Help! 5D MarkII RAW files colors looks off in Lightroom 2.3 Web Gallery

[mimi_zhou]

<p><img src="http://www.zmimi.com/photos/test.jpg" alt="" /><br>

The photo above was taken with Canon 5D MarkII, in RAW format, with Adobe1998 color profile. I imported and converted the RAW file into DNG in Lightroom 2.3 on MacBookPro 10.5.5.<br>

The photo on the left is the exported from Lightroom using the "For E-Mail" preset, with sRGB color profile. When I tried to build a web gallery, with Airtight SimpleViewer template, I found the image looks desaturated, less contrasty and somewhat too bright. (See photo on the right).<br>

After exporting, I checked the web gallery in Firefox 3.0.7 and Safari 3.1.2. In Firefox, the image looks like the desaturated version in Lightroom's Web module; in Safari, however, the image has a lot more red, looks close to the exported Jpg.<br>

I understand that I shot in Adobe 1998, and some color information will be lost after converting to sRGB or after converting for web publishing, but never the difference was so visible and bad from within Lightroom. I shot with the first generation of 5D before, had always shot with RAW and in Adobe1998, the web gallery images had always been very close to the DNGs.<br>

I also tested with the .CR2 file in Lightroom's web module, same ugly stuff.<br>

If you have MAC try http://zmimi.com/photos/test2.jpg in Safari and in Firefox, tell me if you don't see two different rendering on your monitor?<br>

Now it seems that I can no longer go directly from editing in Lightroom to building/uploading web gallery to show clients, because it look bad! Nor I could export the jpgs and shown on web, because somehow they still look off in a non-safari environment? What am I missing here? Help!<br>

Update: I just tried to look at the test2.jpg in Firefox on an old CRT monitor connected to an IBM ThinkPad, the image is deep red; a friend looked at it on her Dell laptop using IE, the image looks desaturated and white.<br>

I have never met with this kind of inconsistancy before!</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>If you shot raw, it doesn't matter what color space you set in the camera. That's just a switch for the in-camera raw converter, which you weren't using (except for the JPEG embedded in the raw file, which is also displayed on the back of the camera and used to calculate the histogram displayed by the camera).</p>

<p>What you're seeing is that Safari is color-managed, and Firefox is not (by default).</p>

<p>You can enable color management in Firefox 3.0.x:</p>

<ol>

<li>Enter "about:config" in the location bar. Promise to be careful.</li>

<li>Enter "gfx" in the Filter bar.</li>

<li>Double-click on <em>gfx.color_management.enabled</em> to change its value to <em>True</em> .</li>

<li>Restart Firefox.</li>

</ol>

<p>Then Firefox and Safari should look the same as each other, and the same as Lightroom and any other color-managed application.</p>

[Brad_]

<p>SimpleViewer uses Flash. And Flash, before Version 10, is not color-managed. Which version of Flash Player you using?</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>The trick isn't to turn on color management in the browser (since the vast majority of people will not have a color managed browser, or enable it if they do). You need to prepare your images in the sRGB color space. Otherwise, they're mapped all wrong for the Average Joe's web browsing app and desktop.</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>True, Matt, but he is exporting in sRGB on the left, and viewing from the web module on the right (which uses sRGB). (Good point about Flash, Brad.)</p>

[joe_c5]

<p>The executive summary is that I recommend you try to figure out what software is color managed and what software isn't, and try to either upgrade or phase out any software that isn't.</p>

<p>To start with, if you have a monitor color profile set up (I'm afraid I'm not up on the details of that under Mac OS) you should see two different versions of any photo depending on whether you view it with color managed software or not, as described above. There might be slight differences from one color managed application to another. All software that isn't color managed should look exactly the same as each other on your MacBookPro (and likely "wrong").</p>

<p>The way it is supposed to work, Lightroom is color managed and should be showing you a more "correct" image. I am fairly sure that with Lightroom 1.4 running under Windows XP that Lightroom at least looks the same between the Library, Develop and Web modules. If you are editing photos it is very important to make sure that your monitor profile really is accurate. If you are only viewing photos it isn't quite as big a deal since you won't be doing any lasting damage to them.</p>

