Lightroom color vs. Internet color

  • Thread starter Thread starter nguzman
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
N

nguzman

Guest
Today I made an interesting discovery, for me actually a monumental discovery. But first, some background.

For months I have been frustrated by the fact that the color in LR and exported jpegs viewed on the Internet looked different. I exported using sRGB color space, which is what is recommended by books I've read and by hints and tips on the web. I post photos on a Yahoo Groups site and on Google's Picasa, a photo sharing site. When viewed there, the images look more saturated than in LR and they are also bluer, i.e., skin takes on a more magenta color. In Photoshop and in Vista's Windows Photo Gallery they look the same as in LR, so thankfully, no problem there. But for the web, I have had to resort to desaturating in LR and pushing the Temperature slider to the right to get it to look right on the websites.

Well, just for kicks, today I exported my developed photos using Adobe RGB, then uploaded the exports to the site. To my surprise, the images looked identical to the colors in LR! I'm now a happy camper. But I wonder if the Lightroom books have been lying to me about using the sRGB color space for web posting, or are the two sites I use just exceptions? BTW, my monitor is calibrated using Datacolor's Spyder2Express.

Nelson
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Wrong! They may look right to you on Your Monitor, but if they are Not sRGB others Are likely to be seeing something different. Read all seven pages of Digital-Image Color Spaces and you to will believe.

Don
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
nguzman said:
Today I made an interesting discovery, for me actually a monumental discovery. But first, some background.

For months I have been frustrated by the fact that the color in LR and exported jpegs viewed on the Internet looked different. I exported using sRGB color space, which is what is recommended by books I've read and by hints and tips on the web. I post photos on a Yahoo Groups site and on Google's Picasa, a photo sharing site. When viewed there, the images look more saturated than in LR and they are also bluer, i.e., skin takes on a more magenta color. In Photoshop and in Vista's Windows Photo Gallery they look the same as in LR, so thankfully, no problem there. But for the web, I have had to resort to desaturating in LR and pushing the Temperature slider to the right to get it to look right on the websites.

Well, just for kicks, today I exported my developed photos using Adobe RGB, then uploaded the exports to the site. To my surprise, the images looked identical to the colors in LR! I'm now a happy camper. But I wonder if the Lightroom books have been lying to me about using the sRGB color space for web posting, or are the two sites I use just exceptions? BTW, my monitor is calibrated using Datacolor's Spyder2Express.

Nelson
Click to expand...


I had/have the same experience. I save everything in AdobeRGB and publish on flickr and elsewhere on the web. New versions of Firefox can read color profiles as I understand it. They show richer colors, but they are pretty much the same colors .... just richer IMO. Saving in sRGB has in my experience caused the colors in the pics to show more of the red channel .. or less of the others perhaps?

Cheers!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Sdor said:
I had/have the same experience. I save everything in AdobeRGB and publish on flickr and elsewhere on the web. New versions of Firefox can read color profiles as I understand it. They show richer colors, but they are pretty much the same colors .... just richer IMO. Saving in sRGB has in my experience caused the colors in the pics to show more of the red channel .. or less of the others perhaps?

Cheers!
Click to expand...
Your sRGB problems maybe a monitor profile issue with you screen. Moany people do not use Firefox and there is no guaranty that a viewer of your images is. That is why sRGB is recommended. Every top Color Management Expert will tell you the same, be it Andrew Rodney or Joa Lagemaat OR Scott Kelby of NAPP fame. Or Jeffrey Friedl as linked above.

Don
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Hey

I am a dedicated Firefox 3.'.3 user and upload all web images as sRGB on my blog, site, forums etc. Using sRGB is the recommended standard so when I heard about the Firefox profiling thing, I deceided to try it out. I uploaded and viewed a recent shot on my site that I purposely did not color managed to see how Firefox profiled it -- the results were poor! You really need to look at your monitor profiles closer.

Best,
Darr
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
darr said:
Hey

I am a dedicated Firefox 3.'.3 user and upload all web images as sRGB on my blog, site, forums etc. Using sRGB is the recommended standard so when I heard about the Firefox profiling thing, I deceided to try it out. I uploaded and viewed a recent shot on my site that I purposely did not color managed to see how Firefox profiled it -- the results were poor! You really need to look at your monitor profiles closer.

Best,
Darr
Click to expand...

Then you must have read that you have to activate it ?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Yes. I realized that I needed to switch between different color profiles in order to see how pics are displaying on different browser/OS configurations.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
DonRicklin said:
Wrong! They may look right to you on Your Monitor, but if they are Not sRGB others Are likely to be seeing something different. Read all seven pages of Digital-Image Color Spaces and you to will believe.

Don
Click to expand...

