matussik

<p>Hi Mark, if the images displayed with IE9 look different, than it seems that the color management of IE is not working properly. Save locally the files and open them with photoshop, lightroom or any other software that has proper color management and you'll see that they look strictly identical; this is what you should see with a web browser with properly working color management.<br>

Internet Explorer 9 is supposed to have color management but I have read in forums that it does only half of the job: it recognises the profile stored in the images, but it doesn't take the calibration profile of the screen into account...<br>

as far as I know, IE8 has no color management at all.<br>

I'm using Firefox 3.6 with a calibrated Eizo Coloredge CG243 screen. The color management of FireFox 3.6 doesn't take v4 color profiles into account but the v4 profiles aren't broadly used on the net and more important FireFox takes your screen profile into account (if it's a v2 profile). I haven't tried FireFox 4.0 yet, I think it's supposed to work with v4 profiles, but I've read in a forum that it doesn't work with Win 7 x64....</p>

<p>Hi Chris,<br>

I'm using Firefox with color management turned on and on my screen both images submitted look strictly identical.<br>

If with your web browser they look different, than it means that the color management of your web browser is not working properly.<br>

As long as you include the color space profile in the images you submit, all users having a web browser with color management properly activated will see correct colors.<br>

But the vast majority of users don't use color managed browsers and they will have false colors with "adobe" tagged images: the standard profile for the web is sRGB and all standard screens sold on the market are designed to display properly sRGB, in this way the broad public is seeing relatively accurate colors on the net even if they have never calibrated their screen.<br>

Therefore the best color profile for web-publishing is sRGB.<br>

Now that doesn't mean that you should stop using "adobe RGB": this is a wide gamut color space, meaning that it can display more colors than sRGB and if you'd be using sRGB in your work-flow, you'd loose at an early stage color information. I'd suggest you to use adobe RGB for all post processing work-flow and only convert to sRGB the small resolution image for web publishing.<br>

I hope this helps.<br>

Kind regards,<br>

Jan</p>

<p>Thank You very much for the hint Gary! I'll try it out for the next calibration of my screen!</p>

<p>I use "color navigator" that was delivered with my screen and I haven't found the option for creating v2 profiles (at least it's not under tools->preferences->profiles). I recently bought a new computer which lead me to reinstall everything including Firefox 3.6<br>

On my old computer with windows XP I had firefox 3.0 which I never updated as it all worked fine and the system was running stable.<br>

prior to my computer change I had no reason for looking for v4 profile compatibility of Firefox (before that I even didn't know about v4 and v2 profiles existing)... so, yes I guess I'm a "late bloomer" on that issue, sorry about that.<br>

thanks all for your feedback! I had read on a forum that most calibration software produced v4 profile unless you specified in the options you wanted v2, I guess this information wasn't accurate.<br>

In my research I found some forum threads asking about how to convert v4 profiles to v2, so I thought my rat run might interest some people.</p>

<p>I recently upgraded my system to windows 7 and reinstalled the newer version of Firefox 3.6. I was surprised that despite of having the settings set to have proper color management within Firefox (gfx.color_management.mode set to 1), the displayed colors were wrong (far too high saturation).<br>

<br /> On my old system with Windows XP and Firefox 3.0 the color management within Firefox worked just fine (same colors displayed as in Photoshop or other color managed software).<br>

<br /> The test pictures with tagged/untagged images on gballard.net were telling me that color management within Firefox was active as no color shift was visible when switching between different tagged color spaces (but the displayed colors were all equally wrong).<br>

here is the link to the test pictures:<br /> <a href="http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html">http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html#</a><br>

On the other hand I could reproduce in Photoshop the colors displayed in Firefox by checking view-> "proof colors" with "Monitor RGB" selected in the Proof setup, which is basically turning of the color management in Photoshop and thus was indicating that the color management of firefox was not functioning properly.<br /> The reason for this malfunction is that Firefox couldn't read the icc profile generated by the calibration software of my monitor.<br>

I found out on google that in Firefox 3.0 the "Icms" code was used for color management but it was changed with the release of Firefox 3.5 to the open source "qcms". Unfortunately while Icms was able to read icc v2 and v4 profiles, the newly used qcms only supports the older icc v2 profiles.<br>

You can read more here:<br /> <a href="http://forums.adobe.com/thread/719755">http://forums.adobe.com/thread/719755</a><br>

Most calibration softwares produce icc v4 monitor profiles which means that for those users the firefox color management will not work properly.<br>

This malfunction is particularly visible on wide gamut screens as it leads to a strong color shift (increase of saturation) but on standard screens this is less visible as they are generally designed to display sRGB wich is also the default color space used by Firefox thus making the color shift less obvious between a truly color managed software and Firefox.<br /> <strong> </strong><br>

<strong>Therefore I believe that many users are mislead by the test images on gballard.net and wrongly assume that their color management within Firefox is working properly while in reality it's not (Firefox can't read the icc profile of their monitor calibration).</strong><br /> <strong> </strong><br>

<br /> <strong>The question is: How can I get Firefox to read correctly the icc profile created by my calibration software?</strong><br /> <strong></strong><br>

<strong>A. </strong>Set your calibration software to save the icc profile in v2 format and recalibrate your screen.<br /> <strong></strong><br>

<strong>B. </strong>What if your calibration software doesn't offer that option? (this is my case)<br>

B.1<br /> The first option is to get a calibration software that offers that option.<br>

B.2<br /> The other solution is to convert the calibration icc V4 profile into an icc V2 profile. I couldn't find a software doing that, <strong>BUT</strong> I found a "rat run" that worked well in my case:<br>

