Photoshop and Color Profile Problem

GwagDesigns · July 6, 2009

Ill get right to it: My photos look great when im editing, but horrible online. Im using sRGB as my color space in photoshop and lightroom, but it seems whenever I upload a picture it gains a red cast? specially noticeable on skin tones. below is an image that im using to demonstrate what it looks like.

The funny thing is if i take a screenshot of the picture on the internet and bring it back into photoshop, the color cast goes away? My friend confirmed that the shots on the internet do look a bit pink

Im at a loss of what could be causing this, As long as im using sRGB all the way to upload they should look proper.

I noticed red cast on my images on SmugMug, my work flow for those is edit in lightroom only, and export directly to smugmug. For images on DeviantArt, i export from lightroom to photoshop to add the logo, and then save as a sRGB file and then upload.

Whats interesting is that the below uploaded shot hosted on Photobucket, did not gain a red cast like my others. Ive noticed the problem on SmugMug and DeviantArt

Wil Davis · July 6, 2009

I remember coming across some threads where the problem was found to be in the browser, particularly Firefox. It is to do with whether or not the browser is colour managed.

I've found these links (particularly the first one) to be very useful:

http://www.gballard.net/photoshop.html

(scroll down to "See Color Management in Action" (web tutorial))

also there's some stuff here:

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration.htm

Good luck!

HTH -
- Wil

jfriend · July 6, 2009

What web browser are you using for this comparison with Photoshop?

What type of monitor do you have? Is it a wide gamut monitor? Is your monitor profiled with a hardware profiler?

GwagDesigns · July 6, 2009

jfriend wrote:

What web browser are you using for this comparison with Photoshop?

What type of monitor do you have? Is it a wide gamut monitor? Is your monitor profiled with a hardware profiler?

I have noted the higher red saturation (should be more desaturated like the right) In Firefox 3, IE, Chrome, and FLock. I have note the picture with the changes on Deviant Art and SmugMug. On The image above, firefox seems to display the image properly (its hosted on photobucket) but it displays more red in Chrome.

I have a Dell 2208 Monitor, just calibrated with a Spyder 2 Express

jfriend · July 6, 2009

GwagDesigns wrote:

I have noted the higher red saturation (should be more desaturated like the right) In Firefox 3, IE, Chrome, and FLock. I have note the picture with the changes on Deviant Art and SmugMug. On The image above, firefox seems to display the image properly (its hosted on photobucket) but it displays more red in Chrome.

I have a Dell 2208 Monitor, just calibrated with a Spyder 2 Express

You WILL get different display of photos when using color-managed applications compared to non-color-managed applications.

Photoshop is always color-managed.
IE is not color managed.
Firefox 3 has color-management capabilities, but it is not enabled by default.
Firefox 3.5 has color-managed on by default.
Flock (which is based on the same engine as Firefox) will have color management capabilities of whatever version of the rendering engine it has
Chrome does not appear to be color-managed (I could be wrong here), though it is based on WebKit which has the capabilities

You don't say what version of Firefox you are running, but if it's 3.0x and you did explicitly enable color management, then only Firefox of the browsers you tried is color-managed and should display proper color. So, since you have a relatively modern monitor that is capable of displaying rich colors, it is expected that a non-color-managed application will display an sRGB image as more saturated than a properly color-managed application like Photoshop. That is the expected behavior. The solution to display accurate color is to display the image with a color-managed application.

Color-managed browsers that I'm aware of on Windows are Firefox 3.0 (with color-management enabled), Firefox 3.5 (color-management is enabled by default), and Safari.

When uploading your own images to the web that are going to be resized by a photo service, the story can get even more complicated. When you upload a high resolution image (like many photo sharing services allow) with a proper color-profile embedded in the image, the photo service, then automatically creates smaller web versions. If the photo service does the "right" thing, they will preserve the color profiles in the smaller versions so that color-managed browsers can properly display them. If the photo service is NOT doing the right thing, the color profiles will not be preserved and even a color-managed browser may not be able to properly display color on the web version.

Smugmug does preserve color profiles in it's web versions. I don't know about photobucket.

GwagDesigns · July 6, 2009

Interesting, I'm using FF 3.5 but my images are still showing a higher red saturation compared to how i edited them in lightroom and photoshop, Also still noticing the red in smugmug?

jfriend · July 6, 2009

GwagDesigns wrote:

Interesting, I'm using FF 3.5 but my images are still showing a higher red saturation compared to how i edited them in lightroom and photoshop, Also still noticing the red in smugmug?

When you upload them to Smugmug are you including an embedded color profile? For the FF3.5 color-management to work, the image must have a color-profile.

Can you describe what steps you take from when an image is in Photoshop until an image is on Smugmug?

One simple test you can do is to take a sRGB JPEG image with color profile embedded. Open it from your hard disk in Photoshop. Then, open the same image from your hard disk in FF3.5 (File/Open). You should see the same rendering. If you don't, then there is something wrong with either your Photoshop or FF3.5 installation and it has nothing to do with Smugmug.

If you do see the same thing in that previous case, then upload that exact same JPEG to Smugmug and view it in FF3.5 and compare to the other two views. If you no longer see the same colors, then we need to track down something that happened at Smugmug. If you do see the same thing in that case, then there is something in your normal workflow that is messing up or removing the embedded color profile before it gets to Smugmug.

