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Archive 2017 · Inconsistent Colour Online

  
 
Inga
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Inconsistent Colour Online


Hi folks, I need some help please. I've been doing this for some years and occasionally run into an issue were images that I edit on my U2711 calibrated monitor look ghastly on clients websites. It seems to be browser independent, but images often appear over-saturated, especially in the red channel. It means that images are not looking their best for the client, and not representing me well.

A couple of recent examples: https://zecutiveshop.com/products/original-gold

The product shot on the white background. On my monitor, in various monitors, it looks really red. When I right-click and download the image to my desktop and open it in Windows Photo Viewer/LR/PS/Firefox, it looks how I edited it. To either the clients website or my browsers are doing something weird to it. Here's how I edited it to look:

http://deprimophoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Zecutive-007-Deprimo-Photography.jpg


Same with this one: https://www.starnow.com.au/blakewintle/photos/8658878/#!photo-8500134

Again, the red channel predominantly, but the whole image is more saturated than how I edited it (below).

http://deprimophoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/BW-Headshot-009-Deprimo-Photography.jpg

When I export images from LR, I select sRGB JPEG.

Thoughts? Are you seeing the difference I'm seeing, or is this isolated to my monitor?



May 24, 2017 at 09:47 PM
John Wheeler
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Inconsistent Colour Online


Hi Inga
One thing I noticed is that the images in the links do not have a color profile tagged to them. I do not recommend saving files on websites without being tagged personally.

Some browsers will assume that the image is in sRGB and manage accordingly and others will send the image directly to the monitor. If the monitor is wide gamut monitor and the image is sent directly with no color management, it will look oversaturated. Again this is browser dependent.

Also, when bringing in an image into Photoshop that does not have a tagged color profile, what happens depends on the color management policy settings for untagged images. It may automatically assign the wrong profile.

Those were my quick thoughts on possible issues. Hope that spurs some possibilities for you.



May 25, 2017 at 12:55 AM
Inga
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Inconsistent Colour Online


John Wheeler wrote:
Hi Inga
One thing I noticed is that the images in the links do not have a color profile tagged to them. I do not recommend saving files on websites without being tagged personally.

Some browsers will assume that the image is in sRGB and manage accordingly and others will send the image directly to the monitor. If the monitor is wide gamut monitor and the image is sent directly with no color management, it will look oversaturated. Again this is browser dependent.

Also, when bringing in an image into Photoshop that does not have a tagged color profile, what happens
...Show more

Thanks for the reply John. Are you able to tell me how to check if an image on a website has a colour profile tagged?

As I said, I export the images from Lightroom and us sRGB as the profile. The images that I have posted here are the same images that I'm sending to the client, just uploaded to my own Wordpress / ProPhoto-themed website. When I download the images from the 'client' website, they even have the same file names that I exported them with. So it's not that the client has done something to them. Are the images that I've loaded here, from my website, showing the sRGB profile?

When I view images on my iPhone on the client website they look fine. So is this isolated to my wide gamut monitor? I'm sure that I'm being a total noob here, but what is happening?



May 25, 2017 at 07:10 AM
John Wheeler
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Inconsistent Colour Online


Hi Inga

I understand you are using a Windows system (I use a Mac) so to see if an image as an embedded profile or not you can follow the following (I am sure there are other ways)

- In PS, make sure that under Edit > Color Settings you have the color management policies set so that under you are alerted to mismatches in profiles and also when there is an untagged image. That way, when you open an image in PS, if there is no embedded color profile, it will pause with an alert and ask what you want to do. I suggest setting up the management policies, download the image from the web site and open in PS and see what happens.

- From a little Google searching it appears that WordPress is pretty notorious for stripping out the embeddd profile. I don't know much about WordPress yet here is a link that discusses that issue:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/add-color-profile-infno/

Not that with an untagged image, it won't always looked oversaturated in a wide gamut monitor. Some browsers will assume the image is in sRGB profile even if untagged and properly color manage to the monitor. Other browsers will not and send the sRGB data directly to your wide gamut monitor without converting to the calibrated monitor color space.

