mhahn Posted August 7, 2014 Posted August 7, 2014 <p>I ask this because I've noticed for a while that some of my pictures look washed out at the medium size (not the way I thought they looked when I uploaded them), but better at the large size (about the way I thought they looked). I thought that perhaps it was just that my perception was influenced by the difference in size.</p> <p>So I just did a test, where I downloaded the medium and large versions of the picture at the link below and looked at them in Photoshop at the same size, which only seemed to confirm that the color of the medium size picture is washed out and the color of the larger one is more vibrant.</p> <p>I bet I'm doing something wrong when I upload my pictures, but I have no idea what it is.<br> Can anyone tell me? </p> <p>http://www.photo.net/photo/17829420</p>
lex_jenkins Posted August 7, 2014 Posted August 7, 2014 <p>The usual reasons for photos not appearing online as we see them on our devices:</p> <ul> <li>Our devices aren't, or can't be, calibrated - camera displays, computer monitors, mobile devices.</li> <li>We've assigned a color space other than sRGB, or none at all.</li> </ul> <p>Photo.net's automatically created smaller JPEGs (680 pixels wide, I think) do suffer some degradation, but it's usually slight. It's more noticeable in landscapes with large expanses of brilliant colors or continuous gray tones - posterizing and loss of saturation often occur. But with other types of photos any degradation is imperceptible.</p> <p>I do notice occasional glitches but I'm never sure whether it's a photo.net problem, browser problem or gremlins. Sometimes it helps to check the appearance of the same photos with other browsers.</p>
mhahn Posted August 7, 2014 Author Posted August 7, 2014 <p>I don't know about the difference being small: I could clearly see it when I looked at both the medium and large images side by side in Photoshop. Even when I decreased the size of the large image to match the medium image, the difference in color was apparent.</p> <p>i.e., the downloaded medium and large images look noticeably different in the same program on the same device</p> <p>That's how it seems to me, in any case.</p>
mhahn Posted August 7, 2014 Author Posted August 7, 2014 <p>Comparing the downloaded images side by side in Photoshop, the medium-size image is also much degraded in sharpness compared to the large image. And when I decreased the size of the large image in Photoshop to match the size of the downloaded medium image, the down-sized image was still sharper and had better color than the medium image.</p> <p>But it doesn't seem to happen with every picture. For instance, I don't see any apparent difference in the color of this image between the medium and large versions: http://www.photo.net/photo/17516679&size=md</p> <p>Perhaps some colors are more delicate than others, and small differences in them are more noticeable than small differences in other colors. In the photo I referred to at the beginning of this thread, the man's face appears to have a grayish cast in the medium version, but a healthy, almost ruddy glow in the large version.</p>
lex_jenkins Posted August 7, 2014 Posted August 7, 2014 <p>As I described earlier, the problem appears to be some inconsistencies in the color spaces assigned to your photos. <a href="/photo/17829420&size=lg"><strong>This photo</strong></a> appears to have Adobe RGB embedded. Different browsers will treat this differently.</p> <p>And <a href="/photo/17516679&size=lg"><strong>this photo</strong></a> appears to be tagged as sRGB without an embedded color profile. Again, this will result in some inconsistencies in appearances.</p> <p>I compared both sets of photos - smaller and larger - in Chrome and Internet Explorer and both appeared okay. I saw no significant differences between the smaller and larger versions. And any differences between browsers were very slight - I saw very slightly more magenta in skin colors in Chrome than in IE, but not enough to be concerned about.</p> <p>When in doubt, try <a href="http://regex.info/exif.cgi">Jeffrey's online EXIF viewer</a>. It will notify you about any color space/profile issues that might affect how the photos appear on various devices and browsers.</p>
mhahn Posted August 7, 2014 Author Posted August 7, 2014 <p>The pictures where I see a noticeable difference in color between the large and medium versions seem to be the ones where the large picture is tagged as Adobe rgb, so maybe that is the problem. (All of the medium-sized versions seem to be untagged.)</p> <p>Not sure how those pictures got to be Adobe RGB, but I'll try reposting them at some point as sRGBs and see if that makes a difference.</p> <p>Thank you, Lex. I appreciate it.<br> Martin</p>
mhahn Posted August 7, 2014 Author Posted August 7, 2014 <p>Looks like all the pictures I was having problems with were ones that I was working with in Adobe RGB without realizing it.</p> <p>I figured it would turn out to be a problem of my own making . . . </p> <p>Well, at least now I know.</p>
JDMvW Posted August 7, 2014 Posted August 7, 2014 <p>A short answer is to use the "Save for Web and Devices.." command.</p> <p>The dialog box will let you choose what color space (check convert to sRGB, for example), the amount of metadata you want to keep, and you can even set the dimensions of the saved file, though it's probably better to do that before you save.</p> <div></div>
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