPhoto, they can tag their images. That .1% of the population would know how.

One. Two. Three. Simple. Respects the consumer network the Internet is and the standard that artists create their work for, and yet lets people with wider gamut lust have wider gamut.

No?

This sounds like a good summary of the asks.

If I understand what you're proposing and understand how tagged images interact with gamma settings, wouldn't item 2 will allow you to fix everything on Smugmug for people running the fixed version of Safari? And, isn't item #2 free of any tradeoffs at Apple or for customers (meaning there's no downside to it)? It has no backward compatibility issues. Only sites who chose to implement the new tags will get the new behavior. Since FF3 has already implemented some of these new tags, once you put the new tags in Smugmug, you'd be set for both new browsers.

I agree with items 1 and 3 as the "right" thing to do and if they'll do them that's great, but I'm sure there is a little heartburn or resistance about them. It may be so accepted that item 1 is wrong that they'll finally just fix the gamma issue, but I can certainly see how some existing things may have adapted to the 1.8 setting and those may seem broken on new macs once they switch.

Item 3 IS the right thing for the internet as a whole. While an untagged image is mystery meat (to borrow Andrew's phrase), an image on the open internet has ZERO chance of being in your own monitor profile. Your monitor profile is specific to your monitor or specific to the model and brand of monitor if you haven't profiled your display and have installed some default display profile. The image being displayed was put on the internet by someone who knows nothing about your system so it can't possibly be in your monitor profile. So assuming the monitor profile is probably the worst choice there is.

Assuming sRGB at least has a large chance at being right. The only time assuming sRGB would be worse than it is today is if the monitor profile is somehow corrupted and contains bad data. Then, using it to translate colors to your monitor would be worse than not using it at all (which is what Safari does today for an untagged image).

I can imagine that there is a bit of heartburn about changing item #3 because it won't match Flash until Flash also starts assuming untagged images are sRGB and implements color management.

So, the point of this posting was mostly to say that you might want to change the order of your asks. I think you can solve your problem for new versions of Safari if they implement #2 and it really has no downside at all for Apple. The other two items are also good things to do, but aren't required for you to solve the Smugmug issues in Safari and may be harder things for Apple to decide to deliver because they involve some short term tradeoffs.

I'm making an assumption that an image in Safari with an ICC profile displays properly whether the Mac gamma is set to 1.8 or 2.2. The monitor compensation that happens in color-managed Safari will accurately compensate for the different gamma settings. If I've got that wrong, then you would need item #1 too in order to get things working by default on new Macs.

[Baldy]

Good response, as always. It would be interesting to think through what the downside of switching to 2.2 gamma is.

Video is becoming very important to us and I know it is to Apple. If you save your production in various ways like with iMovie, Final Cut, or After Effects and play it various ways like with Flash or QuickTime, you find out in a hurry that it's a mess too, mostly due to non-standard gamma.

I get the feeling that the people in this thread mainly deal with stills. The Hollywood boys are always howling about the gamma and posting stuff like this in the forums:

---------------------------------------------------------------

for the 6 millionth time

your mac displays are 1.8 gamma- PCs and TVs are 2.2

To work in Video it is best to change the gamma on your computer display in System Preferences > Displays to correctly display TV gamma

gary adcock
Studio37

--------------------------------------------------------------

They don't want to hear about your mileage varying or profile fairy dust, they want fidelity with SMPTE 170M and its equivalents for HD.

[arodney]

Here's a trial balloon for what we should tell Steve:

1. Let's ship the Mac with gamma set to 2.2. It's the Internet and TV standard. No Apple person is defending 1.8 anymore and the web is full of people suggesting 2.2, including Apple's own pages and the monitor calibration vendors.

First off, this is an OS issue so there's nothing I know of hardware wise that stops Apple and, they could have done this when OS X shipped with a clean slate. They kept 1.8 assumption for legacy reasons. But the OS is pretty well color managed along with the applications Apple provides so for them, its probably a "screw them" kind of mentality (3rd party app's that don't handle color correctly).

Even if the Mac OS had a 2.2 gamma assumption, this wouldn't really do much for you. You still have to have that good old color managed browser and Flash (talking yesterday with Adobe, that hopefully will come about soon).

The Mac at 1.8 and Windows at 2.2 gamma isn't really a strong argument that the problem isn't ICC aware browsers in mass.

Now a news flash from the PhotoPlus NY show last October. Display designer and expert (color scientist) Karl Lang when doing tests on Cinema displays found their native gamma was 1.8! He discussed this in a very good session at the show.