Thanks, Don. I acknowledge what the experts say...my eyes see something different...you say the above. So I decided to go to my other system, my Sony laptop, that also has LR2. Again, I "develop" a picture in LR, export it once with sRGB and another export with AdobeRGB. I upload both files to Picasa, then do careful comparisons. Unlike what I said in my original post, this time the sRGB image looks better than the AdobeRGB image on Picasa, just as you had warned. But still, neither image looks the same as the one in Lightroom.

So now I'm really confused. One system has the AdobeRGB looking better on the web and the other system has the sRGB photo looking better on the web. Both systems' monitors have been calibrated in the last 1' days. And on both systems photos look very close to identical when viewing non-web images.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Nelson, the "problem" is not with the technology, but with your expectations. You're expecting to be able to control the colors in an environment where there is no color management.

How it looks on one uncalibrated machine using non-color-managed software has little bearing on how it looks on another uncalibrated machine using non-color-managed software. There's just nothing you can do about it.

Your best bet is:
(1) Make it look great in your own calibrated, color-managed environment.
(2) On export, be sure to preserve the color profile (LR always does this) so that it will also look great for people viewing in their own calibrated, color-managed environments.
(3) Export in sRGB, so that it will look tolerable in the majority of uncalibrated, non-color-managed environments.
(4) Encourage everyone you can to calibrate and use color-managed software.
(5) Encourage software vendors like Google and Microsoft to support color management.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
nguzman said:
Thanks, Don. I acknowledge what the experts say...my eyes see something different...you say the above. So I decided to go to my other system, my Sony laptop, that also has LR2. Again, I "develop" a picture in LR, export it once with sRGB and another export with AdobeRGB. I upload both files to Picasa, then do careful comparisons. Unlike what I said in my original post, this time the sRGB image looks better than the AdobeRGB image on Picasa, just as you had warned. But still, neither image looks the same as the one in Lightroom.

So now I'm really confused. One system has the AdobeRGB looking better on the web and the other system has the sRGB photo looking better on the web. Both systems' monitors have been calibrated in the last 1' days. And on both systems photos look very close to identical when viewing non-web images.
Click to expand...
Wondering if you read any of the Explanation at the Link I posted?

Don
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
DonRicklin said:
Wondering if you read any of the Explanation at the Link I posted?

Don
Click to expand...

Last night, I only skimmed through Jeff Friedl's article, thinking it looked promising, but just another color management treatise, and that I would read it when I had some time. Well, after your response above, I thought there might be something to learn from it since you seemed so insistent :mrgreen:.

I just spent a couple of hours reading all of it, including the comments, and I have been truly enlightened. As an engineer and software developer, I can appreciate Friedl's in-depth knowledge of color management, but I am really impressed in the clarity of his explanations and examples. This article should be required reading for anyone who has ever had a color problem, and there are a lot of us. A big, big thank you for leading me to the article.

One thing though, he stresses that you should always embed a color profile with your images, e.g. for the web use the sRGB color space but also include the sRGB profile. As I understand it, when I export from Lightroom, I am given a choice of color space only and that there is no option to also put in the sRGB profile. Instead, I am assuming that the image is tagged in the EXIF data that it uses the sRGB color space, as Friedl alluded. I'm saying this because Vista's Windows Photo Gallery correctly displays both my AdobeRGB and sRGB images--it displays them identically so it must honor the tag. However, Picasa, a program that is tag-unaware (and perhaps also profile dumb) displays them different from each other. Can you comment on the profile embedding in Lightroom? I would think that embedding the tag would be sufficient, rather than the whole profile anyway.

Mark, thanks also for your post. That's a good set of advices to live by in the chaotic world of color management.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
darr said:
Yes. I realized that I needed to switch between different color profiles in order to see how pics are displaying on different browser/OS configurations.
Click to expand...

Hmm .. I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing.

You have to activate the reading of color profiles in Firefox.....

open Firefox....then

1. type about:config in address bar and enter
2. look for gfx.color_management.enabled and change it's value to true.
3. you are done.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Mark Sirota;245'9 said:
Nelson, as I said earlier, LR always embeds the profile. I'm not sure whether it also tags, though I would guess it does. You could investigate using Jeffrey's Online EXIF Viewer, or any other similar tool.
Click to expand...

Mark, thanks for the clarification that LR automatically embeds the profile, that surely eliminates the possibility of embedding the wrong profile, as Jeffrey warns is a bad thing.

I looked at the EXIF Viewer--never knew all that data was available. It's the first time I've seen that complete a listing of image data. Even the photos I posted on the web retains everything--guess you can't hide anything anymore. Again, thanks.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Sdor said:
Hmm .. I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing.

You have to activate the reading of color profiles in Firefox.....

open Firefox....then

1. type about:config in address bar and enter
2. look for gfx.color_management.enabled and change it's value to true.
3. you are done.
Click to expand...

Hey sorry for the confusion. I do have the gfx.color management enabled. It was the add-on: Color Management 4.' by Sean Hayes I had been referring to.

Best,
Darr
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top