Smugmug displays colors differently?

JohnR

I uploaded the same photo to smugmug and to a small site that my friend has..notice the difference? Why is this happening?

Normally I wouldn't care because a lot are family photos...but if I want to have smugmug host my wedding photos that I have taken, I don't want incorrect colors displayed for my clients.

Smugmug's





other host. It's slower than smugmug..but I'm not using it except as a comparison.

DavidTO

Have you read this?

DavidTO

Or this?

Search is your friend.

JohnR

phew...lots of it over my head but from the gist of it sounds like anything below Original (L, M and S) display incorrect color due to stripping information off and the fact that I have a mac and Adobe or something.

Thanks!

DavidTO

JohnR wrote:

phew...lots of it over my head but from the gist of it sounds like anything below Original (L, M and S) display incorrect color due to stripping information off and the fact that I have a mac and Adobe or something.

Thanks!

I'm no expert, but I had nothing but trouble when I was using Adobe RGB. As soon as I changed to sRGB, I all my troubles went away.

The fact of the matter is that smugmug and other online photo sites that offer the type of prints that they do--they're all centered around sRGB, and your best bet, IMO, is to just give into it.

Baldy

JohnR wrote:

It's slower than smugmug...

One difference you might not read in the other threads is the difference in size. The second one is 312 KB, so that would make it about 10 times slower to load on than the smugmug version.

JohnR

ok..here's my ignorance showing.




and if so, where or how do I change to sRGB?

JohnR

Baldy wrote:

One difference you might not read in the other threads is the difference in size. The second one is 312 KB, so that would make it about 10 times slower to load on than the smugmug version.

Oh boy..I guess I do have a lot to learn! Broadband really spoils me and makes me forget that there are a lot of others out there without it.

I guess I'll have to use "Save for web" option!

DavidTO

JohnR wrote:

ok..here's my ignorance showing.




and if so, where or how do I change to sRGB?

That's how you work in the RGB colorspace. Which type of RGB you use there depends on how you've set your color settings (Edit>Color Settings).

The dialog looks like this:

Dee

Here's how to set it
Under Photoshop in the menu on the top select "color settings" about the third entry down. Then you select this:

Dee

Also change your gamma
Do a search and find out where your gamma settings are (for your monitor). Change it from 1.8 to 2.2.

Now your Mac is in Windows color mode....

I hated to do it, but once set I see what everyone else sees -- and my "Mac" printer now looks like what I see on the screen. Before when my Mac colors were Mac colors I could hardly ever get my printer to match what I saw on the screen.

What I mean by "Mac" printer is that the printer is supposed to work with Macs, and it does, but if you don't change your gamma and RGB settings it's difficult (or at least it was for me) to get a print to match. Even though it works with a Mac, it appears to me (I could be wrong) that they are really optimized for Windows machines/color modes.

DavidTO

Dee wrote:

Do a search and find out where your gamma settings are (for your monitor). Change it from 1.8 to 2.2.

Excellent point. Very important.

colourbox

Actually, it does not matter what you are using in Color Settings. You can work in Adobe RGB or whatever if you need a bigger color space to make high-end prints or something.

The only thing that matters (other than setting monitor to gamma 2.2 as mentioned above) is that the copies you make for smugmug are converted to sRGB by choosing Edit/Convert to Profile, then saved with no profile embedded. You can make a Photoshop action to batch a whole folder with no manual intervention.

The way to know what space each photo is in is to click the status bar triangle at the bottom of the image window and switch it over to Document Profile so it is always visible.

DavidTO

colourbox wrote:

Actually, it does not matter what you are using in Color Settings. You can work in Adobe RGB, whatever.

The only thing that matters is that the copies you make for smugmug are converted to sRGB by choosing Edit/Convert to Profile, then saved with no profile embedded. You can make a Photoshop action to batch a whole folder with no manual intervention.

The way to know what space each photo is in is to click the status bar triangle at the bottom of the image window and switch it over to Document Profile so it is always visible.

I know it's supposed to work in theory, but it never did for me. And you actually lose colors if you work like that. If you don't have a need for Adobe RGB, lose it. If you do have a need for it, then you already understand how it works and how to apply it, is my theory.

colourbox

There's truth in what you're saying. I agree: If you know why you need a color space other than sRGB, use it and convert to sRGB later. But, if you have no idea why you'd use a color space other than sRGB, pick sRGB in Color Settings and stick with it; that would definitely be the method for most people.

What do you mean by "you actually lose colors?" sRGB is smaller than other color spaces, so of course you're gonna lose colors. The point of using the other color space is so that the file can retain all its original colors for purposes with more fidelity than web display. I print to an Epson 2200 and if I stayed in sRGB the whole time I would never get all the colors on the printer that I paid extra money for.

Also, which colors you lose and how many colors you lose depends on which rendering intent you use during the conversion (a whole other discussion...)

DavidTO

colourbox wrote:

y "you actually lose colors?" sRGB is smaller than other color spaces, so of course you're gonna lose colors. The point of using the other color space is so that the file can retain all its original colors for purposes with more fidelity than web display.

sRGB and Adobe RGB have (as Baldy would say) the same number of crayons in their box. In sRGB, they're packed a little tighter together, so they cover less ground. The Adobe RGB crayons are spread thinner so they cover slightly larger ground.

One way of thinking of it is that in the part of the colorspace that matters 99% of the time, you'll get better colors with sRGB because it has more crayons to use. It just ignores the other 1% (or whatever that number really is, I'm just saying...) Adobe RGB can render the colors in that 1% that's unavailable to sRGB, but it'll do a slightly poorer job with the 99%.

So, again, unless you have a real need for Adobe RGB you are actually doing yourself a disservice by using it. You're getting the worst of both worlds by converting. Limited gamut of sRGB, limited crayons of aRGB (within that gamut).

colourbox

DavidTO wrote:

sRGB and Adobe RGB have (as Baldy would say) the same number of crayons in their box.

That's why when I use color spaces larger than sRGB, I import/edit at 16 bits, which gives me a much larger box of crayons (around 32000 instead of 256), so there is no longer a danger of posterization due to "loosely packed crayons." I use ProPhoto RGB a lot, which could be a disaster if used at 8-bit. I agree that using Adobe RGB and larger at 8 bits/pixel isn't a good idea unless you know what you're doing. Most people will be happiest staying in 8-bit sRGB.

My main point in drawing this out isn't to haggle over special-case details but to point out that everybody's personal recommendation comes with assumptions that may be unstated and may only be true under specific conditions. Might help people understand why one person recommends one thing and another person swears by another.