Help with colour issue between Lightroom and Smugmug.

W00DY

Hi All,

I am sure this has been discussed before but I can't find anything on it. I have just moved from Aperture to Lightrrom and uploaded my first lot of images to SmugMug.

It seems the colour is different from what I see in Lightroom to what I see in Smugmug (using Safari). Smugmug is a LOT lighter, seems to have lost a lot of contrast from the shots.

I have checked and I am exporting them out of Lightroom with the SRGB colour space, which is all I thought I needed to do.

How can I ensure consistent colour from Camera to Lightroom to Smugmug? I have everything set, including the camera, to SRGB.

I would really appreciate your help on this.

Cheers,
W00DY

Andy

Woody:

here you go

http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2007/02/14/this-is-your-mac-on-drugs/

Holler back with any questions

W00DY

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the reply... I have already read that page when I had this same issue with Aperture. So the settings are correct (as per the suggestions on the page).

Issue is when I export from Lightroom the colours seem to change. They get much lighter and lose the contrast to an image.

If anyone is using Lightroom can they please let me know where they set the colour space, both in general and on exporting and if this is all you need to do to maintain consistent colour.

Cheers.

Andy

W00DY wrote:

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the reply... I have already read that page when I had this same issue with Aperture. So the settings are correct (as per the suggestions on the page).

Issue is when I export from Lightroom the colours seem to change. They get much lighter and lose the contrast to an image.

If anyone is using Lightroom can they please let me know where they set the colour space, both in general and on exporting and if this is all you need to do to maintain consistent colour.

Cheers.

If you are selecting sRGB on export from LR, there should be NO difference between your jpg and the jpg on SmugMug.

BenA2

W00DY wrote:

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the reply... I have already read that page when I had this same issue with Aperture. So the settings are correct (as per the suggestions on the page).

Issue is when I export from Lightroom the colours seem to change. They get much lighter and lose the contrast to an image.

If anyone is using Lightroom can they please let me know where they set the colour space, both in general and on exporting and if this is all you need to do to maintain consistent colour.

Cheers.

Andy wrote:

If you are selecting sRGB on export from LR, there should be NO difference between your jpg and the jpg on SmugMug.

W00DY, I think you and Andy are talking about two different things. You are concerned about the discrepancy between the display of an image in Lightroom and the display of a sRGB JPEG exported from Lightroon. What Andy says is true, but not particularly relevant to your concern, if I understand it correctly.

Really, this question probably belongs in Finishing School, not in SmugMug Support, because SmugMug is doing what it's supposed to do in displaying an sRGB image "properly".

Having said that, I experience your exact same problem. Even though I have a properly calibrated monitor, the display of my processed RAW images in Lightroom look different than exported sRGB JPEGs viewed in non-color-managed applications in Windows (i.e. Firefox and IE). If anyone knows of a way to deal with this, like W00DY, I'd love to hear what you have to say.

W00DY

BenA2 wrote:

W00DY, I think you and Andy are talking about two different things. You are concerned about the discrepancy between the display of an image in Lightroom and the display of a sRGB JPEG exported from Lightroon. What Andy says is true, but not particularly relevant to your concern, if I understand it correctly.

Really, this question probably belongs in Finishing School, not in SmugMug Support, because SmugMug is doing what it's supposed to do in displaying an sRGB image "properly".

Having said that, I experience your exact same problem. Even though I have a properly calibrated monitor, the display of my processed RAW images in Lightroom look different than exported sRGB JPEGs viewed in non-color-managed applications in Windows (i.e. Firefox and IE). If anyone knows of a way to deal with this, like W00DY, I'd love to hear what you have to say.

HI Ben,

Thanks for the reply. I think you are right, It probably does belong in another forum, I was not sure where to put it.

Andy - I have my camera set to SRGB, I import into Lightroom as SRGB, I export out of Lightroom in SRGB, I upload to SmugMug in SRGB and then review both the JPEG in Lightroom to the one in Smugmug and the colours are different.

As I menioned it seems to lose a little contrast and saturation once on the web. I did have this issue in Aperture until I changed my settings to SRG in Aperture then it was ok, but seems LIghtroom is a little different???

Like Ben, would love to hear if anyone has a solution for this.

Cheers.

jfriend

Some things to diagnose

W00DY wrote:

HI Ben,

Thanks for the reply. I think you are right, It probably does belong in another forum, I was not sure where to put it.

