Color space conversion question

[jesper_hansen3]

Hi, once again a question about conversion between color spaces - implicit and explicit. <br>

I have a good understanding of color spaces and profiling, know the difference between conversion and assigning a

profile, know about applications being color managed or not and so on. Still something that I don't understand

though,

I hope someone here can enlighten me ;-)<br>

<br>

I am on a hardware calibrated EIZO S2231W LCD. My monitor profile created with Spyder2Express is assigned as

default profile in the color management settings of the "Display Properties | Settings | Advanced" dialog (Windows XP

Pro x64).<br>

<br>

<li>I have Adobe RGB as working color space in Camera, DPP and Photoshop CS2</li>

<li>I use Lightroom 1.1 for my overall work-flow, and as far as I know, that will by design mean working momentarily

in ProPhotoRGB</li>

<li>I have set up in Lightroom so that photos are transfered to Photoshop as 16-bit AdobeRGB PSD files</li>

<br><br>

I believe this is "by the book", and it all seem to work very well - I am very satisfied with the colours I see, and with

the consistency between these (all color-managed) applications.<br>

<br>

What puzzles me is the way my pictures look when leaving AdobeRGB, specifically when creting web contents. I

know from a thousand existing threads that I should just use Safari and forget about un-managed colors, so don't get

me wrong, but I am just desperately trying to understand what is going on... It seems like the photos get extremely

saturated with the reds and yellows way off.

<br><br>

To check if you see the same difference, here is an example with Lightroom's internal web gallery view (to the right,

good colors) and the same gallery as it looks like when selecting "preview in browser" (to the left, over-saturated reds

and yellows on my monitor).<br>

<a href="http://fotoportfolio.dk/colors_off.jpg" target="_new">Example</a><br>

<br>

<li>

Is this the effect of the conversion from AdobeRGB to sRGB - I guess not, because that conversion should

mean "mapping" to similarly perceived colors in sRGB color space, so that the photo would look somewhat the

same, right?</li>

<br>- or -<br>

<li>Is this the effect of the photo not being color managed at all, and is it only remarkable on my display - do you

see it? It seems to me that the un-managed colors must relate to the actual physical settings on the display itself -

since the IE browser is not aware of the monitor profile, what I see is a dumb, "native" display of the pixels using

absolute color values, right? Is my monitor factory settings so extreme, that everything not color managed looks

completely over-saturated, and to you it maybe look OK?</li>

<br><br>

Just one more note - when loading the example pic in Photoshop, and use Proof Colors with sRGB and preserve

RGB values, the saturation drops, and the picture on the left is actually the one closest to my original. I have an idea

that this approach would actually show me how the colors look unmanaged on an "average" display. Is this idea

correct?

<br><br>

I hope that someone can see some logic or reason that I miss here - I was convinced that my setup was good, but

the many problems related to my web output really has me wondering if somethings wrong anyway.

<br><br>

Thanks for taking the time,<br>

Regards, Jesper.

[jesper_hansen3]

I think I may have found a possible reason for the exagerated reds I see in my browser - comments are still VERY

welcome though: <br><br>

The EIZO monitor features a wide gamut S-PVA panel, and I found this article at ColorVision's support site:<br>

<a href="http://support.colorvision.ch/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=723"

target="_new">Incorrect Color outside Photoshop on Wide Gamut Display</a><br><br>

Does this sound like a reasonable explanation for my troubles, to those of you who are color management experts? If

so, I guess my only option really is to proof my web galleries etc. on another display? Or can I rely on soft-proofing

to sRGB with preserved RGB values, as described above?

<br><br>

Thank you once again for any comments you may have,<br>

Jesper.

[pisq]

I'm not a color management expert, but I'll offer this: when saving my images for the web, I convert to sRGB first, then save as JPG (the image comes into the application with AdobeRGB). I have found that to be reasonably consistent. In your case, I understand that on the same monitor, between different applications your color is changing, it would suggest to me that the image's color profile is not following to the second application.

[jacopo_brembati]

Jesper, <br>

the behaviour is normal.

The rule is:<br>

rendering from a larger color space to a smaller one, results in desaturated colors <br>

rendering from a smaller color space to a larger one, results in more saturated colors <br>

 

If an application is color managed, the CMM transforms color from image color space to monitor profile. <br>

 

Image have to be transformed to sRGB as most people has monitor sRGB-like. <br>

Who has wide gamut monitor see color more saturated.

[steveg]

Hi Jesper

 

I also have a wide gamut monitor (a Dell) and suffer the same problems - the link you gave in your second post is right - its because the majority of applications don't colour manage so ignore the fact that your monitor will show more saturated colours than a "normal" sRGB one.

 

The answer is to use colour managed applications were possible (Firefox 3 instead of I.E for example)

[jesper_hansen3]

Thank you all for your responses - you have helped restoring my confidence that it is not my workflow or my setup that is wrong. I will just have to workaround the "benefits" of my wide gamut display, when preparing standard sRGB web content ;-)