Stop forcibly converting all images to sRGB
skibum4
Registered Users Posts: 59 Big grins
Please stop forcibly converting all images to sRGB and insisting that you know better! It's 2012! What next? Smugmug will decided it knows better which images should be in B&W and start randomly deciding that Smugmug knows that the user 'actually' wanted certain images they uploaded in color to be in black and white? Leave the control to the artist!
I really like Smugmug otherwise, but this issue is really frustrating me and I'm just about to cancel my subscription and go with someone else.
I almost don't feel like wasting the time to upload anything to Smugmug since I know some stuff I'll just have to upload all over again if I switch to a place that doesn't decide it knows better than the user.
How hard is it to offer a toggle that turns off the auto convert to sRGB?? You'd even save processing time on your end! Let it default to what it does now, whatever, but how can any photo hosting site claim to be a serious entity and not allow an option for users to upload images as they wish them to be seen? It's outrageous really. And it's holding back the world of photography.
I really like Smugmug otherwise, but this issue is really frustrating me and I'm just about to cancel my subscription and go with someone else.
I almost don't feel like wasting the time to upload anything to Smugmug since I know some stuff I'll just have to upload all over again if I switch to a place that doesn't decide it knows better than the user.
How hard is it to offer a toggle that turns off the auto convert to sRGB?? You'd even save processing time on your end! Let it default to what it does now, whatever, but how can any photo hosting site claim to be a serious entity and not allow an option for users to upload images as they wish them to be seen? It's outrageous really. And it's holding back the world of photography.
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There are some browsers that will intelligently handle color spaces, but others that do not and colors go really wonky when the browser doesn't handle the colorspace correctly and the image is not sRGB.
What colorspace do you wish to use?
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In all honesty what sort of an answer is that?
It is NOT the universal language of the web. There are plenty of fully and partially color-managed browsers these days. We are not talking about setting up some lowest common denominator website for ESPN or Amazon or something. This is a photo hosting site and to not allow for some galleries to be left as is is simply ridiculous and I am not alone in that thought since I've met a number of photographers who grumble quite a bit about this at times. If some users want to make some wide gamut galleries to share with other wide gamut monitor users how on earth does that hurt anyone else? Why do you have to punish everyone because the lowest common denominator only has sRGB monitors?
Again why on earth do you force ALL images to be converted to sRGB?? Make that default action fine.
Nobody is asking that you eliminate the option to convert all images to sRGB. But to deny users the option to leave their images as is, come on. What defense?
And you obviously don't know better since I've heard others quite annoyed about this too. It's just patronizing to insist that you know that everyone wants every last image in every last gallery to actually be in sRGB and to deny people the right to allow their images to be seen as they should be seen to those who have wide gamut monitors.
As for printing, those galleries could either be set to no prints or smugmug could send an sRGB conversion out to the print lab. How would it be any worse for smugmug to do the make sure it's sRGB check and conversion right before sending it to the print lab?
Sadly I guess Smugmug really has no clue and will never get a clue so I guess I will have to start looking elsewhere and cancel my smugmug account in a couple of months. So much about smugmug and your user support is fantastic, but on this issue, I've never met a worse
Why? Have you seen what sRGB does to sunsets? How entire brilliant bands of clouds disappear and mix in with the other clouds? Have you seen how many flowers lose detail, intensity and shift to odd shades in sRGB? Have you seen what happens to intensely blue-green shallow tropical waters in sRGB? Brilliant Japanese maples in the fall? Even some more regular stuff during intense golden hour sunlight? Brilliant intensely saturated clothing? Certain gems?
Why on earth should users who have wide gamut monitors not be able to share with each other their images as they were meant to be seen?
As for what gamuts I wish to use, whatever color space is needed. If sRGB fits it then I'll upload in sRGB, if it needs AdobeRGB then I'll upload in that and if needs ProPhotoRGB then I'll upload in that.
If I have galleries where it might matter to me if someone viewed them with whatever old browser then I can let them all auto-convert, or better, upload them as sRGB to begin with.
I can place a warning at the top of my wide gamut galleries to make sure to use a color manage browser or the colors will look weird. If someone can't or doesn't want to follow those simple directions then so what? What do I care if someone doesn't view one of my special wide gamut galleries.