Andy - I have my camera set to SRGB, I import into Lightroom as SRGB, I export out of Lightroom in SRGB, I upload to SmugMug in SRGB and then review both the JPEG in Lightroom to the one in Smugmug and the colours are different.

As I menioned it seems to lose a little contrast and saturation once on the web. I did have this issue in Aperture until I changed my settings to SRG in Aperture then it was ok, but seems LIghtroom is a little different???

Like Ben, would love to hear if anyone has a solution for this.

Cheers.

The first thing to do is to isolate where the difference is occuring. The first step in that would be to compare the image in Lightroom to a JPEG you created from Lightroom viewed in the browser on your local hard disk. This will remove Smugmug from the equation entirely. To load a local JPEG on your hard disk into your browser, just use File/Open and then browse to it's location on your hard disk. Then, compare that display with Lightroom's display and let us know what result you see.

If that shows a difference, then I'd suggest importing that same JPEG into Lightroom and comparing the display of that JPEG in Lightroom to your original (before saving a JPEG) in Lightroom. Let us know what happens in these tests.

If that first test does not show a difference, then there probably is something happening in the upload to Smugmug process and we need to examine one of these files to see why.

If you want to point us to an original sized file on Smugmug that has this problem, we can take a look ourselves to see if we see anything specific to this file and if we can reproduce a difference in our setups.

W00DY

jfriend wrote:

The first thing to do is to isolate where the difference is occuring. The first step in that would be to compare the image in Lightroom to a JPEG you created from Lightroom viewed in the browser on your local hard disk. This will remove Smugmug from the equation entirely. To load a local JPEG on your hard disk into your browser, just use File/Open and then browse to it's location on your hard disk. Then, compare that display with Lightroom's display and let us know what result you see.

If that shows a difference, then I'd suggest importing that same JPEG into Lightroom and comparing the display of that JPEG in Lightroom to your original (before saving a JPEG) in Lightroom. Let us know what happens in these tests.

Hi J,

Thanks for the help with the tests... Ok I have run they first test, opening a local file in Safari and comparing it to Lightroom, there is NO difference.

jfriend wrote:

If that first test does not show a difference, then there probably is something happening in the upload to Smugmug process and we need to examine one of these files to see why.

If you want to point us to an original sized file on Smugmug that has this problem, we can take a look ourselves to see if we see anything specific to this file and if we can reproduce a difference in our setups.

Here is a link to a file (click it to see the original).

test Image

The easiest place to see the difference is on the skirt. In Lightroom it is a dark denim colour, but in Smugmug it is much lighter, the same with the hat... in Lightroom it is a very deep pink but in Smugmug it is much lighter.

I also tried to take a screen shot of the two images, not sure how helpful it will be but here it is anyway:



Look forward to your analyses

PBolchover

Could you try exporting the picture from Lightroom as a JPEG, and opening that JPEG in other applications? Do the colours match Lightroom, or Smugmug?

jfriend

OK, now look at the original-sized version on Smugmug in Safari

W00DY wrote:

Hi J,

Thanks for the help with the tests... Ok I have run they first test, opening a local file in Safari and comparing it to Lightroom, there is NO difference.



Here is a link to a file (click it to see the original).

test Image

The easiest place to see the difference is on the skirt. In Lightroom it is a dark denim colour, but in Smugmug it is much lighter, the same with the hat... in Lightroom it is a very deep pink but in Smugmug it is much lighter.

I also tried to take a screen shot of the two images, not sure how helpful it will be but here it is anyway:

Look forward to your analyses

OK, several new clues (including that you're on a Mac/Safari). Here's my summary so far:

• You import an sRGB image into Lightroom and make some changes to it
• You export that image as an sRGB JPEG to your hard disk
• You load that sRGB JPEG from your hard disk into Safari and it looks the same to you as it does in Lightroom
• You upload the sRGB JPEG to Smugmug
• You load the medium-sized image in Smugmug into Safari and you see a difference between that image and the previous two

The next thing I would suggest you try is to load the original-sized image on Smugmug into Safari and compare that to your Lightroom version. Smugmug does remove many pieces of metadata from the smaller versions of your image that they generate (in the interest of faster downloads) and we want to see if that is causing the change in display.