As for films, I believe QuickTime is color managed. So I don't think Raider's would look washed out. None of the video content I see looks problematic.

[arodney]

Item 3 IS the right thing for the internet as a whole. While an untagged image is mystery meat (to borrow Andrew's phrase), an image on the open internet has ZERO chance of being in your own monitor profile. Your monitor profile is specific to your monitor or specific to the model and brand of monitor if you haven't profiled your display and have installed some default display profile. The image being displayed was put on the internet by someone who knows nothing about your system so it can't possibly be in your monitor profile. So assuming the monitor profile is probably the worst choice there is.


We used to have control over this until Tiger. I've asked Apple till blue in the face to default to sRGB or far better, give the user control. Once again, in the future, sRGB will not be the assumption for images if display technology continues to evolve. We're no better off being forced into sRGB as Monitor RGB. We used to have a preference in ColorSync. I think Apple feels that too geeky or hidden (and to some degree that's true). I'd rather see this system wide in System Preferences (Monitors Control Panel). Set default to sRGB. Only someone that knows what they are doing would set it differently. We currently have the ability to load different display profiles in this control panel, so its not a stretch to allow a 2nd profile that's used for untagged files.

Steve isn't paying any attention to ColorSync or color management if recent OS history is any indication.

[jdryan3]

Here's a trial balloon for what we should tell Steve:

1. Let's ship the Mac with gamma set to 2.2. It's the Internet and TV standard. No Apple person is defending 1.8 anymore and the web is full of people suggesting 2.2, including Apple's own pages and the monitor calibration vendors.

I am trying to find the link, but when I got my MacBook Pro last June and started to set it up, a page/document from Apple stated something along the lines of "First, change the gamma to 2.2 from 1.8 ...". I thought it was funny because of the way DavidTO always preached that on all the various threads.


If people want aRGB or ProPhoto, they can tag their images. That .1% of the population would know how.
As long as SmugMug has a Help screen and sticky thread to assist the delta of the population that do know how (.1%), and the remainder that don't but still would want to. Especially, as Andrew has pointed out, since there are affordable wider gamut monitors available even today. You don't want to be in the same situation 6 years out.

[Baldy]

Steve isn't paying any attention to ColorSync or color management if recent OS history is any indication.The Apple guys say his eyes glazed because it got too complicated for mere mortals. He wants a simple way out of the swamp consumers can grok.

[jfriend]

The Apple guys say his eyes glazed because it got too complicated for mere mortals. He wants a simple way out of the swamp consumers can grok.

It can be reduced to a very simple answer for the consumer and this should probably be your pitch.

Support ICC profile tags in Safari and fix the default gamma. This is brain-dead simple for the consumer. They don't have to know anything. The sites that care about accurate color display willl add ICC profile tags and the consumer will just get more accurate color display. The sites that don't care about good color get exactly what they have today.

I personally think sRGB should be assumed if no profile is present in the image or pointed to in the HTML, but once they have support for ICC profile tags, that doesn't really matter any more.

For those who want to venture beyond sRGB (to AdobeRGB, for example), just include a profile reference in the HTML and everything is hunky dory (on Safari, at least).

The message to Steve is that this will get Apple the hands-down best internet color display anywhere, particularly for color concious folks who profile their monitors. Windows + IE will be miles behind. Photo sharing sites will add the ICC profile references in a snap because it costs them virtually nothing, has no backward compatibility issues and promotes better color display for those who care.

[arodney]

It can be reduced to a very simple answer for the consumer and this should probably be your pitch.

Support ICC profile tags in Safari and fix the default gamma.

I wouldn't even bring up the gamma issue because you can't get that toothpaste back into the tube. It will not matter anyway if the browser is ICC aware just like it doesn't matter to Photoshop users. If Apple didn't pull this silly legacy gamma with the first release of OS X, the certainly are not going to do so now. Customers head's would explode.

This is brain-dead simple for the consumer. They don't have to know anything.

They still need a good profile for the display. Note that what, 6-8 years ago, Apple introduced a self calibrating display. Didn't work, was a huge failure. But they tried.

The message to Steve is that this will get Apple the hands-down best internet color display anywhere, particularly for color concious folks who profile their monitors.

But they get that now, Safari ships with all Mac's, its color managed. Steve can point to Adobe and Flash. Why should Steve care about how users working with a non Apple Browser see color. That tact will not fly.