If we have to make everything on earth lowest common denominator for everything just in case we may as well just give up on everything.
Also if more people ran into such notices then maybe proper color management would become more truly universal. Why should photographers be leading the pack to hold back color management????
Most images are at least partially managed now anyway. Firefox has been fully managed for ages. Any recent IE is smart enough to at least auto-convert everything to sRGB (obviously IE is no good for wide gamut monitors in wide gamut mode but it's no good for all images in that case even ones already sRGB, everything will look a disaster so someone using a wide gamut monitor in wide gamut mode would never use IE to begin with and someone who is using it would have no problem with anything since it will convert everything to sRGB automatically). I believe chrome can be set to do that and safari as well. What else is there that gets much use?
Because Joe Whoever uses IE 4.0 somewhere and might, horrors, view someone's special wide gamut gallery and see weird colors we need to go hysterical and forcibly auto convert all images, always, in all cases, for all galleries, no matter what to sRGB??? And if you are afraid of that then the smugmug user simply doesn't use the option to prevent auto sRGB conversion and just lets smugmug do what it does now for all of their galleries or all of the ones where they do care about Joe Whoever using IE 2.9. I doubt it will be a tragedy if Joe WHoever doesn't get to see one of my wide gamut galleries proprely and if Joe Whoever cares about that one gallery THAT much then maybe he will take the time to update his browser.
One thing you probably aren't thinking about are the millions of visitors that come here and don't have color-managed browsers. Before we converted images in Adobe98, or ProPhoto, to sRGB, you can't imagine the number of help emails we got from people talking about how their images didn't look right.
I'd say we do have a clue
It does sound like you want a way to turn it off. I can't promise if or when we'd do that but we'd love your feature request here http://feedback.smugmug.com
Thanks for being so passionate about this!
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Again nobody is asking you that you get rid of the auto-convert option or that you don't make it the default so all the stuff about too many smugmug users will be confused about their colors looking wrong doesn't even come into play. That can't be part of the argument. Nobody is saying you don't know what you are doing by having that option what we are saying is that there is no clue to be found in making it forced 100% of the time in all cases. We are simply asking for the option to be able to turn it off for certain uploads or galleries, however you want to handle it.
Again nobody is asking for the autoconversion to be removed from smugmug or for it to no longer be the default. We just want the option to be able to get around it for the times we desire to get around it.
I've tried it in feature request before and seen others try for it there but smugmug has yet to act on it. It's been a few years now.
If there is little chance you will ever act on it, I'd rather just know now so I can just move on and not end up wasting time fixing up my site here and uploading more images. I'd rather just get started somewhere else.
It seems to me like it should be pretty trivial to implement, just a toggle option on the uploader to tell the code to either do the sRGB conversion or to skip it. IF ((default)autoconvert=TRUE) THEN {convert}. And then whatever the autoconvert routine is just make sure that routine, already written, is triggered as first stage of sending something off to the printer. Granted a thousand requests for trivial little changes makes nothing an instant trivial thing to do on the spot but this has been requested for some years now and I'm getting the feeling that it won't ever happen. Although, for the first time ever, at least there was a hint that maybe it might be done this time.
Further, I rather doubt Smugmug would implement what I described because that means double the storage for any wide gamut images that people would upload, but it's the only quality solution that could move us to wide gamut-capabilities.
They really ought to support at least one printer that accepts wide gamut images too. I don't do my best prints through Smugmug for this reason.
The only other option I'm aware of is to wait until all meaningful volume of IE browsers before IE9 is gone and until Chrome turns on color management on PCs by default and older versions of Chrome have faded out. It's probably awhile before both of those are true and then just start allowing wide gamut images for upload. Ideally, they'd demand that their printers support accepting images with wide gamut color spaces too.
FYI, for anyone else reading this thread, here's a quick diagnostic page that illustrates whether your browser is color-managed or not: http://mansurovs.com/is-your-browser-color-managed. If the images look the same, you're color-managed. If they look different, you're not.
