Smugmug Saturates

Pete291

Hello All

I notice that Smugmug mildly saturates the colors in photos. I fully saturate my photos in Photoshop, so they look a little over-saturated when they go to Smugmug. Is there a way to turn off the Smugmug saturation?

No biggie.

Pete291

Cameron

Pete291 wrote:

Hello All

I notice that Smugmug mildly saturates the colors in photos. I fully saturate my photos in Photoshop, so they look a little over-saturated when they go to Smugmug. Is there a way to turn off the Smugmug saturation?

No biggie.

Pete291

While the resized versions you see have some sharpening applied, they do not change the saturation/color at all from the version you upload. The difference in color you are seeing is likely due to the fact that Photoshop and web browsers do not see colors the same way. Do you have a link to the photos in question?

jfriend

Pete291 wrote:

Hello All

I notice that Smugmug mildly saturates the colors in photos. I fully saturate my photos in Photoshop, so they look a little over-saturated when they go to Smugmug. Is there a way to turn off the Smugmug saturation?

No biggie.

Pete291

Smugmug does not adjust the saturation in your photos. It is probably your browser and display combination doing this and the effect has recently become more common because of wide gamut LCDs that display richer colors. If you use a properly color-managed browser (like the latest Firefox 3 beta or Safari) this will not happen and can show you that it's the browser causing the problem. This will eventually get fixed as more and more browsers become color-managed (like Photoshop is) and more and more users run those color-managed browsers.

Independent of Smugmug, if I open the exact same JPEG photo from my hard disk in Photoshop and in IE, the IE version will look more saturated on my computer. That's because IE is not color managed and does not know that a given red value when sent to my monitor will render more red than the sRGB value for that red should be. But, Photoshop is color managed so it adjusts properly for my display.

You can try this test yourself to eliminate Smugmug from the equation. Open the same JPEG image from your hard disk in both your browser and in Photoshop and compare.

Pete291

OK, thanks, I get it now. Looking forward to the day when everything is color-managed. Life will be easier. My galleries are at PeterDeCamp.com

Pete

jfriend

Pete291 wrote:

OK, thanks, I get it now. Looking forward to the day when everything is color-managed. Life will be easier. My galleries are at PeterDeCamp.com

Pete

When I look at them in Safari for Windows (which is color managed), they look normally saturated on my computer.

gongzero

There is definitely some colour hanky-panky going on at SmugMug; I joined these forums just to find out what's going on.

Here are three links to the exact same file uploaded to SmugMug, my own webserver, and Flickr, respectively.

http://gongzero.smugmug.com/photos/284421678_5Ja9f-O-1.jpg

http://www.gongzero.com/images/photos/oldport-17april2006/tracks.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2239/2439142602_d7ca0e833b_o.jpg

Open each link in a new tab and you'll see the difference for yourself.

For the record, my monitor is calibrated and I use system-wide colour management on my PC in Vista, and all web-bound images are converted to sRGB before upload.

There must be some way to turn off this default colour munging, does anyone know how?


-A

Andy

Hi, welcome! Try the same comparison with a file that is 801px on the long side or larger. Can you? I'll be here when you have new links to share. Thanks!

gongzero

Hi Andy,

Here's a 1024x683 version of the same photo, again uploaded to three different webhosts including SmugMug:

http://gongzero.smugmug.com/photos/284550102_rtFp9-O.jpg

http://gongzero.com/images/photos/tracks.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3205/2438869815_fd337c6c3b_o.jpg

At this size, I see no change between the three images. But why are smaller-resolution photos altered?

IMO, for images on the web, anything much bigger than 800px maximum on any given side become unwieldy for viewing on most desktop monitors -- in fact, some of the photography forums I'm on stipulate this size as the largest they'll allow. I'll concede that visitors to my SmugMug page can always select a smaller size, but the image isn't optimized by me for anything other than the original file's resolution, so there will be a loss in detail.

All this lies on top of the remaining question -- why alter smaller-sized photos in the first place?

FWIW, I really like SmugMug's featureset and would love to go on to a full account after my free trial expires, but quite frankly having to upload these larger images just to get around the colour munging would be a bit of a pain.