Windows + IE will be miles behind. Photo sharing sites will add the ICC profile references in a snap because it costs them virtually nothing, has no backward compatibility issues and promotes better color display for those who care.

Windows + IE already is (it is taking IE out of the sentence). Look at their (Apple) sales. Look at the ability to boot into Windows and naughty IE and OS X from the same box. None of this is a compelling reason for Steve to do anything.

[jfriend]

But they get that now, Safari ships with all Mac's, its color managed. Steve can point to Adobe and Flash. Why should Steve care about how users working with a non Apple Browser see color. That tact will not fly.

My point was this. Users running Safari on Macs see the same non-color-managed internet as the Windows world because most of the images on the web have no profiles. The Mac + Safari is no better than anything else because the majority of the internet has no profiles for it's images.

If they fix a few things in Safari, then color quality concious sites like Smugmug and other sites who care about their image quality will take advantage of it and Safari will offer the best internet color display. Though Safari has color management capabilities today, it usually doesn't give them any advantage. With just a little more functionality, that advantage could be applied much more widely and matter a lot more.

[bwg]

It does indeed look as though FF3 with color management enabled is defaulting to sRGB for untagged images and CSS. Although I'm not sure it's doing monitor compensation for css colors. Thats the only explanation I can come up with for the difference in the background color and how awful the rest of the internet looks in FF3. Or maybe i'm just missing the point again.

Note the differences in the thumbnails and in the background colors. The main image is/should be identical since it has an attached sRGB profile.

clicky for original size.
http://BigWebGuy.smugmug.com/photos/248727752-L.jpg (http://bigwebguy.smugmug.com/photos/248727752-O.jpg)

[arodney]

My point was this. Users running Safari on Macs see the same non-color-managed internet as the Windows world because most of the images on the web have no profiles. The Mac + Safari is no better than anything else because the majority of the internet has no profiles for it's images.

Understood. But untagged documents are not good, and my point is, altering the gamma of the OS doesn't solve anything is very unlikely to happen.

If they fix a few things in Safari, then color quality concious sites like Smugmug and other sites who care about their image quality will take advantage of it and Safari will offer the best internet color display. Though Safari has color management capabilities today, it usually doesn't give them any advantage. With just a little more functionality, that advantage could be applied much more widely and matter a lot more.

We either need (preferably) system wide profile assignment for untagged docs, or (probably more doable) a preference in Safari for untagged docs that defaults as sRGB. Even easier short term is to STOP using the silly assumption of Monitor RGB for untagged docs. So I think if anyone has influence, it should be directed at the Safari team.

[jfriend]

Understood. But untagged documents are not good, and my point is, altering the gamma of the OS doesn't solve anything is very unlikely to happen.

I agree. My feedback to Baldy was exactly that. If you we get Smugmug images interpreted as profiled images, then that gamma setting doesn't matter anymore. I think we're on the same page here.

We either need (preferably) system wide profile assignment for untagged docs, or (probably more doable) a preference in Safari for untagged docs that defaults as sRGB. Even easier short term is to STOP using the silly assumption of Monitor RGB for untagged docs. So I think if anyone has influence, it should be directed at the Safari team.

What we are arguing for is that Safari support some of the proposed standards that allow a site (using CSS styles or HTML attributes) to say what profile any given image is without embedding the actual profile in the image. This has the advantage of not adding the overhead of an ICC profile to every image and allows the browser to cache a single profile for all the images on a page (particular great for thumbnails, but efficient for larger images too). It can also be added by any site who cares in minutes and it has no backward compatibility issues at all. You are right, this is something to work on the Safari team with. Firefox 3 is supporting these new profile attributes.

[Mike Lane]

I agree. My feedback to Baldy was exactly that. If you we get Smugmug images interpreted as profiled images, then that gamma setting doesn't matter anymore. I think we're on the same page here.



What we are arguing for is that Safari support some of the proposed standards that allow a site (using CSS styles or HTML attributes) to say what profile any given image is without embedding the actual profile in the image. This has the advantage of not adding the overhead of an ICC profile to every image and allows the browser to cache a single profile for all the images on a page (particular great for thumbnails, but efficient for larger images too). It can also be added by any site who cares in minutes and it has no backward compatibility issues at all. You are right, this is something to work on the Safari team with. Firefox 3 is supporting these new profile attributes.CSS 3 has a property, color-profile (http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-color/#icc-color), but I'm not familiar with FF3 supporting it. This page (http://www.css3.info/compatibility-table-colour-module/) states that no browser currently supports it including FF3 beta. There may be a mozilla proprietary CSS property I'm not familiary with though, I'd love to know about it if there is. Given the W3C's track record on timliness of their recommendations :rolleyes I'd say it'll be a long frickin time before we see CSS3 make it into browsers in any meaningful way.

