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Color differences in Finder, Quick Look, Safari, Firefox and Photoshop

M

MacUser1980

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 23, 2008
3
0
Hi all,

I know this message isn't 100% about digital photography, but I assume this is the place where most people care about color management...

I used to be a windows user, but then decided to go for a change and took a Mac. Still getting a bit used to it, but there is one thing that I'm unable to understand.

Here you can see a screenshot I took with several applications having the same photo open: Finder, Quick Look, Safari, Firefox and Photoshop.


colorissue.jpg



I know Safari uses embedded color profiles and Firefox does not, but I'm still confused. The photo as you see it in Photoshop is as I intend it (if Safari renders it correctly, of course :) but I'm sure you'll see the difference with the other apps.
Of course, I've converted the image to sRGB before exporting it from Photoshop, and the thumbnail in Finder looks as if it has the right color.
However, when I open it in Quick Look, Preview or Safari, it turns very red.
It's very frustrating, also because I don't know how it will look on other people's computers.

I've been looking very intensively for a solution, but I can't find it.
Anybody here with the same issue, or with an idea for a solution?

Please let me know, I'm getting desperate... :(

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer,

Andy
 
You say you converted to sRGB. Are you sure you actually "converted to" and not "assigned" sRGB. In "Adobe-speak" assign just sticks on the sRGB sticker but does not change any pixels. Looks like that could be what you did but then you did say "convert".

Ifyou want to know what other people will see on their screens, that's easy. The answer is "all messed up" most people do not have calibrated screens. People with newer Apple iMacs and notebooks will be using glossy screens which boost contrast and saturation.
 
The reason why PS looks different than the others is that it doesn't use the system's gamma settings, but its own, brighter Windows-style gamma (2.5 vs. 1.8, I think).

Firefox doesn't use profiles, but I'm not sure why Preview and Safari look different.
 
I'm glad you brought this up. This is something that I noticed years ago. In OS 9, which used Pictureview (or something) a photo viewed in Safari looked the same when downloaded to the desktop and viewed in Pictureview.

When OS X came out and I got it, images in Preview just don't have the sharpness compared with when viewed in Safari or Photoshop.

I thought it was a size thing but zooming in on an image in Preview to make a part of it the same size as the image rendered in Safari shows the Preview version to lack sharpness and richness of colour.

Would love to know why too.
 
Oh, I meant to say...

For example, my photos look way better when viewed on the internet in Flickr than they do when seen in Preview on my computer.
 
Convert to...

Thanks for your replies on this topic.

I'm sure I'm using "convert to...".
Source space is Adobe RGB , destination space is sRGB

You're right that most monitors are not calibrated, but now it doesn't even end up correctly on those that are (not even on my own)
 
MacUser1980 said:
You're right that most monitors are not calibrated, but now it doesn't even end up correctly on those that are (not even on my own)
Click to expand...

Did you calibrate it using a colorimeter (e.g. Spyder, Huey)? Or did you just "calibrate" it using the OS X built-in tools?

If you haven't done an honest-to-goodness calibration (using a gamma of 2.2) then that could be the culprit.

Also, are you sure your exported images have the color profile embedded?
 
FYI... Firefox 3 now supports color profiles - but support of them is switched off by default. There are two ways to switch it on. The first is by changing some entries in about:config. The easy way is to download the "Color Management" plugin which is available here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6891
(requires Mozilla registration)

...or from the author's homepage here:

http://seanhayes.name/2008/06/16/color-management-04/

If you leave the extension's profile box blank it should use the system default monitor profile, or you can direct it to the monitor profile you want (am not quite sure what difference this makes). You can test if your browser is color-managing properly using this testpage:

http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter

...and if you're interested in browser color management I wrote a blog post about it here:

http://www.snappertalk.com/index.php/20080612/firefox-3-matters-to-photographers/

Cheers,

Ben
 
My monitor is calibrated and actually photoshop and safari look closer togther than Firefox...My workflow always looks the same from preview to photoshop to safari...I have only noticed a difference when downloading Firefox couple of days ago...I asked the question on DPreview and the color on Firefox has been turned off...
 
Thanks for the tips

For starters, the monitor is regularly calibrated with Spyder2PRO.
Also, the profile is properly exported with the image.

As for the others, I'll have to have a look.

It's still strange for me to see that the Firefox I'm using (version 2, which disregards profiles) matches far better with what I see in Photoshop than with what I see in Preview/Safari which do use them.

Would that also mean that if I get it right in Safari, it will look as horribly discolored in Firefox on other people's display as it now does in Safari on mine?
 
Okay, I can't duplicate this. I took a photo I had of a fair-skinned woman that was shot in Nikon's NEF (RAW) format / Adobe RGB. Using Photoshop CS3, I did "Edit" -> "Convert to Profile" and converted my colorspace to sRGB IEC61966-2.1. Then I saved the image as JPEG at maximum quality.

When I display the JPEG image simultaneously using Photoshop CS3, Preview, and Safari - I can't see any differences in color at all. It also looks the same in Firefox 3, which isn't the same browser you're using (plus I have color management turned on in FF3).

My Macbook Pro's screen was calibrated 2 months ago using a Spyder 2 Pro.

Sorry I can't be of any help...
 
ChrisA said:
Who still has their monitor set at 1.8? Likely someone still using OS 9.
Click to expand...

As far as I know, anyone running OS X that hasn't changed the setting to 2.2 themselves, which I'm guessing is most of the typical user base that the OP is concerned about. I think the default is 1.8, or at least it was on both my clean installs of leopard and tiger on my powerbook, mbp, and my girlfriend's macbook.
 
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