ICC Tagging?

[dj_paige]

I just installed Firefox 3.5, and my images on Flickr suddenly appeared to be oversaturated and over contrasty. Then I came across this article which says, in part:

Although support for color correction was introduced in Firefox 3, it was disabled by default, requiring some tinkering about in the about:config window to enable it. Firefox 3.5 addresses the issues that caused it be disabled by default in the previous version, and now images with International Color Consortium (ICC) tagging are, by default, color corrected.

Can someone give me a brief explanation of what ICC Tags are, and how they are set in Lightroom, and furthermore, does the fact that I had this particular issue with the new version of Firefox mean that I haven't calibrated my monitor properly?

 

[Mark Sirota]

Yes, that's probably what it means. Exported files viewed in Firefox 3.5 should look identical to how they look in Lightroom. Are you saying they look different than Lightroom, or different than Firefox 3.'.x?

 

[dj_paige]

The exported photos look identical to Lightroom in Firefox 3.'.11 and in Internet Explorer. They appear extremely contrasty and over saturated in Firefox 3.5 and do not match what I see in Lightroom. (And I turn off the ICC Color correction in Firefox 3.5 and now Firefox 3.5 matches what I see in LR)

So what is an ICC Profile, and how does one set it?

 

[Mark Sirota]

The ICC profile is embedded by Lightroom. You select it in the Export dialog. Usually for the web you choose sRGB.

If Firefox 3.5 isn't matching Lightroom, then I suspect you have a corrupt monitor profile, and you should try recalibrating.

Edit -- I just reread your post, and you said "The exported photos look identical to Lightroom in Firefox 3.'.11 and in Internet Explorer."

That shouldn't be true. IE isn't color-managed, and it would be amazing for it to look just like Lightroom. Are you sure?

 

[dj_paige]

Spent about an hour on this earlier today, yes I am sure that IE7 and Lightroom and Firefox 3.'.11 match, on many many photos. The outlier seems to be Firefox 3.5.

Also, Flickr photos that apparently don't have this ICC profile (old ones uploaded years before I got Lightroom) match in LR, IE7, FF 3.'.11 and FF 3.5.

Looking forward, if I have a corrupt monitor profile and need to recalibrate ... does that mean that everything in LR will appear off after the recalibration?

 

[Mark Sirota]

I just did some testing with Firefox 3.5's three color management modes to see whether to take their text literally, which says that by default "Color management [is] applied only to tagged images."

Taken literally, that would mean those images that have the EXIF ColorSpace and InteroperabilityIndex tags. Lightroom doesn't include those tags, but does embed an ICC profile.

However, it looks like the text of that article is misleading; Firefox 3.5 will honor embedded ICC profiles by default, whether or not the EXIF tags are also present.
It will also honor EXIF tags if there is no embedded profile. All good stuff.

It looks like the author of that article wasn't fully informed. The included sample image does not have the EXIF tags, and has an embedded profile called "iMac". That sounds like it might be the name of the author's monitor profile, which shouldn't be applied to web images. So I'm not sure how far to trust this article...

In any case, I actually can also see a difference between Firefox 3.5 and Preview on the Mac, both of which are color-managed. On my monitor Firefox 3.5 is slightly more saturated than Preview when color management is enabled, for files with the sRGB profile embedded. I'll have to go back and test against Firefox 3.'.11 and Lightroom, but it's time for me to head home.

 

[dj_paige]

Thanks for you help, I'll be interested in whatever you come up with.

For now, I have taken the very simple step of turning off the ICC Profiles in FF 3.5, and I'm happy, but a little worried too.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

What monitor Paige? There were some discussions about a bug in FF 3.5 with wide gamut monitors.

 

[dj_paige]

I don't think this is a wide gamut monitor. It is an Acer X233H LCD monitor.