[jfriend]

CSS 3 has a property, color-profile (http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-color/#icc-color), but I'm not familiar with FF3 supporting it. This page (http://www.css3.info/compatibility-table-colour-module/) states that no browser currently supports it including FF3 beta. There may be a mozilla proprietary CSS property I'm not familiary with though, I'd love to know about it if there is. Given the W3C's track record on timliness of their recommendations :rolleyes I'd say it'll be a long frickin time before we see CSS3 make it into browsers in any meaningful way.
The mozilla page:http://www.mozilla.org/projects/colorsync/ says that they already support:
<img… iccprofile=…> support
<body… iccprofile=…> supportNo discussion of CSS support that I've found. The img tag or body tag support would allow Smugmug to solve their problem.

[bwg]

The mozilla page:http://www.mozilla.org/projects/colorsync/ says that they already support:
<img… iccprofile=…> support
<body… iccprofile=…> supportNo discussion of CSS support that I've found. The img tag or body tag support would allow Smugmug to solve their problem.Dunno how accurate that article still is. Last modified date is 20 May, 2005.

[Baldy]

Somebody mentioned QuickTime having color management. My understanding is it sorta does, but not in the way we think about it for stills.

If you upgrade to QuickTime Pro, you can specify source and destination profiles for a QuickTime movie you're saving. It's like converting a jpeg to another colorspace in Photoshop. It isn't that it attaches an ICC profile that color-aware options know what to do with, I don't think.

Here's some details:

http://safari.adobepress.com/0321245768/ch11lev1sec5

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[jfriend]

Dunno how accurate that article still is. Last modified date is 20 May, 2005.

I guess we just need to try it. Anyone know any ICC profiles at a publicly accessible URL?

[bwg]

Another comparision between FF3 w/color management enabled and Safari3 on my system. Can anyone explain why this is happening? (besides the fact that apparently my wife has been using my Amazon login)

FF3 on top, Safari on bottom. Clicky for original size
http://BigWebGuy.smugmug.com/photos/249376701-M.jpg (http://BigWebGuy.smugmug.com/photos/249376701-O.jpg)

[Mike Lane]

(besides the fact that apparently my wife has been using my Amazon login):lol3 :lol3

[Baldy]

Another comparision between FF3 w/color management enabled and Safari3 on my system. Can anyone explain why this is happening? (besides the fact that apparently my wife has been using my Amazon login)Hahaha on the login. :rofl

I haven't installed FF3 or read anything about how they do color management, but it sure looks like they are trying to color manage the HTML and CSS, unlike Safari. I'll look at this later in the week.

In the meantime, Pantone got back to me and pointed me to

http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html

to answer my questions. Hahaha, back in circles we go again.

[LeChuck]

Hello folks. I was searching the web for a solution to this same issue, learning things along the way and found this long and extremely interesting thread.

I recently bought one of the Dell "wide gamut" LCD screens, the 2407WFP-HC and found the same issue with PS/OSX/Color profiles. Even after "calibrating" the screen with an i1/GretaMacbeth, when doing a save for web in PS, the saturation goes way up (a huge change). While I could deal with the fact that I would not get an accurate preview in save for web and would have to embed a profile to get an accurate view in Safari to match the color managed Photoshop/Lightroom, I don't have a PC around anymore to make sure my photos look "alright" to the average joe.

Now I understand that the jump in saturation that I get when the picture is not color managed (as in save for web, Firefox, or Safari with no embedded profile) after it was converted to sRGB, is because my monitor, after profiling, is not close enough to sRGB specs.

This monitor has a number of things that can be set, aside from contrast/brightness, but I think the main problem a lot of buyers of this kind of screen are going to face is the total lack of documentation. You buy something that you think will be better for photo work (I used to have an iMac and now an external screen on a laptop), but you don't know how to use it.

For example, you can select a PC color mode or a Mac color mode. Now it's pretty obvious to me what this does: gamma 2.2 or 1.8. Easy. I set it to PC.

Below that, you have to choose between PC Standard, PC Blue, PC Red. Alright, standard is the obvious choice. I kinda assume this is likely to mean a 6500k color temperature. But again, no explanations.

