MY COLOR PROBLEM ON PHOTO.NET

[kdjusa]

Quick question for you guys. I have posted a few images to photo.net for critique, and each time, the

image, as it appears on photo.net, lacks the saturation that the same image possess on my computer

when viewed in iPhoto or Photoshop. The odd thing is, I have optimized the same images for web use

before and uploaded them to my own .mac website and when I do that, they look fine. For some reason,

however, when they load on this site, they lose noticeable color quality and look lifeless. By looking at

other photos on this site, it is obvious that not everyone is having this problem. Any ideas on what I'm

doing wrong?

[andrew_rodney1]

Did you convert them into sRGB?

 

Andrew Rodney

Author "Color Management for Photographers"

http://www.digitaldog.net/

[AaronFalkenberg]

It sounds like a standard profile problem. The vast majority of web browsers don't recognise color profiles. If you created your image in the Adobe 98 space, that won't be read by the browser and the image will look substantially dull. You need to convert to the sRGB color space (the lowest common denominator between machines without calibration or profiles) before you Save For Web. Once you convert and Save For Web, the image should look as it does in PS.

[ilkka_nissila]

Browsers don't support profiles - you get what your monitor by default wants to show. If you want to see the images for real, download them and open in PS. Or get a monitor which is closer to standard.

[kdjusa]

How do I convert to sRGB? I'm pretty sure right now it's in Adobe RGB since when I click on

image=>mode, it says "RGB."

[mystuff]

to convert to a different profile in photoshop..

 

edit->convert to profile

 

then choose srgb

 

srgb has a smaller range than argb, so it is best to save the converted image as a copy rather than overwrite the original

[michaelkh]

Some browsers do support profiles. For example, Apple's Safari respects the profile of an

image if it has one (though it arguably gets the default wrong for images that don't). It's a

pretty sorry state of affairs that profile use is not more widespread in browsers, IMHO.

 

I'm not clear on whether photo.net is stripping profiles, but if it is, that might explain

Kyle's problem. However, it doesn't necessarily suggest that other browsers would see the

same disparity (they may be seeing the images similarly desaturated on the .mac site too).

 

My general approach has been to convert to and embed the sRGB profile, because this

gives reasonable behaviour on macs with Safari, and on PCs. The major loser in this

scheme is Firefox on the mac, which strips the profile and (I think) displays it in the

monitor space.

[don_e]

Kyle,

 

After preparing an image for web display, I convert it to srgb, then Save As for the jpeg, which is a lot easier and less dangerous (but that's me) than Save for Web.

 

I review it in Internet Explorer on Windows because that's what the most people use. The result seems slightly warmer and slightly more saturated than it appears in PS, but not so off as to make me want to redo it.

 

Good Luck,

 

Don E