GwagDesigns · July 9, 2009

I'm using the SmugMug Export Plugin for Lightroom, Not sure if thats embedding a profile, but I did make a test gallery showing some tests I did

http://gwagdesigns.com/gallery/8844630_YE7xu#586138034_qPfue

When working in photoshop I always save as with the ICC profile embedding showing in the test gallery. I am using the "edit in photoshop" command in lightroom to get them into PS and then make my edits there before saving.

I did do the image test, it looks fine in firefox with a color profile embeded so that seems to be working, also shown in the test gallery.

One thing im also noticing is I can take any image off the web using FF, IE, or Chrome. from anywhere that contains red, save it to my computer and open it, or copy and open it in photoshop and it shows it duller. Which leads me to wonder if im really seeing any images online correctly.

I have a few other notes in the test gallery

http://gwagdesigns.com/gallery/8844630_YE7xu#586138034_qPfue

Thanks for the help thus far, i am learning and hopefully can solve this issue.

GwagDesigns · July 12, 2009

Just an update, still need help with this but i removed my Spyder2Express software from my computer now so no monitor profile is being loaded now? things look a bit better, not AS red online but still a tad more so than my desaturated images on my computer. Just wanted to elimate something in the chain.

joedecker · July 12, 2009

GwagDesigns wrote:

Just an update, still need help with this but i removed my Spyder2Express software from my computer now so no monitor profile is being loaded now? things look a bit better, not AS red online but still a tad more so than my desaturated images on my computer. Just wanted to elimate something in the chain.

I can explain why this works in long detail if you want, but try this.

1. Convert to LAB, in Photoshop.

2. Export from Photoshop without making further conversions.

3. Note higher saturation in non-color managed browsers for resulting JPG.

Let me know if that works.

--Joe

GwagDesigns · July 12, 2009

joedecker wrote:

I can explain why this works in long detail if you want, but try this.

1. Convert to LAB, in Photoshop.

2. Export from Photoshop without making further conversions.

3. Note higher saturation in non-color managed browsers for resulting JPG.

Let me know if that works.

--Joe

But you cant save a LAB converted image as a JPEG?

Also After removing the calibration software and restarting, everything now looks the same (redish) in FF3.5 Lightroom and Photoshop. Is it possibly that I somehow fixed the problem and I should have desaturated more in the beginning?

jfriend · July 12, 2009

GwagDesigns wrote:

But you cant save a LAB converted image as a JPEG?

Also After removing the calibration software and restarting, everything now looks the same (redish) in FF3.5 Lightroom and Photoshop. Is it possibly that I somehow fixed the problem and I should have desaturated more in the beginning?

The fact that you had unexpected inconsistencies probably means that the color management profile created by the calibration software was not installed or configured properly or was somehow double set. It does occasionally happen that things get set in a way that double profiling can happen.

The trouble with having no color profiling on your system now is that you have no way of knowing what your image will look like on properly calibrated/profiled systems. It is NOT necessarily the right thing to optimize the color for your non-calibrated system unless your monitor is the only intended viewing apparatus.

GwagDesigns · July 17, 2009

Ok, one more proble, im noticing now. Ive taken all color calibration software off, and My screen is showing things how they were before, so it looks ok. However the problem lies in the below examples. the image has been exported directly to Smugmug from lightroom. In IE, both examples look fine. In Flock, both fine. In firefox 3.5, the first one looks desaturated and the second looks normal to me. Both are the same picture, just different sizes?

Desaturated
http://www.gwagdesigns.com/photos/593097434_Qswx5-O.jpg

Normal
http://www.gwagdesigns.com/photos/593097434_Qswx5-L.jpg

jfriend · July 17, 2009

GwagDesigns wrote:

Ok, one more proble, im noticing now. Ive taken all color calibration software off, and My screen is showing things how they were before, so it looks ok. However the problem lies in the below examples. the image has been exported directly to Smugmug from lightroom. In IE, both examples look fine. In Flock, both fine. In firefox 3.5, the first one looks desaturated and the second looks normal to me. Both are the same picture, just different sizes?

Desaturated
http://www.gwagdesigns.com/photos/593097434_Qswx5-O.jpg

Normal
http://www.gwagdesigns.com/photos/593097434_Qswx5-L.jpg

The second URL (the -L size) is being served up by Smugmug without a color profile and that's why a color managed browser renders it differently. I saw a report of this earlier in the day and Andy said he would look into it. It appears to be an operational problem at Smugmug. I hope they will fix it soon. Please post this exact message in the Bug Reporting forum (with these two links) to get an official look at the issue.

GwagDesigns · July 27, 2009

Seems like they got that problem fixed, but im still having issues.

Without my monitor being calibrated at all, why am I still seeing photos in FF3.5 faded? Anything red is noticeably faded from what i see from lightroom or another browser. I can take any image online, look at the same image in say, flock or IE, and it looks like it should be, But in FF3.5 it looks faded.

One more note to add I just found, Images look fine in FF3.5 on my laptop, so there must be something on my desktop version that's messing with it?

Thanks

David

Photoshop and Color Profile Problem

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