Flat contrast lacking pictures in galleries

photocat · July 23, 2005

I uploaded a new gallery today, with the same contrast as all my other uploads before, but they seem to be very flat and without any contrast.
Someone else mentioned it before I did today and I had not encountered the problem yet.

I do encounter it today though. My pictures look terrible, I know they are so much more contrasty then they appear...

What is happening on smugmug???

Photocat

jfriend · July 23, 2005

sRGB?

photocat wrote:

I uploaded a new gallery today, with the same contrast as all my other uploads before, but they seem to be very flat and without any contrast.

Any chance your originals weren't in sRGB this time? You don't have originals enabled on your latest upload so I can't check.

--John

photocat · July 23, 2005

jfriend wrote:

Any chance your originals weren't in sRGB this time? You don't have originals enabled on your latest upload so I can't check.

--John

I can check that, but I always work in the same way. Previous uploads had all the correct contrast. I will check on the space I worked in. Thanks for the tip.

I checked and they are in Adobe RGB 98, which is the space I always use...
My originals are far more contrasty then the ones uploaded. They look terrible...

Mike Lane · July 23, 2005

photocat wrote:

I can check that, but I always work in the same way. Previous uploads had all the correct contrast. I will check on the space I worked in. Thanks for the tip.

I checked and they are in Adobe RGB 98, which is the space I always use...
My originals are far more contrasty then the ones uploaded. They look terrible...

Adobe RGB will always look bad on the web (and in your prints). You should only use sRGB, I promise you that you'll be much happier. Read more at http://www.smugmug.com/help/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-1998. Also there are a boatload of discussions about sRGB vs. ARGB in dgrin.

jfriend · July 23, 2005

You should upload in sRGB - that's your problem

photocat wrote:

I can check that, but I always work in the same way. Previous uploads had all the correct contrast. I will check on the space I worked in. Thanks for the tip.

I checked and they are in Adobe RGB 98, which is the space I always use...
My originals are far more contrasty then the ones uploaded. They look terrible...

It depends upon the image, but you will lose both contrast and color if you upload Adobe RGB images to the web. The problem has nothing to do with Smugmug. The problem is that most browsers are not color aware so they display your aRGB images as if they were sRGB, thus using the wrong color space. In the case of displaying an aRGB image as sRGB, you lose color saturation and contrast.

You should always convert your images to sRGB before uploading to any web location.

See the Smugmug help pages:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-1998
http://www.smugmug.com/help/upload-photos

for more info.

--John

photocat · July 23, 2005

jfriend wrote:

It depends upon the image, but you will lose both contrast and color if you upload Adobe RGB images to the web. The problem has nothing to do with Smugmug. The problem is that most browsers are not color aware so they display your aRGB images as if they were sRGB, thus using the wrong color space. In the case of displaying an aRGB image as sRGB, you lose color saturation and contrast.

You should always convert your images to sRGB before uploading to any web location.

See the Smugmug help pages:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-1998
http://www.smugmug.com/help/upload-photos

for more info.

--John

Thanks Guys, I will batch convert them... sigh...
thanks a lot for the input. It is much appreciated

Baldy · July 23, 2005

In my experience, there's often heartburn among photographers to convert from Adobe 98 to sRGB because they feel sRGB is somehow inferior. Actually, for display on the web and for making prints that use a photographic process, like almost all commercial printers do, sRGB is a superior space to Adobe 98.

Here's why:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sRGB-AdobeRGB1998.htm

For wide-gamut ink jets and for magazine/brochure production, Adobe 98 could be superior to sRGB.

Thanks,
Baldy

photocat · July 23, 2005

Baldy wrote:

In my experience, there's often heartburn among photographers to convert from Adobe 98 to sRGB because they feel sRGB is somehow inferior. Actually, for display on the web and for making prints that use a photographic process, like almost all commercial printers do, sRGB is a superior space to Adobe 98.

Here's why:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sRGB-AdobeRGB1998.htm

For wide-gamut ink jets and for magazine/brochure production, Adobe 98 could be superior to sRGB.

Thanks,
Baldy

I come from a newspaper-quadri printing environment, and I always was told there that Adobe RGB1998 was the space to go for. (The paper was in quadri print with process colors if I am not mistaken-we never had to worry about color spaces, we had templates made up by prepress, and those guys know what they are talking about)

I know that the minilab that does my prints works on sRGB.
It is hard for us normal people to follow the color discussion, I know that prepressers can tell you all about why yellow is yellow, my knowledge is very limited though.

I say if you have a good prepresser, your printing job will be safe... that is when we talk printing jobs, not photography.
(It is one thing to to design the most magnificent color pages, but it has to be printed too, and that is another story)

Printing and photography are two different things, maybe that is the reason I keep struggling with pure technical stuff like color space.
If you follow Scott Kelby and gang they say adobe RGB1998, so does Martin Evening.

Thanks Baldy for your input. Most appreciated

Andy · July 23, 2005

photocat wrote:

I come from a newspaper-quadri printing environment, and I always was told there that Adobe RGB1998 was the space to go for. (The paper was in quadri print with process colors if I am not mistaken-we never had to worry about color spaces, we had templates made up by prepress, and those guys know what they are talking about)

I know that the minilab that does my prints works on sRGB.
It is hard for us normal people to follow the color discussion, I know that prepressers can tell you all about why yellow is yellow, my knowledge is very limited though.

