Color Management Issue

coldclimb · August 13, 2011

Hey all, got a question I'm wondering if anyone can answer, since my grasp of color management is fairly meager. My wife recently used my laptop, which is regularly calibrated with a Gretag Macbeth Eye1, to edit some photos of a girl in a red dress. I then recalibrated my monitor as I do every few weeks, and when she got back on, the red dress in all the photos she had previously edited looked distinctly orange.

Now one could immediately conclude that the recalibrating simply changed the way the photos are displayed, but on second glance, the colors are displaying brightly red like they are supposed to when viewed in Windows Explorer and Opera, but orange when viewed in Photoshop or Firefox. The files concerned are sRGB jpegs.

What might cause this change? And is there a way to get these photos to display nice and red in all browsers?

Peano · August 13, 2011

Can you post one of the images (or at least a crop showing the red)?

coldclimb · August 14, 2011

Well I took a screenshot to show you by lining up three different programs showing the color difference, but when I saved the screenshot, there is barely a difference at all!

I'm thinking it's got something to do with the jpeg colorspace and how it deals with reds, but something has to have changed on our end since she edited these, because they looked right for her then. I've attached the screenshot, which shows only a subtle difference between Windows Photo Viewer on the left and Windows Explorer and Opera which are showing the proper color. I assure you the color difference is much more dramatic when I look at it here, but the screenshot barely shows it.

coldclimb · August 14, 2011

Okay now that I look at that screenshot here in browser (firefox) it shows the difference properly. In Photoshop and Windows Photo Viewer I'm seeing all three of them as almost the same orange, even in the screenshot jpeg.

Peano · August 14, 2011

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant could you post the actual image, not a screen shot of it in different viewers.

pathfinder · August 14, 2011

John, I can clearly see an orange dress in the left image, and a reddish orange image in the right two images, maybe just a touch more reddish on the right. The difference is quite distinct on my calibrated Apple Cinema display.

Photoshop, and Firefox and Safari are color space aware applications, and they should be displaying the correct colors within the image.

Windows Photo Viewer and Opera I am not so certain about.

The difference is not only visible, it is readable with my DigitalColor meter, which displays the pixel data on my screen. When I read the brightest portion over the buttock on the left I get 170, 4, 0 but on the right image I read 180, 5, 5

My personal preference is to not perform critical color corrections on a laptop ( even my calibrated MBP, because I just find them less reliable than larger monitors - especially the viewing angle, and the fact that the lighting around them varies so much more than in a more formal color office fixed location ) I know some folks edit on laptops and are happy with the results, so don't flame me here.

What profile is your laptop screen currently running? Is is maybe sRGB rather than your most recent profile created with your Eye1?

I don't think there is a way to get color aware browsers, and non-color aware browsers to match exactly. That is why we use monitor profiles,after all. Even with monitor profiles they are not all exactly the same, but much closer than without a profile.

Newer computer monitors tend to be glossy, high saturation devices which look great to passers by, but are rather poor for image editing. Well calibrated monitors tend to look more flat and less saturated and have "less eye appeal" to passers by. This creates all kinds of issues for folks wanting to display their work to its best vantage.

arodney · August 14, 2011

Calibrate the laptop to produce a match to the other display (assuming it is calibrated to match a print next to the display). You probably need to adjust the white point a tad, assuming you have software with adequate control over these settings. ONLY compare the two in a color managed application like Photoshop!

coldclimb · August 15, 2011

Okay I haven't had time to try out your suggestions yet, but here's one of the files in question (sized down for upload on my phone internet) so you can check it out. It shows orange here in photoshop, but when my wife originally edited it in photoshop it showed nice and red, and it still shows nice and red in OTHER programs like Opera and Windows Explorer...

Thanks again for all the help everyone, I'll admit I'm pretty much a rookie when it comes to color management.

coldclimb · August 15, 2011

To add to my confusion, looking at the file I just uploaded here in the forum using firefox, the dress is red, but if I drag ithe same file from my local folder into firefox, I see orange!

BinaryFx · August 15, 2011

I have a feeling that the "orange" image may be in ProPhoto RGB space (numbers/values + tagged or assumed icc profile) and then is being viewed in a program that is not ICC aware and will then display the numbers/values in say monitor RGB or sRGB.