-A

devbobo

gongzero wrote:

Hi Andy,

Here's a 1024x683 version of the same photo, again uploaded to three different webhosts including SmugMug:

http://gongzero.smugmug.com/photos/284550102_rtFp9-O.jpg

http://gongzero.com/images/photos/tracks.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3205/2438869815_fd337c6c3b_o.jpg

At this size, I see no change between the three images. But why are smaller-resolution photos altered?

IMO, for images on the web, anything much bigger than 800px maximum on any given side become unwieldy for viewing on most desktop monitors -- in fact, some of the photography forums I'm on stipulate this size as the largest they'll allow. I'll concede that visitors to my SmugMug page can always select a smaller size, but the image isn't optimized by me for anything other than the original file's resolution, so there will be a loss in detail.

All this lies on top of the remaining question -- why alter smaller-sized photos in the first place?

FWIW, I really like SmugMug's featureset and would love to go on to a full account after my free trial expires, but quite frankly having to upload these larger images just to get around the colour munging would be a bit of a pain.


-A

I got Don to check out what was happening with the image when it gets uploaded (ie. using the version from your website), and it appears that the image you are trying to upload is AdobeRGB format.

gongzero

devbobo wrote:

I got Don to check out what was happening with the image when it gets uploaded (ie. using the version from your website), and it appears that the image you are trying to upload is AdobeRGB format.

That's strange. The image is definitely in sRGB, I've just opened it in PS to double-check.

How is he determining the colour space?


-A

devbobo

gongzero wrote:

That's strange. The image is definitely in sRGB, I've just opened it in PS to double-check.

How is he determining the colour space?


-A

from the file's meta data.

Check out this gallery, it contains your original file and a version that was resaved with the sRGB profile.

gongzero

devbobo wrote:

from the file's meta data.

Check out this gallery, it contains your original file and a version that was resaved with the sRGB profile.

Very interesting.

I see the difference between the two images, but I can't understand why

1. it's being uploaded as Adobe RGB when I made sure to convert the image to an sRGB profile;
2. why the image only shows noticeable colour shifts on SmugMug, unlike on my own web server and on Flickr; and
3. why it's only making a difference on the smaller version and not the larger version of the image.

Thanks, by the way, for all your troubleshooting help! I'm sure we'll figure this out.


-A

devbobo

gongzero wrote:

Very interesting.

I see the difference between the two images, but I can't understand why

1. it's being uploaded as Adobe RGB when I made sure to convert the image to an sRGB profile;
2. why the image only shows noticeable colour shifts on SmugMug, unlike on my own web server and on Flickr; and
3. why it's only making a difference on the smaller version and not the larger version of the image.

Thanks, by the way, for all your troubleshooting help! I'm sure we'll figure this out.


-A

We convert AdobeRGB to sRGB automatically on upload, read this for more info on why.

devbobo

also, check this out....it's a comparison of firefox vs safari, you will see that safari (which is colour managed) displays the photo on your site, the same way as it's shown on SmugMug if you upload the version as AdobeRGB.

gongzero

Curiouser and curiouser.

I'm going to reprocess the image again right from the original RAW file just to see what happens. It looks like the Adobe RGB vs sRGB issue is the culprit, somehow, so I'll pay extra attention to this. My camera shoots in Adobe RGB and, hell, it's very possible that I didn't properly convert the image in PS.

I'll post up my results later tonight.


-A

devbobo

gongzero

Well, here's the original image in the sRGB colour space (for sure, this time):

http://gongzero.smugmug.com/photos/284835862_EJf3H-O.jpg

And yeah, it's showing up exactly as on the other two webhosts.

This is a very strong argument for automating as much of your workflow as possible!

Thanks for all your help.


-A

Andy

gongzero wrote:

Well, here's the original image in the sRGB colour space (for sure, this time):

http://gongzero.smugmug.com/photos/284835862_EJf3H-O.jpg

And yeah, it's showing up exactly as on the other two webhosts.

This is a very strong argument for automating as much of your workflow as possible!

Thanks for all your help.


-A

w00p