I say if you have a good prepresser, your printing job will be safe... that is when we talk printing jobs, not photography.
(It is one thing to to design the most magnificent color pages, but it has to be printed too, and that is another story)

Printing and photography are two different things, maybe that is the reason I keep struggling with pure technical stuff like color space.
If you follow Scott Kelby and gang they say adobe RGB1998, so does Martin Evening.

Thanks Baldy for your input. Most appreciated

:nono for web display use srgb only

this has been discussed a gazillion times here at dgrin - it comes up a lot - glad your q got answered!!

Mike Lane · July 23, 2005

andy wrote:

:nono for web display use srgb only this has been discussed a gazillion times here at dgrin - it comes up a lot - glad your q got answered!!

but also remember with ezprints use sRGB only too.

marlinspike · July 23, 2005

Mike Lane wrote:

but also remember with ezprints use sRGB only too.

Does ezprints make the large size prints too (i.e. the ones not available on the exprints website?
Richard

Baldy · July 25, 2005

photocat wrote:

Printing and photography are two different things, maybe that is the reason I keep struggling with pure technical stuff like color space.
If you follow Scott Kelby and gang they say adobe RGB1998, so does Martin Evening.

Scott Kelby doesn't anymore.

The sRGB tide swept commercial printers and the Internet and he recently jumped on the bandwagon.

The prepress guys like Bruce Fraser, Andrew Rodney, etc., are very smart but they have no background in consumer devices like television. The Internet has to work on TVs and TVs on the Internet, along with consumer devices. Those devices don't know for Adobe 98 and the complex way the prepress world was managing color. The guys who spent 20 years in prepress didn't seem to be able to adjust to the new world order.

When I worked for Steve Jobs on what became Mac OS X, UNIX gurus were the equivalent of prepress gurus today. Most of them were from Sun or Silicon Graphics and they railed against us for dumbing down computing with a graphical user interface.

But the graphical user interface tide swept the world and even though Sun gurus still speak at conferences and write books...raw UNIX was never embraced by consumers.

No matter how many fat books Bruce writes about Real World Color Management, the real world he writes about doesn't include the Internet or prints from Kodak, Fuji, Agfa, Wolfe's, Costco, Walgreen's, whcc, EZ Prints, MPIX, Shutterfly, Wal Mart, Ritz, dotPhoto, ClubPhoto, Target...

Baldy · July 25, 2005

marlinspike wrote:

Does ezprints make the large size prints too (i.e. the ones not available on the exprints website?
Richard

Well... We send them through EZ Prints and they bill us, but they have arranged with another lab who has a large-bed Durst Lambda to print them. They take a few extra days to ship them and aren't available in lustre.

But they sure are stunning.

Rohirrim · July 25, 2005

If you follow Scott Kelby and gang they say adobe RGB1998, so does Martin Evening.

Kelby did qualify his feelings towards sRGB in his book The Photoshop CS2 book for Digital Photographers. In this version of the book he mentions that if you are putting images on the Web or Printing through many outside labs then sRGB is best. (Sorry can't remember the exact quote)

Regards,

photocat · July 26, 2005

Rohirrim wrote:

Kelby did qualify his feelings towards sRGB in his book The Photoshop CS2 book for Digital Photographers. In this version of the book he mentions that if you are putting images on the Web or Printing through many outside labs then sRGB is best. (Sorry can't remember the exact quote)

Regards,

I have been reading his new preachings just this morning. To be politically corect I suppose that you have to use Dr. Browns imageprocessor, and get it to make tiffs that are RGB98 and jpeg sRGB...

I wonder for us normal mortals, who take their photostuff to the store in town, wether it is needed that we put a tiff copy into adobe RGB98 too, for the time that we will be famous and needing good real prints might never come...

I think for the home, garden and gardengnome stuff, that sRGB might be the best way to go...
I am indeed getting more confused the more I read about color management... if you don't have a logical mind these pure logical thinkingpaths are difficult... (or maybe it is just me having not enough braincells to work it out)

Baldy, shall I listen to you or to Kelby or some of the other guys mentioned???? AAAAggggggRRRRR

Baldy · July 26, 2005

Scott's a really great teacher and tips meister. A lot of his secrets and shortcuts are pure gold. I don't think anyone has accused him of being great technically.

The idea of saving tiffs (lossless files that you can alter and save to your heart's content without degrading them) is great. Saving to a color space that has more colors than sRGB is great too.

Just one little gotcha: Adobe 98 doesn't have more colors. It has 256 reds, 256 blues, and 256 greens, just like sRGB. If you want to archive to a color space that has more colors, go to one that actually has more colors: ProPhoto.

photocat · July 27, 2005

ProPhoto.[/QUOTE]

The link made up for some great and understandable reading Baldy. Thanks.
I will try to stay tuned for color management, though I should really have a spider if I want to fine tune. And I think that I am not good enough already to go for the color spider... (I don't know its real name in english). It is a spider like device that measures the colors of your screen. I think it is mainly amed at professional photographers.

Flat contrast lacking pictures in galleries

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