Slide show and (lack of) colour management
Andrew Gould
Registered Users Posts: 190 Major grins
I've had my laptop and pc colour managed for a couple of years now, and recently have discovered that if I use Firefox (or Safari, but it has no true full screen view, so I don't usually for photography sites) I can have the same colour management in place, too.
I only just realised though that the Smugmug slideshow is not color managed. Before blaming Smugmug for this, I did a bit of research, and sure enough, if you have a colour managed system, and you compare the colours of anyone's photos on Flickr with those of the slide show, it's the same story as on Smugmug. In case you haven't seen it, Flickr has a full screen flash slide show that is very similar to Smugmug's.
If you go to the Gallery2 website and check out the sample websites of photographers who use this open source software to create a website independently, once again the same is true. Gallery2 also makes available to users a full screen flash slideshow which is almost the same as Smugmug's.
Very interestingly, Zenfolio's slideshow displays exactly the same colours as seen in galleries. In other words, their slide show is colour managed. They're obviously not using Adobe flash for this because right clicking on the slideshow does not bring up any mention of Adobe.
Perhaps Adobe will fix this tomorrow, or in five years, or maybe never. I certainly don't want photographers who also have colour management in place to see colours misrepresented when viewing anything on my site. The only solution I see for now is to either disable the slide show in all my galleries or to move over to Zenfolio. Neither is really satisfactory for me. In the case of the former, the slide show was one of the factors that caused me to sign up with Smugmug in the first place. Zenfolio has beautiful presentation but the slide show is not truly full screen. Moreover, full customization of a site is not possible.
For the moment, I'll do the former, but in the long run, I may have to change, as when I ask myself why I sought out a web presence in the first place, I have to answer that it was to display my work exactly as it is, and this is still my first priority.
If Zenfolio can have a colour managed slideshow that loads fast and presents images beautifully, I would imagine that Smugmug could do this too. I do hope that this will be considered.
I only just realised though that the Smugmug slideshow is not color managed. Before blaming Smugmug for this, I did a bit of research, and sure enough, if you have a colour managed system, and you compare the colours of anyone's photos on Flickr with those of the slide show, it's the same story as on Smugmug. In case you haven't seen it, Flickr has a full screen flash slide show that is very similar to Smugmug's.
If you go to the Gallery2 website and check out the sample websites of photographers who use this open source software to create a website independently, once again the same is true. Gallery2 also makes available to users a full screen flash slideshow which is almost the same as Smugmug's.
Very interestingly, Zenfolio's slideshow displays exactly the same colours as seen in galleries. In other words, their slide show is colour managed. They're obviously not using Adobe flash for this because right clicking on the slideshow does not bring up any mention of Adobe.
Perhaps Adobe will fix this tomorrow, or in five years, or maybe never. I certainly don't want photographers who also have colour management in place to see colours misrepresented when viewing anything on my site. The only solution I see for now is to either disable the slide show in all my galleries or to move over to Zenfolio. Neither is really satisfactory for me. In the case of the former, the slide show was one of the factors that caused me to sign up with Smugmug in the first place. Zenfolio has beautiful presentation but the slide show is not truly full screen. Moreover, full customization of a site is not possible.
For the moment, I'll do the former, but in the long run, I may have to change, as when I ask myself why I sought out a web presence in the first place, I have to answer that it was to display my work exactly as it is, and this is still my first priority.
If Zenfolio can have a colour managed slideshow that loads fast and presents images beautifully, I would imagine that Smugmug could do this too. I do hope that this will be considered.
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Comments
The 'other' slideshow you reference is Javascript, not as smooth as Flash. Here's to Adobe getting on the color ball!
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What you say may be true, but doesn't this colour thing bother you at all? I find it particularly worrying in a photo with bright colours. On my Dell 24" screen these will come out so oversaturated that it's positively sickening to look at. The colour managed gallery images are fine, of course, and are just like they appear on the screen from my external hard drives where they're stored.
Hi Andrew.
The question you've asked has no answer/solution. You want two things:
-A colormanaged slideshow
-A fullscreen slideshow
Since flash doesn't color manage you're hosed there and since JS can't go fullscreen you're hosed there
Yes, I see your point, but it all comes back to how important it is to see those colours correctly, and how long we'll all be waiting for it.
I didn't know that was the reason that the Zenfolio slideshow doesn't go full screen, so thanks for pointing it out.
There are two reasons our slideshow is Flash:
-It can truely go fullscreen
-Even at 2650x1600 sized images the transition is smooth
javascript fails in both those regards.
I see... and I do appreciate that, but it still comes back to image appearance for me, and even more so since changing to colour managed Firefox.
We could go on in circles over this, I know...
I think you're putting effort into something that generally isn't going to impact anybody. Sure, you'll notice it, in your color managed environment at home if you look at stuff side by side and that'll be irksome. But everybody else (99.999^infinity) won't because they're average joe's w/no color management. Those other photographers out there that do have color managed environments and do happen to notice because they're looking at the slideshow AND gallery images side by side (?) will roll their eyes maybe and just not use the slideshow. Just don't _force_ the slideshow style.
I guess what you've said makes sense, and I don't want to give up on Smugmug just because of this. I do hope that Adobe fixes this problem, though.
Thanks!
Andrew,
Just picked up this thread from a google search. Thanks, I would have thought I was seeing things without it.
I have just registered for the trial of SmugMug and was disappointed to see the lack of colour management in the slideshows. This thread explains the reason and it is understandable but it doesn't help in my case. I use a studio XPS laptop that has the high gamut RGB LED screen, it is calibrated as colours look horribly oversaturated otherwise.
I'm not selling anything, just an amatuer but I need to choose the website that will be faithful to the colours I see on my screen. Oh well.