Colour display?

MaGutosh · December 21, 2004

Hi folks,

This is my first post here.

I've been a smugmug user for nearly a year now, but I've repeatedly found that colour display doesn't match colour on my screen. Only when viewing in original size they look exactly the same side by side, but any other smaller size look lack of contrast, not rich enough in colour, a dull kind look.

I use Adobe RGB 1998 embedded in all my shots, and photoshop CS profile setting according to SIphoto.com.

Please advice me what to do to make them look better or just the way on my screen.

I'm using Mac OSX btw.

DavidTO · December 21, 2004

MaGutosh wrote:

Hi folks,

This is my first post here.

I've been a smugmug user for nearly a year now, but I've repeatedly found that colour display doesn't match colour on my screen. Only when viewing in original size they look exactly the same side by side, but any other smaller size look lack of contrast, not rich enough in colour, a dull kind look.

I use Adobe RGB 1998 embedded in all my shots, and photoshop CS profile setting according to SIphoto.com.

Please advice me what to do to make them look better or just the way on my screen.

I'm using Mac OSX btw.

sRGB seems to get the best results. Also, Macintosh displays are set to 1.8 gamma by default. If you run through the monitor calibration in Panther, set the gamma to 2.2, which is the PC default. Long history, but basically, you'll be on a level playing field with 95% of the computers out there.

pathfinder · December 21, 2004

MaGutosh wrote:

Hi folks,

This is my first post here.

I've been a smugmug user for nearly a year now, but I've repeatedly found that colour display doesn't match colour on my screen. Only when viewing in original size they look exactly the same side by side, but any other smaller size look lack of contrast, not rich enough in colour, a dull kind look.

I use Adobe RGB 1998 embedded in all my shots, and photoshop CS profile setting according to SIphoto.com.

Please advice me what to do to make them look better or just the way on my screen.

I'm using Mac OSX btw.

I shoot and process in PS in the Adobe colorspace. But for images that I am planning on uploading to smugmug, I convert them to the sRGB colorspace first before uploading - Image> Convert >sRGB

This seems to retain the color saturation better. If you upload images tagged as Adobe, they will look kind of desaturated - Most web browsers do not recognize the Adobe color space like Photoshop does.

If you click on More Photo Details below your image in the smugmug display, the last box will display sRGB if the image is coded as sRGB. If the file was uploaded as Adobe, the box is empty.

MaGutosh · December 21, 2004

Thanks guys, I'll try sRGB and see the difference myself.

Second thought, is it possible to for web browser to support Adobe RGB? My paper requires adobe RGB as in camera profile and for photoshop, is there any easy way to embed sRGB for the ones I need to upload?

Thanks in advance!

pathfinder · December 21, 2004

MaGutosh wrote:

Thanks guys, I'll try sRGB and see the difference myself.

Second thought, is it possible to for web browser to support Adobe RGB? My paper requires adobe RGB as in camera profile and for photoshop, is there any easy way to embed sRGB for the ones I need to upload?

Thanks in advance!

You can set your camera to save the files in camera as sRGB jpgs, unless your job requires that color space to be Adobe RGB. If you shoot and save yuor files as Adobe RGB, then you will have to load them into Photoshop and go to Image>Convert to Profile and then fill in the appropriate boxes in the dialogue box that pops up. Then save the image under a new name and it will be tagged as the sRGB space - this is the procedure that I use for files I plan to uplopd to smugmug.

When they get to smugmug if you click on the Photo Details button you will see that the color space IS sRGB. If you upload Adobe RGB tagged files and click Photo Details - the color space will be unlabled and the box will be empty.

Baldy · December 21, 2004

Hi MaGutosh,

Welcome! It turns out two browsers on OSX are ICC-profile aware, Safari and IE. No browsers on the PC are because it's a limitation of Windows. They assume your file is sRGB.

smugmug strips your ICC profile for the display copies we make but leave it in the original. That's why you see the color shift on OSX.

Why would we strip them? Because they are large relative to the thumbnails, so they would dramatically slow down the display for most people, but no PC user could benefit.

Here's more if you want it: http://www.smugmug.com/help/display-color

Thanks,
Baldy

Colour display?

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