Does the fur on this goat look orange?

[lisae]

<p>Sounds like a goofy question, but.... I had a calendar made by Shutterfly for my daughter. In the first calendar, what I see as a tannish patch on the front of the goat came out bright orange, like a pumpkin. (Many of the pictures on the calendar had an orange cast to them, but this was one of the worst.)</p>

<p>Many frustrating phone calls later, Shutterfly's customer service manager called me. He reviewed the pictures on the account and agreed with me that the fur shouldn't have been orange. The calendar was reprinted and I received the replacement yesterday. In the new calendar, the fur is less orange, but still orange. (The color of the rest of the prints is acceptable, not great, but good enough.)</p>

<p>I'm supposed to send the original back to Shutterfly so that they can look at it. But my monitor isn't calibrated so I thought I would ask here and see if it looks orange to anyone else.</p>

<p>(I also received 2 photo books yesterday from Shutterfly and those pictures all look fine.)</p><div></div>

[tonybynum]

nope, just the patches on the chest and knees, with a little pink . . . Looks perfectly exposed to me,

would make a nice print. . . I think there might be a tad loss of detail in the head just above the right eye if

it were printed, but it's a nice photo and well exposed.

 

Tony

[ralf_h]

<p>uncalibrated laptop here. the patches look light tan, about the way you described them</p>

[riz]

<p>I have calibrated laptop. The fur looks white and as Tony mentioned there are patches on chest and knees. But the patches on chest looks orangish-light brown to me. No they are not pink.</p>

[ann_clancy6]

<p>on my calibrated screen, the chest looks light tan, the knees a bit pink with a small amount of tan, but over all it looks natural</p>

[simon_crofts]

<p>Possibly a colour profile issue? If you open the image as an Adobe RGB it looks like this:-</p>

<p><img src="http://www.croftsphoto.com/photonet/Goat.jpg" alt="" /></p>

[simon_crofts]

<p>The fur looks more orange in the Adobe RGB version. The colours also look better in it to me (subjective opinion).</p>

<p>So, one possibility is that you had the camera set to Adobe RGB when you took the picture. And maybe you sent it to them with Adobe RGB profile stilll embedded. But are viewing it via software that assumes the image is sRGB (eg. most web browsers, or many JPEG viewers). It's also possible that the calendar manufacturer have slightly boosted saturation even further to make it more 'punchy', which publishers aimed at mass market often do (I find Blurb comes out with a bit of extra saturation in my experience for example). With the result that the fur looks even more orange.</p>

<p>Not saying that the above is what happened or that you're not properly managing your colour profiles, just suggesting one possible way that it could have happened.</p>

[simon_crofts]

<p>And as an Adobe RGB image with a bit of a boost to colour saturation like a publisher might add:-</p>

<p><img src="http://www.croftsphoto.com/photonet/Goat2.jpg" alt="" /></p>

[lisae]

<p>Thanks for all the responses. Simon, I think you're right and that's what I'm trying to figure out. I shot in raw, imported it into Lightroom (if I understand the process, it comes in as Adobe RGB). ( And I just checked the camera setting and it is set to Adobe RGB). In Lightroom, I converted it to Camera Standard. I have Lightroom set up to export a med-res jpeg as sRGB. The calendar page looks much like your last picture. (The first calendar was even worse - poor goat looked like it had been on a diet of carrots and pumpkins.)</p>

<p>When you said the Adobe RGB might still be embedded, is there something else I need to do (besides exporting as sRGB) to get rid of that?</p>

<p>Shutterfly says that they don't add any sharpening or saturation to the calendar photos, and the customer service manager said he thinks the original calendar color was a printer problem. I'm pretty sure they are boosting the saturation. But since the second one still looks too orange on the calendar and the others don't, I wanted to make sure I'm not doing something wrong. </p>

<p> </p>

[simon_crofts]

<blockquote>

<p>When you said the Adobe RGB might still be embedded, is there something else I need to do (besides exporting as sRGB) to get rid of that?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The one you posted online does have an sRGB profile attached to it, but it looks to me a bit like the colours where an sRGB profile has been attached to an Adobe RGB image without going through the proper sRGB - Adobe RGB conversion process. Maybe the copy sent to the printers somehow still had the Adobe RGB profile attached to it, or had been correctly converted to sRGB? Or it could just be that the printers' software somehow automatically assumes the image must be Adobe RGB without looking at the actual profile (Adobe RGB is a standard for printing), though it'd be a bit surprising if they didn't look at the profile.</p>

<p>I don't use Lightroom, so not sure how the colour profile conversion works there. But one way or another, it does look like an Adobe RGB image that is being incorrectly viewed (by you, and by us because our web browsers assume it is sRGB) as if it's an sRGB image.</p>

<p>If you're taking the image as Adobe RGB, probably the safest thing is to convert the image to JPEG as Adobe RGB ie. without changing the profile, then using "Convert profile" in Photoshop (NOT "Assign profile").</p>

<p>To see what profile you have in any image, in Photoshop, look in "File Info", then under "Advanced" and "Adobe Photoshop Properties", it should tell you what colour profile the image has attached to it. If it's Adobe RGB it should have reasonably bright/punchy colours like in the first version I posted. Or have a look at the properties of the image in a programme like Adobe Bridge to see the colour profile.</p>

 

[SCL]

<p>Semi-calibrated monitor here - the goat looks fine, not orange patch but light tan.</p>

[lisae]

<p>Simon, thank you. I'll pull out my Lightroom book this week and see what more I need to do. And that was one of the questions the Shutterfly guy asked me, so I'll bet the answer lies in the color profile.</p>

<p>Thanks, again, to everyone who commented.</p>

[simon_crofts]

<p>It's a pleasure - good luck with sorting it out and I hope you get to the bottom of it. As an aside, it's a good idea to keep very careful control of what colour profile is being used and that it is converted properly when you eg. need the picture as sRGB for web use.</p>

<p>I tend to keep two copies of important pictures - ones in a separate folder with Adobe RGB profile for maximum quality for the future and for printing, the other copies in an sRGB folder, which I use for emailing, web use, and generally in any case where I'll be delivering images to someone (eg. non-professional clients) and I'm not sure if they're going to understand and cope with Adobe RGB.</p>

 

[lisae]

<p>Thank you, again, Simon. I spent some time looking through the photographs on your website (especially the orphans/families) and I feel like I have witnessed something very profound. Your pictures are so sensitive and intimate, and the details say so much about your subjects... I don't feel that it's right to say that I'm impressed. It's more that I have grown in understanding the groups of people you have photographed.</p>

[simon_crofts]

<p>Thank you Lisa, that's very kind of you to say so! I'm very glad that you enjoyed them - that's a really lovely comment that you made.</p>