If the original on Smugmug looks the same as Lightroom, then please compare the original on Smugmug with the large on Smugmug just to confirm. If the original on Smugmug looks different than Lightroom, then please compare the original on Smugmug to the JPEG on your hard disk (both in Safari).

W00DY

jfriend wrote:

OK, several new clues (including that you're on a Mac/Safari). Here's my summary so far:

• You import an sRGB image into Lightroom and make some changes to it
• You export that image as an sRGB JPEG to your hard disk
• You load that sRGB JPEG from your hard disk into Safari and it looks the same to you as it does in Lightroom
• You upload the sRGB JPEG to Smugmug
• You load the medium-sized image in Smugmug into Safari and you see a difference between that image and the previous two

The next thing I would suggest you try is to load the original-sized image on Smugmug into Safari and compare that to your Lightroom version. Smugmug does remove many pieces of metadata from the smaller versions of your image that they generate (in the interest of faster downloads) and we want to see if that is causing the change in display.

If the original on Smugmug looks the same as Lightroom, then please compare the original on Smugmug with the large on Smugmug just to confirm. If the original on Smugmug looks different than Lightroom, then please compare the original on Smugmug to the JPEG on your hard disk (both in Safari).

Ok now we might be getting somewhere. It seems the original in Smugmug is the same as the image in Lightroom, buth the Large, Medium and Small versions are not.

Is this normal? If so is there a way around it as I want people to see the correct colours at the smaller sizes as they may not want to load the original (as it is very hard to see on the screen) and to top it off I resize the all anyway so I never upload the original size.

Again, I really do appreciate the help you are offering.

Cheers.

jfriend

Gamma and monitor profile are apparently the key to this conundrum

W00DY wrote:

Ok now we might be getting somewhere. It seems the original in Smugmug is the same as the image in Lightroom, buth the Large, Medium and Small versions are not.

Is this normal? If so is there a way around it as I want people to see the correct colours at the smaller sizes as they may not want to load the original (as it is very hard to see on the screen) and to top it off I resize the all anyway so I never upload the original size.

Again, I really do appreciate the help you are offering.

Cheers.

I'd say that there's a 90% chance this difference between the way the original on Smugmug looks in Safari and the way the smaller sizes on Smugmug look in Safari is because the original contains an embedded ICC profile and the smaller sizes do not (Smugmug removes it). As I understand it, Safari is smart enough to use the profile when it's there, but not very smart about what to do when there is no embedded profile (it uses your local monitor profile). In the PC world, none of the popular browsers even pay attention to an embedded profile and all do something intelligent when there isn't one (they assume a standard sRGB profile).

I am not an expert on how to fix this, but hopefully either someone who is will chime in or we can work on it some more and figure it out based on some things that have been written about this.

If you read this article, it discusses the fact that when Safari encounters a web image without an embedded profile (which is what happens on the smaller sizes at Smugmug), it uses your monitor profile instead of the standard sRGB profile. That accounts for the difference in display. From that article: "On the Mac, when no ICC profile is embedded in the photo, it uses the crayons of your monitor profile."

And further, "Macs come with monitor profiles that are quite different than the ones on Windows machines. They are lighter, for one thing. Which is why photos look lighter on Macs than they do on Windows, TV, etc."

If you then read this thread by Baldy (founder of Smugmug), it sounds like the answer to the problem is to make sure your Mac Gamma setting is at 2.2 (not the Mac default of 1.8) and to set your monitor profile to sRGB. Then quit and restart Safari and all images should look the same in Safari.

I'm not entirely sure about setting your monitor profile to sRGB. You can read what ars technica has to say about the issue in their article that was inspired by Baldy's blog entry, but adds their own analysis.

Has anyone out there with a Mac figured out how to fix this issue on their system without screwing up anything else? The test for whether you've fixed it is to see if these two images look the same in your Safari browser.

Original size (that has an embedded ICC profile).
Large size (which does not have an embedded ICC profile).

Woody, let me know what you decide to try and what happens?

By the way, if you haven't already set your gamma setting to 2.2, here's Apple's own recommendation for doing that.

DavidTO

Yes. Set your gamma to 2.2.

rainforest1155

W00DY wrote:

Ok now we might be getting somewhere. It seems the original in Smugmug is the same as the image in Lightroom, buth the Large, Medium and Small versions are not.

