What does smugmug do to my photos?
igophoto
Registered Users Posts: 38 Big grins
When I upload photos they look fine everywhere except on smugmug. I always save files in the sRGB color space. I have several online portfolios I upload them too including my personal web page. They all look great and the same except for the smugmug uploaded photo. The color is completely changed and skin tones are often horrid.
Why is this? Can I keep smugmug from altering my photo?
Why is this? Can I keep smugmug from altering my photo?
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Hi. We'd like to help you! In order to do that, I need to know your SmugMug site, and some specific examples of photos that you don't think are right.
We don't do anything to the color of your photos. We do make display copies:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/display-quality
Tell us more, what do you process and view your photos in on your computer? What browser do you use to view online?
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Workflow:
[list=#][*]All cameras set to use sRGB color space (not Adobe RGB)
[*]Ingest photos with Photo Mechanic
[*]Upload to SmugMug[/list]
That's it. I'm not even touching the photos in Photoshop. The photos uploaded to SmugMug are right off the camera.
http://pixoul.smugmug.com/gallery/2397944#125827725
Here's an example of how I see my images vs. how Andy sees my images (my browser with the washed-out image on the right opened over Andy's screenshot with the saturated images on the left):
In Photo Mechanic I have the option of viewing photos with the embedded sRGB color profile enabled or disabled (see the color icon in the upper-right hand corner). Here are the examples; disabled is washed-out, enabled is saturated:
The washed-out version is how I see images in my SmugMug gallery. The saturated version is how I see images in Photoshop or in Photo Mechanic with color profiles turned on.
Now here's the odd part. Depending on what computer I'm using depends on how images look in SmugMug.
[list=#][*]Powerbook G4 in Safari and Firefox: SmugMug images are washed-out
[*]Wife's Mac mini with HANNS-G 19" LCD in Safari and Firefox: SmugMug images are nice and saturated just like in Photoshop
[*]Wife's Mac mini with HANNS-G 19" LCD running Windows XP in IE and Firefox: SmugMug images are nice and saturated like in Photoshop
[*]Co-worker's MacBook Pro in Safari and Firefox: SmugMug images are washed-out
[*]Power Mac G4 with 23" HD LCD in Safari and Firefox: SmugMug images are washed-out
[*]Power Mac G4 with 15" LCD in Safari and Firefox: SmugMug images are washed-out
[*]Pepper Pad 3 running Linux in Firefox: SmugMug images are nice and saturated
[*]Pepper Pad 2 running Linux in Firefox: SmugMug images are washed-out[/list]
So it's obviously a color profile issue; it appears that all my Macs with Apple displays are displaying images washed-out in browsers when using the default Apple-assigned color profile Color LCD. My Macs, Linux, and Windows boxes with other non-Apple monitors are displaying nice saturated images.
Other workflow wonkiness:
In Photoshop if I select View -> Proof -> Monitor LCD then it displays the images on screen within Photoshop washed-out just like on SmugMug.
In Photoshop if I select Save for Web then it displays the images on screen within Photoshop and in my browser washed-out just like on SmugMug.
In Photoshop if I select Save As JPEG (not Save for Web) then browsers display the images nice and saturated.
And if I download an original from SmugMug that displayed washed-out on SmugMug, it's nice and saturated in Photoshop and nice and saturated in Photo Mechanic.
I've just learned to live with this and, short of buying some $500 calibration spider, I've given up at calibrating my monitors by eye and just stuck with using the default Apple color profiles because they're consistently wrong.
http://blogs.smugmug.com/great-prints/2005/06/27/mac-browsers-can-you-believe-your-eyes/
Try your same tests using Firefox
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Yup...I've read dozens of pages on this issue. Baldy's blog was the first page I found specifically regarding SmugMug images. My tests were done in both Safari and Firefox.
In my case, it's not the browser that determines whether the image is saturated or washed-out, it's the system itself.
On the Macs I tested if the image was nice and saturated it was saturated in both Safari and Firefox.
On the Macs I tested if the image was washed-out it was washed-out in both Safari and Firefox.
Ditto for Windows; it was nice and saturated in both IE and Firefox.
On the Pepper Pad 3 running Firefox the image was saturated.
On the Pepper Pad 2 running Firefox the image was washed-out.
So yeah, I'm right back at square one. I spent hours searching Digital Grin and the various SmugMug Blogs and read everything to do with the color wonkiness before I even signed up for the trial.
Of the dozens of Blogs, Howtos, and Articles I've read nothing solves my issue.
http://blogs.smugmug.com/great-prints/2005/06/27/mac-browsers-can-you-believe-your-eyes/
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/color-management/is-for-wimps.htm
http://www.gballard.net/psd/saveforwebshift.html
http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-debate.html
http://www.macworld.com/forums/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=461542&page=0&vc=1
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=45397
I could go on.
The answer to the mystery is you must be using Safari on the Mac and including an ICC profile when you create your other portfolios.