Stephen Marsh

http://binaryfx.customer.netspace.net.au/ (coming soon!)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

Dan7312 · August 15, 2011

The EXIF data for the image ColdClimb just uploaded says the colorspace is sRGB.

It does have some "color data" but I don't know what it means or how a browser might interpret it.

Processing Info : 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 65535 5200 132 0 0 0
Measured Color : 12 1023 1024 1024 998 1
Color Space : sRGB
VRDO Offset : 0
Color Data : 7 786 1024 1024 408 555 1024 1024 553 399
1024 1024 771 974 1261 1277 507 667 1238
1246 680 464 1218 1220 939 65534 2 247 248
245 0 1985 4202 4229 2675 897 276 269 55 174
1037 1046 1584 1865 3287 3317 764 1980 4384
4421 2865 903 251 257 41 144 1018 1005 1650
1941 3495 3554 803 2367 1024 1024 1327 6172
2149 1024 1024 1452 5200 2149 1024 1024 1452
5200 557 1170 1170 825 5200 2149 1024 1024
1452 5200 2497 1024 1024 1234 7000 2315 1024
1024 1334 6000 1515 1024 1024 2175 3200 1896
1024 1024 2032 3769 2149 1024 1024 1452 5200
2367 1024 1024 1327 6172 2491 1024 1024 1285
6672 2149 1024 1024 1452 5200 2149 1024 1024
1452 5200 2149 1024 1024 1452 5200 2149 1024
1024 1452 5200 1023 1024 1024 998 4020 1023
1024 1024 998 4020 1023 1024 1024 998 4020
1023 1024 1024 998 4020 1023 1024 1024 998
4020 65157 366 998 10900 65182 377 963 10000
65225 396 905 8300 65271 420 850 7000 65329
453 786 6000 65357 469 755 5600 65389 488
722 5200 65438 515 670 4700 65497 553 613
4200 19 597 567 3800 71 639 527 3500 133 692
482 3200 185 736 445 3000 230 786 420 2800
344 920 362 2400 500 2064 2080 2048 2048
2048 2048 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 32768 0
1024 1024 1024 2800 4006 6810 4171 65515
65525 4276 4022 20 11 3924 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 1024 1024 0 1024 0 0 0 0 0

BinaryFx wrote: »

I have a feeling that the "orange" image may be in ProPhoto RGB space (numbers/values + tagged or assumed icc profile) and then is being viewed in a program that is not ICC aware and will then display the numbers/values in say monitor RGB or sRGB.

Stephen Marsh

http://binaryfx.customer.netspace.net.au/ (coming soon!)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

Dan7312 · August 15, 2011

Never mind this, I looked at the wrong image

Dan7312 wrote: »

The EXIF data for the image ColdClimb just uploaded says the colorspace is sRGB.

It does have some "color data" but I don't know what it means or how a browser might interpret it.

Processing Info : 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 65535 5200 132 0 0 0
Measured Color : 12 1023 1024 1024 998 1
Color Space : sRGB
5525 4276 4022 20 11 3924 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 1024 1024 0 1024 0 0 0 0 0

Dan7312 · August 15, 2011

The image coldclimb uploaded has no EXIF data in it. Most browsers are going to interpret that as being in the sRGB space and if that isn't the case the colors won't be correct.

BinaryFx's comment sound like it could be the issue.

BinaryFx wrote: »

I have a feeling that the "orange" image may be in ProPhoto RGB space (numbers/values + tagged or assumed icc profile) and then is being viewed in a program that is not ICC aware and will then display the numbers/values in say monitor RGB or sRGB.

Stephen Marsh

http://binaryfx.customer.netspace.net.au/ (coming soon!)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

Peano · August 15, 2011

I don't get the orange/red in any viewer. The red is slightly darker in Photoshop.

L to R: Picture Viewer, IrfanView, Photoshop CS5 (sRGB working space)

pathfinder · August 15, 2011

Interesting Peano, when I read your three images, just below the waistband in the brighter area, I find just a a touch 4-9 in the Green channel in the two leftmost images. In the right image the Green channel reads flat 0, and is less orange than the leftmost pair to my eye. I see this on my main monitor, and on my iPad as well..... I am using Safari 5.1 as my browserand my OS is OS 10.6.8

The image Coldclimb attached to his post above reads as sRGB in CS4 for me, despite Dan's comment.....

Color Management Issue

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