But then it gets complicated: you can also choose "custom color" with RGB sliders. Ah, now what? Which one is the most "standard" mode? The PC Standard or the custom color with all sliders up at 100%?

And then in another menu, you get IMAGE MODES, and there you've got Desktop Standard, Multimedia, Gaming. I kinda figured the Desktop Standard is the one without overly boosted, cartoonish colors.

Why the heck can't they provide any decent explanations for a screen that they advertise in a way to sell it to people that are actually interested in color control? How do I know how I should setup my screen to obtain a good base for color profiling with the i1?

Then I read more into it and found a way to get into the service menu, and there I can see the color values used for the different presets (PC Standard etc.). I thought I read that reducing the monitor's RGB values was bad and would lead to banding, which is why I decided to use Custom Color and leave things at 100%, but now I read about monitor's internal LUT versus graphic card LUT, blah blah blah, so perhaps the PC Standard mode *was* the value I should be using, since its settings seem based on 8bit values (0 to 255) rather than the 0-100 of the Custom Color mode.

I'm going to have to borrow the i1 again from my friend and spend more time calibrating, profiling.

Bottom line is, there's so much confusion around this, mostly from lack of documentation, it's really difficult to know what's what. I feel fine about being able to work in a totally color managed environment, but still I'd like to use my monitor to its maximum possibilities in the most accurate way possible, while knowing that things are not going to be too out of whack for the average person out there.

Currently, since I decided to go for the Custom Color mode after I had given the i1 back already, I am currently using the monitor profile for my screen that came with OSX. After opening the profiles and looking inside, it seems awfully close to the provided sRGB profile except it seems its gamut (tri-stimulus) is quite a bit larger.

[jfriend]

Hello folks. I was searching the web for a solution to this same issue, learning things along the way and found this long and extremely interesting thread.

I recently bought one of the Dell "wide gamut" LCD screens, the 2407WFP-HC and found the same issue with PS/OSX/Color profiles. Even after "calibrating" the screen with an i1/GretaMacbeth, when doing a save for web in PS, the saturation goes way up (a huge change). While I could deal with the fact that I would not get an accurate preview in save for web and would have to embed a profile to get an accurate view in Safari to match the color managed Photoshop/Lightroom, I don't have a PC around anymore to make sure my photos look "alright" to the average joe.

Now I understand that the jump in saturation that I get when the picture is not color managed (as in save for web, Firefox, or Safari with no embedded profile) after it was converted to sRGB, is because my monitor, after profiling, is not close enough to sRGB specs.

This monitor has a number of things that can be set, aside from contrast/brightness, but I think the main problem a lot of buyers of this kind of screen are going to face is the total lack of documentation. You buy something that you think will be better for photo work (I used to have an iMac and now an external screen on a laptop), but you don't know how to use it.

For example, you can select a PC color mode or a Mac color mode. Now it's pretty obvious to me what this does: gamma 2.2 or 1.8. Easy. I set it to PC.

Below that, you have to choose between PC Standard, PC Blue, PC Red. Alright, standard is the obvious choice. I kinda assume this is likely to mean a 6500k color temperature. But again, no explanations.

But then it gets complicated: you can also choose "custom color" with RGB sliders. Ah, now what? Which one is the most "standard" mode? The PC Standard or the custom color with all sliders up at 100%?

And then in another menu, you get IMAGE MODES, and there you've got Desktop Standard, Multimedia, Gaming. I kinda figured the Desktop Standard is the one without overly boosted, cartoonish colors.

Why the heck can't they provide any decent explanations for a screen that they advertise in a way to sell it to people that are actually interested in color control? How do I know how I should setup my screen to obtain a good base for color profiling with the i1?

Then I read more into it and found a way to get into the service menu, and there I can see the color values used for the different presets (PC Standard etc.). I thought I read that reducing the monitor's RGB values was bad and would lead to banding, which is why I decided to use Custom Color and leave things at 100%, but now I read about monitor's internal LUT versus graphic card LUT, blah blah blah, so perhaps the PC Standard mode *was* the value I should be using, since its settings seem based on 8bit values (0 to 255) rather than the 0-100 of the Custom Color mode.

I'm going to have to borrow the i1 again from my friend and spend more time calibrating, profiling.

Bottom line is, there's so much confusion around this, mostly from lack of documentation, it's really difficult to know what's what. I feel fine about being able to work in a totally color managed environment, but still I'd like to use my monitor to its maximum possibilities in the most accurate way possible, while knowing that things are not going to be too out of whack for the average person out there.