Here's a test page to show how Safari works:
http://www.dgrin.com/test
If you hover over the upper left image, you'll see how colors shift if you're using Safari. It won't shift if you're using Firefox or Windows, Linux, TV, or consumer devices.
Safari cannot render an sRGB image as sRGB unless a profile is attached, which means if you use Safari 99.99% of images on the web will look different in your browser than they do on Windows machines or even in Photoshop on your own Mac.
To make them display correctly, Safari needs an ICC profile attached, which sites like PBase and SmugMug don't attach to anything but originals because many users perceive a performance penalty due to the added bytes.
We are considering adding them to the other display sizes except for thumbnails, where the performance hit is very pronounced. But Apple had made some noise about fixing the problem so we waited to see what they'll do with Safari 3.0. Looks now like they probably won't fix it.
Clear as mud?
;-)
Thanks for the mud! Those are actually the exact two paragraphs that are missing from all the other explanations I've found on the Web regarding the issue. Even after doing tons of research, including your Blog entry, I still inferred that it was possible to solve the problem with a monitor recalibration or profile. Although I obviously don't like the answer, it's good to finally hear "sucks to be you, it's broken".
Edit: And add me to the list of people requesting that S/M/L/XL images get tagged.
Get a PC, I have no problems
All kidding aside, I hope you get that resolved! Smugmug is the greatest!
I had read in many places from guys like Rob Galbraith and Andrew Rodney that when the profile was missing, Safari defaults to the monitor profile. It was easy enough to check and I should have. :hack I'm really sorry about that.
I emailed Bill Atkinson, whom I revere, about how the heck Safari really works, thinking if anyone knew it'd be him. He was shocked to learn that it doesn't use the monitor profile because he too had assumed what everyone was writing was correct. But when he went to the test page he saw what we're all seeing, that even if you set your monitor for sRGB, Safari renders the sRGB image with profile attached very differently from one where there is no profile.
The thing we're checking now is why some Mac users are saying the sRGB image with profile attached looks like drek to them. DavidTO is one and I think what happened is he calibrated his monitor with a Huey so that sRGB images look good without a profile, a sensible thing to do since 99.99% of images on the web lack one.
It wouldn't be good if we started attaching profiles and had a flood of people email us asking, "why did you make my photos look like drek?"
That's it...you're fired!
I'd say it'd be best to make attaching profiles a Control Panel option to reduce complaints and reduce bandwidth. I'm sure us geeks asking for attached profiles are in the minority...
Thanks again!
Please elaborate...do you mean an option for guest visitors to decide whether or not images have profiles attached similar to how guest visitors can choose from the dropdown style menu?
Gotcha! I now see exactly what you're saying but here's my take on the whole issue...
Most users don't know or care about profiles. They don't know or care how or why photos look good. All they care about is a good looking photo. And, in my opinion, photos with color profiles will impress users because of their more saturated and vivid colors.
The corollary is that I don't care that a photo looks washed-out in Safari because I now know why it looks washed out. Although seeing my own photos in all their glory with color profiles is nice I'm not trying to impress me; I'm trying to impress my prospective clients.
I wouldn't show my prospective clients a printed portfolio of washed-out drab photos that haven't been color corrected. So why would I want them to see washed-out photos in my SmugMug portfolio?
So yes...I see exactly what you're saying. Really, I do.
Yes, some of those users might be running a browser that doesn't understand color profiles, but the vast majority of Mac users are running Safari and would thus be capable of seeing those color profiles in action. That way more users are seeing my photos the way I intend them to be seen.
Yeah, ok; I see your point now.
I guess the question is "what percentage of your visitors are using Safari on a Mac?"
Sitemeter will tell me that for my site; whether the built-in stats machinery will tell Smug the global answer to that question isn't clear.
We know.
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I'm perfectly happy with SiteMeter, thanks.
And I'm not entirely happy with Google, these days.
I would just like for SiteMeter to *work* again.
I guess I'll have to switch from SmugMug to a style which hasn't been ajaxified.
Hi Andy,
Just so happens -- for the nth time -- that you're right on the money just as I'm needing and answer. Today its Google analytics.
Just exactly where do I add the script Google provides? I assume it goes in the Java section of the customization page but I'm not sure about the way the script tags should be handled because, though SM says the code will be placed between script tags, the first one looks rather complex and there are more than two script tags involved.
Here's the script: (spaces added for sanity)
< script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
< /script >
< script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-xxxxxxx-x";
urchinTracker();
< /script >
Do I use all but the last line?
Drop the Analytics code including the < script > and </ script > into the Footer section of the customization page.
smugmuggoogleanalytics.jpg
That was QUICK! Worked like a charm. Thanks for being there.
Now I notice (using IE7 -- haven't tried FF yet) that I get a "certificate error" each time I visit using my custom URL (www.thepicturetaker.ca). I assume this is from adding the new code. Might make users nervous? Any comments?
works fine for me in FF and in IE6