1. download and install "ICC Profile Inspector 2.4" from www.color.org which is a software allowing you to edit your ICC profile<br /> <a href="http://www.color.org/profileinspector.xalter">http://www.color.org/profileinspector.xalter</a><br>

2. make a copy of your calibration icc profile in a temporary folder (desktop). Your calibration icc profile should be stored in C:/windows/system32/spool/drivers/color/ (sort by date for easier find)<br>

3. edit the profile with ICC Profile Inspector 2.4 (see attached image)<br>

3.1 click on Modify<br>

3.2 change in the Version field the digit for version 4 into version 2 (see attached image)<br>

3.3 confirm the change by clicking ok. You'll have a warning notification "Warning: Changed version number from V4 to V2, tags should be updated accordingly!" which I ignored by clicking ok and it worked fine.<br>

3.4 Save as: save your profile with a different name to keep your original icc v4 profile working for other application such as Photoshop. Example: "my_monitor_profile_v2.icc"<br>

4. copy your new icc V2 profile back to the folder C:/windows/system32/spool/drivers/color/<br>

5. edit the Firefox configuration by typing "about:config" in the field for web adresses and confirm by clicking on "I'll be careful, I promise!"<br>

6. scroll down to the line "gfx.color_management.display_profile", double click it and enter the address of your new profile: " C:/windows/system32/spool/drivers/color/ my_monitor_profile_v2.icc"<br>

7. restart Firefox to get the changes active. Windows asked me: "do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?" I clicked NO.<br /> <strong> </strong><br>

<strong>Now Firefox should have proper color management active. </strong>I know this method isn't really clean, but in my case it worked very well. Some feedback would be appreciated!</p>

<p>Now I'm not an expert on color management and I wrote those indications to the best of my knowledge and belief, please correct me if I made some errors. I hope this post to be helpful.<br>

Kind regards, Jan</p><div></div>

<p>Hi Sal, I fear that with a black background color in LR instead of neutral gray standard, you'll increase the risk of producing too dark images in PP. Best wishes! Jan</p>

 

<p>I'm confused now: if there is only little difference between the light-room window and the browser, where does the darkening happen?<br>

Did you mean that the same file seen with the same web-browser looks darker in photo.net than in Flickr?</p>

<p>Hi Sal,<br>

the message "<em>The sRGB color space cannot encompass the full range of colors available within Lightroom</em>" only says that Lightroom can work with color spaces that can display more colors than sRGB does -> basically the software is telling you that you could get more out of it, if you'd be using a different color space with a wider gamut (such as Adobe RGB for example).<br>

sRGB is the standard color profile for pictures displayed in the internet and when the industry switched from CRT screens to LCD screens they adapted to the lower standard used by the broad majority of users -> today standard LCD screens won't be able to display colors outside the range of sRGB. Those screens are designed to display sRGB, and therefore display relatively accurately the pictures of the web even if the web-browser isn't color managed.<br>

Wide Gamut screens capable of displaying more colors than sRGB are recently becoming more common and maybe your Mac has such a screen, and this might be the source of your problem -> sRGB being the standard for internet, the web browser will send color information to the screen in the sRGB profile but basically without telling your screen that this is sRGB, and as the screen can display more colors he will do it by using the full range of its capabilities...<br>

If this is your problem you should be seeing a color shift when looking at the same picture with your non color managed web-browser and color managed soft-ware such as light-room: the image in the web-browser will look more saturated. If this is the case than your solution will be to use a web-browser that has color management capability and there I'd recommend to use Firefox as you can set an option to force it to color manage pictures with sRGB even if the picture has no color profile embedded.<br>

Calibrating the monitor is of course also something to do, but I doubt that it can be the reason for a color switch or darkening of pictures between two software on the same computer.<br>

I hope this will help you.<br>

Kind Regards,<br>

Jan</p>

<p>You shouldn't <em>assume </em>that posters who suggests to check in the tripod have never tried taking it as hand luggage: actually I used to always carry my tripod in its travel bag as hand luggage until it was refused by TSA agents in Paris in 2005 (and it doesn't have any spikes) -> I had to get back to check in and there I assumed that my tripod would be safe in its travel bag but when I retrieved it in the arrival airport the head was damaged: the Manfrotto 3 Way head was twisted beyond its rotation limit and got loose. I got a refund from the airport services but I'd have been happier to avoid this inconvenience! Since then I always pack my tripod inside my case. This is my personally tested experience about traveling with a tripod...</p>

<p>once I got told that my camera-bag was too heavy for cabin: I stepped back and loaded the heavy lenses in the back-pack of a friend, got through TSA with a bag within weight limits and loaded the lenses back where they belong right behind TSA...<br>

If you want to take your tripod, put it <em>inside </em>your checked luggage: the travel bags for tripods won't necessarily give enough protection to have the tripod in its travel-bag as checked in luggage on its own.</p>

<p>I'm using a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED (generation after the V) and I'm very happy with it. On some highly contrasted slides it has some difficulties to render the dynamic range, but then I do several scans with different brightness settings and merge them together in PS to obtain a result that is very similar to the original slide.<br>

If you have only a limited number of slides to scan at once and wouldn't have the use of an own scanner afterward's you may not want to invest in a scanner and get through the process of learning how to get the best result out of it. If your looking for the top some labs offer scanning with Imacon scanner which are among the best in the market but are also very expensive: I have a lab in my area that offers raw scan on a Imacon flextight 848 for 25,-EUR per scan... I haven't tested it yet (I will soon though) but considering that there is a factor 10 in the value of the scanner and it has a scanning resolution of 8.000dpi while mine has 4.000dpi, I believe the Nikon will not sustain the comparison.</p>