Currently, since I decided to go for the Custom Color mode after I had given the i1 back already, I am currently using the monitor profile for my screen that came with OSX. After opening the profiles and looking inside, it seems awfully close to the provided sRGB profile except it seems its gamut (tri-stimulus) is quite a bit larger.

One thing you have to realize is that what you do with your monitor has aboslutely nothing to do with what the average joe is going to see on their uncalibrated monitor. The best thing you can do is to get your images looking the best they can on your color managed screen in color-managed apps. That, at least, puts them as close to accurate as possible so the closer a viewer's screen is to accurate, the better your images will look. From there, how they look on a non-color-managed system will have nothing to do with how you fiddle with your screen in all these settings you are discussing. Absolutely nothing. Since it sounds like you use (color-managed) Safari for browsing and color-managed apps for photo editing, I wouldn't bother if I were you. Calibrate your screen to a reasonable temperature setting and then use color-managed apps.

There is some false sense that if you make your monitor somehow close to sRGB and then look at your images when not color-managed that that will somehow help you see how the regular joe is going to see them. Unfortunately, it doesn't at all. It just shows you how they look on a non-color-managed monitor that's been futzed with the way you did. How they see your images has only to do with how their monitor is set up.

[LeChuck]

One thing you have to realize is that what you do with your monitor has aboslutely nothing to do with what the average joe is going to see on their uncalibrated monitor. The best thing you can do is to get your images looking the best they can on your color managed screen in color-managed apps. That, at least, puts them as close to accurate as possible so the closer a viewer's screen is to accurate, the better your images will look.

Exactly, which is why I want to find out how best to setup my color management. Unfortunately, the fact that the monitor comes with so little documentation isn't helpful.


From there, how they look on a non-color-managed system will have nothing to do with how you fiddle with your screen in all these settings you are discussing. Absolutely nothing. Since it sounds like you use (color-managed) Safari for browsing and color-managed apps for photo editing, I wouldn't bother if I were you. Calibrate your screen to a reasonable temperature setting and then use color-managed apps.

I use many web browsers. I am a web developer as well as photographer. And I want to bother because it's in my nature. Knowing exactly how my screen works and what it does when is the first step to being able to calibrate it correctly. Heck, getting the brightness and contrast right is already a chore! (and you should see the weird stuff this screen does at certain contrast settings) I know that my own calibration will not impact how my work looks on another screen....except if my calibration work is off and I'm overcompensating for something (not that...)


There is some false sense that if you make your monitor somehow close to sRGB and then look at your images when not color-managed that that will somehow help you see how the regular joe is going to see them. Unfortunately, it doesn't at all. It just shows you how they look on a non-color-managed monitor that's been futzed with the way you did. How they see your images has only to do with how their monitor is set up.

I know this. Been working with computers digital photography a long time. Nevertheless, it's important to get it right for me. I've read it all in this thread about sRGB and how it's not really a standard etc. With due respect, it's just talk and play on words. It is a de-facto standard because of the sheer number of systems expecting things to be close to those specs, even when they are not color managed. As a web developer, I wish I could say to heck with IE and make my life easier, but that's not how things are.

I've also used many PCs on quite a few screens. Even with the variation on screen types, quality, settings etc...if someone at least takes the time to set a 6500k white balance, everything else being equal, the closer I get to sRGB specs, the more chance I have that my photos will not be totally out of whack on someone else's machine (including the potential buyer), as you mention in your first paragraph. I've seen my own work on enough different machines to know this for a fact. Other macs, PCs, desktops, laptops... Slightly different colors, slightly different saturation, sometimes the picture too blue, or too yellow, sometimes a CRT screen that has lived long past its prime (I have one of those at home). That's expected but it's better to do it right and now that I'm not introducing issues from the start. I also work on multiple screens.

To come back to the main reason for my post: how to best setup these new "wide gamut" screens, and in particular the Dell I mentioned in order to do the best calibration possible. What's the point calibrating something if my base settings are way out, modifying a color response one way to just compensate it via profiling in Photoshop, probably introducing issues and crippling the color values. Bottom line is...with a screen like this I don't even know enough to choose the right settings on the on-screen menu, going blindly.

[jfriend]

Exactly, which is why I want to find out how best to setup my color management. Unfortunately, the fact that the monitor comes with so little documentation isn't helpful.