So I suspect that you clients are also using wide gamut monitors with a viewing program / browser that just sends the untagged image data directly to their wide gamut monitor and therefore looks oversaturated.

Hope this additional information is helpful.



May 25, 2017 at 09:53 AM
CanadaMark
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Inconsistent Colour Online


Every browser displays a little different, even with embedded profiles, and not all versions of them are even color managed at all. Mobile browsers aren't all color managed either. With Firefox it defaults off but you can turn it on.

The reality of it is that *most* people, and probably most people's clients, have crappy uncalibrated monitors or inaccurate, over-saturated smartphone screens. All the work we put into making the photos perfect in PP often goes unnoticed except for prints and people with color management. Those same people aren't likely to notice or care though, so the problem kind of takes care of itself. I think all you can do is produce your images how you like with embedded ICC profiles, and make sure it's sRGB.

Another thing is that most people's monitors are WAY too bright and have a narrow gamut, so when you present them with a perfectly adjusted image, it looks over exposed or the whites are all gone. It's a common issue and there isn't much you can do about it.



May 25, 2017 at 04:36 PM
Inga
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Inconsistent Colour Online


Sorry guys, I think you're misunderstanding my issue now.

No client has complained about this, yet. I agree that most people aren't running any colour management and that browsers do some funky stuff and that nothing will look the way it does on my monitor. That said, I have always worked on the adage that if it's right on my calibrated monitor, then regardless of which way another viewing device is set, I delivered a "correct" file.

More to the point, this issue is affecting my own viewing of photos I've done for a client. As per the examples in my OP, you can see what a client has on their website (apparently stripped of the profile), and then you can view the same file, hosted on my website, exactly the way it was emailed to the client, the way it was exported from LR. As I said, if I download the file from their website, and view it in Windows Photo Viewer on my machine, the file appears fine. Why then is it oversaturated while on their website? Again, my website, a WordPress site with a ProPhoto theme, displays the file perfectly. And it appears that neither of the client websites I've linked above are using WordPress.

The same images (on their website) when viewed on a cheap monitor, or iPhone appear very much like I want them to look. Why does this affect my wide-gamut monitor, and how can avoid this situation?



May 25, 2017 at 07:32 PM
John Wheeler
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Inconsistent Colour Online


Hi Inga

I think you are right that there is a misunderstanding. To get to the bottom of your issue we may need to backtrack and simplify to better understand root cause of your issue.

Since this is an issue of viewing on your system and seeing different colors of the same object, could you clearly state the when this happens e.g. source of the image that you are viewing and the software you are using that shows them different. If you use the same software (e.g Photoshop) do they still look different.

To separate out the issues, I woiuld take the same identical image source. I can't tell I if your issue is viewing actually different images or your issue is viewing on different peices of software (e.g. Photoshop vs a browser). Once we narrow down if this is an image issue or an applicatio issue, that should help.

Note, here are the two image links that was comparing, one from Fred Miranda and one from the web site. Fred Miranda linked image is tagged with sRGB and the one from the other website has not tagged/embedded color profile. With my Firefox browser on my Mac they look the same since I have Firefox set up to assume untagged images are sRGB:

Link from Fred Miranda that has embedded sRGB profile: http://deprimophoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Zecutive-007-Deprimo-Photography.jpg

Link of image from product catalog that has not embedded color profile:
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1317/4017/products/Zecutive_-_008_Deprimo_Photography_1024x1024.jpg?v=1495004555



May 26, 2017 at 08:08 AM
Inga
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Inconsistent Colour Online


Hi John, I can confirm that the two images you've put in your last post appear differently on my monitor. The first (from my website) is correct. The second, is oversaturated and red looking.

I use Chrome (v58) as my default browser. Is there a way to force Chrome to display non-tagged images as sRGB?

Thanks for your amazing patience with me on this.