<p>Colors seen from any software that isn't color managed will vary from monitor to monitor, possibly by a lot. There is no way to get all of them to match each other because other peoples' hardware and software are out of your control. The most common solution to this is to adjust photos so that they look good in the sRGB color space. Since relatively few monitors match sRGB very closely, one of the few ways to see what that would really look like is to use color managed software.</p>

[alec_myers]

<p>Joe C is basically correct. You can't control what other people see. And, even your own operating system doesn't obey embedded colour profiles, outside of colour-managed applications like Lightroom. The best you can do is optimize an image for an sRGB profile, and hope for the best.</p>

<p>For an in-depth discussion, see Jeffrey Friedl's excellent article here:<br /> <a href="http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/color-spaces-page1">http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/color-spaces-page1</a></p>

<p>PS, if it's any consolation, unless your intended audience is a fellow professional (photographer, editor, photo-editor etc) they probably don't have the correct perception to notice the differences like you do. I once was arm-twisted to send what I considered to be a sub-par photo to a client; it was slightly off-focus, the lighting was poor and the colours washed out. Later I spoke to her and apologised that it was the only picture satisfying the requirements. Yes she said, "I agree, it's not a good picture. My daughter really doesn't look happy in it at all!"</p>

<p> </p>

[mimi_zhou]

<p>Thank you for all your replies, very helpful!</p>

<p>I had flash player 9 previously. I upgraded to 10. I also enabled color management in Firefox3. Here is how if anyone is interested, thanks to a link from elida.ca - http://lightroom.theturninggate.net/?s=ICC+profile</p>

<p>The result, the image looks better in Firefox now on my laptop, still pale though. I was able to check out the online gallery on a brand new G5 with OS 10.5.6, GeForce 8800 GT graphics card, flash player 10, Firefox 2, on a MAC 24in cinema display, what you know, the online gallery images look perfect, and even a little too much red in fact.<br>

Again, the point is that I am used to do only a little bit color balance in Lightroom before exporting and showing client a proof gallery, whether the photos were taken with a 20D, 5D, or a 1Ds. The gallery images online (from different monitors) were never TOO different from the images show in Lightroom Web module nor from my originals in the Lightroom Library module. The 5D mII files were the first to cause such dissimilarity, on my own machine too! This affects my workflow tremendously.</p>

<p>I can't explain this except I feel I am back to the time when people insisted that film is so much superior than digital.</p>

[mimi_zhou]

<p>I downloaded a demo version of a HTML based TTG Slimbox Gallery engine for Lightroom. The color of the published web gallery is very very good. I then downloaded the TTG Simpleviewer 2.0 (instead of the Airtight SimpleViewer 1.8.5) , the same problem with color persists.<br>

I am wondering if the root of this problem lies with Flash Players. Perhaps the next version will read the 5D MarkII files better. I will stay away from using flash based web gallery for a while.</p>

 

[kyleweems]

<p>As long as the image is imbedded with an sRGB profile, it really should look about the same as what it does elsewhere. sRGB is typically the only thing browsers like FF are designed for.. so anything else is somewhat like having no color profile at all, so it randomly guesses at values, invariably turning them off color, pale, and bright.</p>

<p>Try opening one of the exported images in photoshop, go to save as, see what color profile it shows, and make sure it is embedding it. It could just be something with the export that is screwed up?</p>

<p>Of course, you're never going to be able to predict how it will look on some other computer.. many monitors are -way- uncalibrated, nothing you can do about it. This would be the same for using film or anything else, when it comes to digital displays, it's a guess as to how it will look on the monitor of the average person. This is why I prefer showing things to customers on my screen, or prints :)</p>

<p>Kyle</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>I suspect the problem is with SimpleViewer. Perhaps it was built with Flash 9, before color management was supported. Certainly it shouldn't have anything to do with your camera.</p>

[Brad_]

<p>>>> I am wondering if the root of this problem lies with Flash Players. </p>

<p>Yes. As I mentioned above, if you're not using the Flash Player Version 10 pluggin, there will be no color management.</p>

<p>Go to /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player.plugin, and make usre it's Version 10.</p>