I use many web browsers. I am a web developer as well as photographer. And I want to bother because it's in my nature. Knowing exactly how my screen works and what it does when is the first step to being able to calibrate it correctly. Heck, getting the brightness and contrast right is already a chore! (and you should see the weird stuff this screen does at certain contrast settings) I know that my own calibration will not impact how my work looks on another screen....except if my calibration work is off and I'm overcompensating for something (not that...)



I know this. Been working with computers digital photography a long time. Nevertheless, it's important to get it right for me. I've read it all in this thread about sRGB and how it's not really a standard etc. With due respect, it's just talk and play on words. It is a de-facto standard because of the sheer number of systems expecting things to be close to those specs, even when they are not color managed. As a web developer, I wish I could say to heck with IE and make my life easier, but that's not how things are.

I've also used many PCs on quite a few screens. Even with the variation on screen types, quality, settings etc...if someone at least takes the time to set a 6500k white balance, everything else being equal, the closer I get to sRGB specs, the more chance I have that my photos will not be totally out of whack on someone else's machine (including the potential buyer), as you mention in your first paragraph. I've seen my own work on enough different machines to know this for a fact. Other macs, PCs, desktops, laptops... Slightly different colors, slightly different saturation, sometimes the picture too blue, or too yellow, sometimes a CRT screen that has lived long past its prime (I have one of those at home). That's expected but it's better to do it right and now that I'm not introducing issues from the start. I also work on multiple screens.

To come back to the main reason for my post: how to best setup these new "wide gamut" screens, and in particular the Dell I mentioned in order to do the best calibration possible. What's the point calibrating something if my base settings are way out, modifying a color response one way to just compensate it via profiling in Photoshop, probably introducing issues and crippling the color values. Bottom line is...with a screen like this I don't even know enough to choose the right settings on the on-screen menu, going blindly.

I have no idea what any Dell monitor menu settings do (I have an HP monitor that has none of the settings you mention). If there is such a thing, I would think you would want a forum where folks discuss Dell hardware or look at the manual for your monitor here (http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/monitors/2407WFP/en/index.htm)on the Dell site.

On my 30" HP, all I had to do was pick a color temperature setting that I wanted as a target in the calibration and then adjust the brightness of the monitor to match a target luminance value as part of the calibration process. Everything else was handled by the calibration tool (EyeOne Display2, in my case).

[LeChuck]

I have no idea what any Dell monitor menu settings do (I have an HP monitor that has none of the settings you mention). If there is such a thing, I would think you would want a forum where folks discuss Dell hardware or look at the manual for your monitor here (http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/monitors/2407WFP/en/index.htm)on the Dell site.

I have that manual, thanks.


On my 30" HP, all I had to do was pick a color temperature setting that I wanted as a target in the calibration and then adjust the brightness of the monitor to match a target luminance value as part of the calibration process. Everything else was handled by the calibration tool (EyeOne Display2, in my case).

That's what I used as well. I do wish that my monitor had clearly labeled settings such as the color temperature rather than obscure mode names. As for adjusting the brightness of the screen via the calibration tool I have found it almost impossible since any increase or decrease in contrast also influences the tool's reading, with no clear indication of how to best set the contrast (100% is way too high on a monitor like this, burns all the whites and your eyes too). It's a guessing game. Your eyes adjust to various settings and it's hard to pick the right one.

Oh well, I guess that's the stuff you have to deal with on a monitor in that price range.

[Baldy]

I know this. Been working with computers digital photography a long time. Nevertheless, it's important to get it right for me. I've read it all in this thread about sRGB and how it's not really a standard etc. With due respect, it's just talk and play on words. It is a de-facto standard because of the sheer number of systems expecting things to be close to those specs, even when they are not color managed. As a web developer, I wish I could say to heck with IE and make my life easier, but that's not how things are.I'm with LeChuck. In my (brief) conversations with Gretag they indicated that their calibration is not supposed to do this and they don't (yet) have an answer for why it's happening.

LeChuck, I'm sorry I didn't pay attention to this thread for a few days.

[bwg]

...It is a de-facto standard because of the sheer number of systems expecting things to be close to those specs, even when they are not color managed. As a web developer, I wish I could say to heck with IE and make my life easier, but that's not how things are.

Great analogy.

[sanaka]

:bow

This is, by miles, the mother-lode-rosetta-stone-historically-awesome thread for quality discussion of display color management I've ever read.

I just wanted to post for the sake of bumping this thread up so more innocent bystanders might end up reading it.