May 26, 2017 at 09:56 AM
Inga
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Inconsistent Colour Online


Sorry, just to confirm. I export my images from LR to the sRGB space for clients, even for print...it seems to be safer that way. I had always believed that this is tagging the image with sRGB. I suspect that there are websites which are doing compression and (among other things) removing the colour profile to save space. How else are these images that I have created in sRGB while exporting, suddenly ending up non-tagged when clients upload them to their website?


May 26, 2017 at 10:07 AM
John Wheeler
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Inconsistent Colour Online


Hi Inga

Some websites do strip the color profile. I am not sure why yet per my previous post, WordPress sites have been known to do that (not sure about others).

Firefox browser has good color management and can be configured to make sure untagged images are interpreted as sRGB. Not sure about Chrome yet am checking.



May 26, 2017 at 10:11 AM
John Wheeler
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Inconsistent Colour Online


Hi Inga

As far as I can tell, Chrome still does not assign sRGB for untagged images and apparently just sends the data as is to the montor (which is the same as if they just assigned the monitor color profile.

Here is a link that I believe is from Ja 2017 with the most recent comparison charts showing how things stack up for wide gamut monitors vs browsers and sRGB monitors and browsers.

I could not find any more information that Chrome will do what you want yet I may not have the most recent information

https://www.silentnomad.com/chart/

The article does mention how to configure the Firefox browser though so you could give that a try.

I bet we understand root cause of your issue now though.

Hope this helps.



May 26, 2017 at 10:32 AM
John Wheeler
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Inconsistent Colour Online


Hi Inga

Here is a link wiht additional information to help debug your browser situation. It has both a good explanation and a way to test your browser to see that it is color managed for wide gamut monitors. Hope the additional information is helpful:

http://www.gballard.net/photoshop/srgb_wide_gamut.html



May 26, 2017 at 02:06 PM
Inga
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Inconsistent Colour Online


John Wheeler wrote:
Hi Inga

Here is a link wiht additional information to help debug your browser situation. It has both a good explanation and a way to test your browser to see that it is color managed for wide gamut monitors. Hope the additional information is helpful:

http://www.gballard.net/photoshop/srgb_wide_gamut.html


Sorry for the slow reply John. I think you've totally found the issue. I used to use FF as a browser but it was just too unstable back in the day. Guess that's my only option unless someone can suggest a way to force sRGB to be shown on non-tagged images in Chrome.

Sadly, I don't think there is any way for me to control/dictate to clients how their website handles my images. I know I'm sending them to the client with sRGB profile set. But something is clearly striping that info out on the way to the website.



May 29, 2017 at 06:49 AM
John Wheeler
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Inconsistent Colour Online


Hi Inga

The best you can do is convert to sRGB and make sure the profile is embedded. For those that have wide gamut monitors and don't use a browser that assumes sRGB with untagged images, they will have overly saturated images. Yet most all other clients will do just fine with the images.

As a note, the Shopify site specifically strips color profiles from images. Here is a link to their help page confirming that practice: https://help.shopify.com/themes/customization/colors-images-and-video/fix-colors-of-uploaded-images

With more and more monitors moving to wider gamuts, either browsers will have to get better on color management or sites such as Shopify will have to review their policies.



May 29, 2017 at 07:29 AM
plateaulight
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Inconsistent Colour Online


I have seen this issue with sites that employ scripts. The scripts do not recognize embedded profiles in general. The only workaround if they are using scripts that strip profiles from the file header is to use the .PNG format with the proper SRGB profile. The .PNG format embeds the profile differently and is immune to the profile being stripped in the file header. Try it and report back.


May 29, 2017 at 12:48 PM
Inga
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Inconsistent Colour Online


plateaulight wrote:
I have seen this issue with sites that employ scripts. The scripts do not recognize embedded profiles in general. The only workaround if they are using scripts that strip profiles from the file header is to use the .PNG format with the proper SRGB profile. The .PNG format embeds the profile differently and is immune to the profile being stripped in the file header. Try it and report back.


That is very useful information. I'll try that out next time I have the opportunity. Thank you for the extra insight.



May 29, 2017 at 07:00 PM





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