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Yeah but if I set up some special galleries and put warnings up and someone still views them with IE8 well whatever, it is their fault. Maybe it will wise them up, if not, whatever. Who are you are anyone else to say that I HAVE to care if someone accidentally views some of MY galleries the wrong way?
And I'd love to see other smugmuggers wide gamut stuff, but for now I can't see stuff from anyone else if they use smugmug in wide gamut.
Again what does it hurt you or anyone else who insists every last image of theirs been seen sRGB only-safe if the option is given, not as default, for the rest of us to offer some wide gamut galleries?
And the latest version of every popular browser out there is fine to at least not make a mess and a few, such as firefox, let you both view them properly as sGRGB on sRGB monitors and as wide gamut on wide gamut monitors.
Or they can just let users decided if they are willing to run the hideous risk that some viewer might see one of their galleries with the wrong colors. Why does smugmug have to play nanny and decided that I HAVE to care if someone sees one of my images the wrong way? Maybe I don't care if someone sees images the wrong way in that gallery? If I shot some peewee soccer league and put up prints for sale to parents sure I'd upload in sRGB by what on earth can't I post some landscape and flower galleries for sharing with people who have wide gamut monitors (and for anyone who uses IE 9 or firefox or chrome with management toggled on. I should also note that people would quickly learn to toggel CM on if they stated noticing everything looking weird).
What you aren't considering is that Smugmug has some costs and reputation that can be affected if images display crappy. Every customer who goofs it up and then leaves because the images look bad is a lost customer. Every customer who goofs it up and then has to engage support to fix it is some support cost. Every customer who uses wide-gamut in the wrong context and then someone orders prints and the prints come out lousy either because the auto-conversion to small gamut didn't look good or because the lab can't print some of the colors in the wide-gamut image is both a potential support cost and potential print guarantee/reprint expense. Remember they have a 100% satisfaction guarantee on prints so they have to be pretty sure that there aren't going to be a lot of messups or their costs get out of control.
Then, there's the print labs. For whatever reasons, a lot of consumer print labs don't accept wide-gamut and that seems to be the case with at least one of Smugmug's partners. Figuring out how to handle that situation is more complication and potential support issues.
I'm not saying they couldn't figure something out here with a lot of engineering, but making a clean (it just works) kind of experience for customers that don't really know much about color spaces without incurring more support burden or reprint costs is not a trivial issue. My guess is that they think there are much more important things to work on for their business that would affect a much larger group of customers or potential customers. Remember, I'm not arguing against your desire for that feature (I'd like it too), just trying to point out that it's not as simple as you imagine and I probably have 50 other feature requests that I'd give a higher priority to for my own needs.
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Which is why I am not asking the option to be removed or even switched off from being default. But why just because some people are more cautious they have to ruin it for everyone else? If you are more cautious then don't use the option to retain original gamut. How hard it that? You do nothing and it works as it always has.
It's not rocket science for crying out loud and if someone goes to the trouble to ACTIVELY turn off the auto conversion to sRGB it's their own fault. How dumbed down does everything have to be these days? There are a thousand other things people could mess up too? Are we going to put 1000 more restrictions avoiding every possible thing that someone could mess up by actively doing things?
Someone could accidentally tie the shoelaces between two sneakers together, so then we ban shoe laces and only allow velco sneakers now?
Again the option to auto-convert can be left on as default.
What next then, they police each gallery and remove images that are poor to begin with because if someone sees a bad shot their reputation will be tarnished? The photographer will get the blame for whatever is in a gallery not Smugmug. There are some pretty weird and ugly and way off colors in plenty of sRGB galleries. Will they all be removed? Only perfect 10 images and certain subjects can be posted next?
How hard is handling the printing? As I said they just run their auto-convert to sRGB routine, that they already have programmed, on every image that is not noticed to be sRGB already, basically they just point to the same code they already run as soon as every image is uploaded. The code checks if somethng is in sRGB and, if not, it converts it to sRGB. All they do is cut and paste the exact same code as the first step in their send things off to the printer. If they don't trust sRGB prints after a few people have seen wide gamut versions then maybe they can disable printing from wide gamut galleries if they are afraid of complaints. Printers don't exactly match sRGB gamut anyway.