Peace,
Sanaka Thompson

[Nimai]

I hadn't read this thread when I posted mine on a similar - maybe even the same - topic. I struggled through reading this whole thread here, and I'm amazed that there's no single, straight-forward answer. The prevailing theme seems to be "it depends" on what you want to do. Well, maybe there's an answer to what *I* want to do, which is have my image look "good" to the untrained consumer eye when viewed on the web. :scratch

[vidiot]

So, is this a lot like life itself? The more you learn, the less you understand? And the more you realize how messed up everyone else really is?

I just asked this question yesterday, about over saturated images in the main window panel. I was directed here, and now, after this long read, I'm not sure what the question was, if there's any real answer, and does it really matter?

All right, I'll try anyway. I have a Mac, ACDisplay, browse within Safari. Based on (internet) advice, I've set my gamma at 2.2, profile with a Spyder 2. Process in CS3 in an Adobe RGB environment, convert to sRGB before uploading to Smugmug. ( I do not use Save for Web.)

The thumbnails appear like my original upload, the large window, which I assume is applying the sRGB tags, is over saturated. The same JPEG, opened with CS3, displayed in sRGB, side by side on the same monitor, does not match the Smugmug image opened in the Safari browser.

From what I've been able to decipher, Safari does use the sRGB tags. This is where I'd normally try to guess what's happening, but not after reading this thread. I'm so #@%! confused now. Should I even consider this an issue at all, since the image does not appear over saturated on a Windows machine with IE7? And why would a non-color managed image appear more correct than one that is using the ICC tags?

You know, I have been de-saturating by -10 or so when sending out any small images via email. The reason is that when they came back to me, they were, of course, over saturated. Nobody ever complained, but it was alarming to me. Now I realize that maybe it's just MY SYSTEM that's applying additional corrections from the LUT to untagged images? Or am I totally missing the point?

Please, correct me if I'm doing something wrong. I am, like everyone else, searching for the Holy Grail of color management.

In the meantime, I think I've decided that I trust Photoshop and my Spyder 2 profile to give me accurate color. After it leaves here, all bets are off. Should I even think that it's possible to have a color match between an original and something displayed from a web browser, any web browser for that matter? Or am I asking for something that really isn't possible?

Kevin :cry

[Nayanna Arts]

In the meantime, I think I've decided that I trust Photoshop and my Spyder 2 profile to give me accurate color. After it leaves here, all bets are off.
You've got it right there, once it leaves photoshop for anyone else's non-color managed applications (firefox, IE, and the like) it doesn't matter. Someone else using PS, downloading the TAGGED image and viewing it in the rightly tagged color space *should* see as closely as possible with today's technology. That's as good as it gets and it's everything that was explained here.

Should I even think that it's possible to have a color match between an original and something displayed from a web browser, any web browser for that matter? Or am I asking for something that really isn't possible? If the image is tagged when uploaded to the web, you can easily download it and open it in PS and "keep the embedded color space when it differs from your working color space" and it'll match the original as if someone handed you the same file on a cd :) So yes, it IS possible, what it looks like in an non-color managed browser has nothing to do with what it "truly" looks like :)

Can you believe I just "got this" 2 days ago? Probably can ;)

BTW, I was LOL at the spam bot check question when registering! too funny.

And yes, this is by far the MOST informative thread on the subject I've found so far. I had found g ballards site first, SO hard to follow and apparently a lot of flawed statements in there:huh despite the fact that he's apparently started to think they are all not "right" as per the above posted adobe link I first read through before finding this.

Again, thank you for a most informative thread.

[Baldy]

Again, thank you for a most informative thread.It was interesting. :D

I was looking over Ben's shoulder this a.m. with his new and newly calibrated dual 30" monitors, as he whined about the two monitors being so different. You move a photo from one to the other and the skin tone goes from tanned to reddish. It would be nice if just once in our offices we could get two monitors to match...

I've probably fielded 3,000 emails from pros about their prints who say, but it looked good on my calibrated monitor... I always send them to the Photoshop eyedropper tool and that's what I use for all my corrections. I don't recall ever seeing a print returned that we adjusted that way.

[Baldy]

Hey everyone,

We add ICC profiles to all display copies larger than thumbnails now no matter what browser you use. One reason is FF3 can use them but we don't know if you've enabled it or not. Another is it's much faster this way because we can cache the images on servers in Europe, Australia, etc., since they're the same for every browser.