That looks like you uploaded a non sRGB file and therefore smugmug seems to convert it to sRGB in order to create sRGB Small, Medium and Large files. I don't think that you can change that behavior.
Here's the link to the help entry and a quote:

When SmugMug receives non-sRGB photos, what do you do?

We learned from hard experience to convert CMYK, Adobe 98, and ProPhoto images to sRGB. Otherwise they look bad both online and in print, benefitting no one.

Sebastian

jfriend

rainforest1155 wrote:

That looks like you uploaded a non sRGB file and therefore smugmug seems to convert it to sRGB in order to create sRGB Small, Medium and Large files. I don't think that you can change that behavior.
Here's the link to the help entry and a quote:



Sebastian

Sebastian, it does not appear that that's what is happening here. We believe all files are sRGB from start to finish. If that was the cause of the issue here, then we would not see a difference between the display of the original sized image and the large sized image. I'd love it if it was that simple, but I don't think that's it here.

The difference between the original and the large size (on Safari only) is because Smugmug does not include the embedded profile in the Large, Safari uses the embedded profile when displaying the original size, but because there is no embedded profile in the Large size (even though the image is tagged as sRGB), Safari uses the monitor profile to display the image. If the monitor profile is not the same as the sRGB profile, the Large size image (and all other Smugmug generated sizes - the ones without the embedded profile) looks a little different because it's being displayed with a different profile.

jfriend

DavidTO wrote:

Yes. Set your gamma to 2.2.

David, the gamma to 2.2 seems easy and hopefully Woody has already done that. But that issue is more about making sure the images you see on your Mac match the images people on other operating systems and other browsers see. In this case, Woody sees a difference right in his own system.

Does Smugmug have a specific recommendation for how to set the monitor profile on the Mac to fix Woody's issue?

rainforest1155

jfriend wrote:

The difference between the original and the large size (on Safari only) is because Smugmug does not include the embedded profile in the Large, Safari uses the embedded profile when displaying the original size, but because there is no embedded profile in the Large size (even though the image is tagged as sRGB), Safari uses the monitor profile to display the image.

John,
thanks for the catch up. I guess I wasn't following the whole discussion and was a bit in a hurry.
I've heard of this problem before, but I don't remember if there was any resolution to it. There has to be an option to set Safari to the standard sRGB for any not tagged photos...

Sebastian

EDIT: Here's a detailed blog entry on this from Don - that's where I heard of it before.
EDIT2: Okay, you already got that link from Andy...

W00DY

Hi All,

I use a Colour Vision Spyder to calibrate my monitor and I have it set to 2.2 gamma, so i am not sure what else to try really?

Maybe I just need to put a note in each album saying that the colours would be different in print as they might see on the web site.

Unless someone knows how to get small, medium and large images in Smugmug looking the same as the original ones?

GarethLewin

W00DY wrote:

Hi All,

I use a Colour Vision Spyder to calibrate my monitor and I have it set to 2.2 gamma, so i am not sure what else to try really?

Maybe I just need to put a note in each album saying that the colours would be different in print as they might see on the web site.

Unless someone knows how to get small, medium and large images in Smugmug looking the same as the original ones?

Woody, I think that calibrating your monitor is the 'problem' as was said above. Safari is trying to use your monitor's icc that comes from the calibration.

Here is a very simple test to see if we are right nor not. Install firefox for the mac and look at your galleries.

If it all looks right in firefox then it is in fact Safari trying to do the right thing and getting it (in your case) wrong. Then you have two choices. Either ignore the issue (Assuming a small minority of your uses will be using Safari) or leave a note on the gallery saying that in Safari the colors are different.

Also, if you could give us a picture to view with originals enabled, we can tell you if they look different on a windows machine.

Jason Dunn

The unfortunate reality that every Smugmug user has to face is this: there are millions of computers with tens of thousands of different combinations of video cards, monitors, and monitor settings...it's sheer chaos. You can't get predictable results out of chaos.

There's no way you'll ever be able to get your photos to look "right" on everyone else's computers. The best you can do is calibrate your monitor and get them to look right on your end - but even then, that just makes you feel better, it has no impact on the rest of the world looking at your images.

My brother used to get quite upset about this same issue until I explained the secret to him: it's nothing you can change, and it doesn't really matter anyway because those people with their eight year old computers and 15" CRT monitors from 1997 probably aren't going to notice any of the subtle differences that he's freaking out about.

So, basically, focus on your photography and don't worry about it.

- Jason Dunn