smugmug alters my colors!
Hell hath no fury like a photographer who believes smugmug altered their colors. Imagine the frustration: you carefully adjust your photo until it’s perfect, only to post on smugmug and have it look bad.
Here’s an example: the right and left images, below, are the exact same copy of the same photo — one displayed in Photoshop and one in a browser (Firefox):
One possibility is your photo is in a color space other than sRGB, the only one the Internet can display correctly.
The thing is Photoshop knows about color spaces and your browser doesn’t (except for the strange case of two Mac browsers). Your browser bets that everything it sees is in the sRGB color space. And when it loses that bet? Your photo looks awful.
The other reason defies the experts and tortures endless photographers who can’t find the answer: Photoshop (and some other desktop programs) use your monitor profile and your web browser doesn’t. You can think of a monitor profile as a scouting report: it tells Photoshop your monitor is weak on blues, so amp those up, but the greens are too vibrant, so subdue them.
Photoshop bets your monitor profile is the key to displaying your colors accurately. And when it loses that bet? Your photo looks awful.
To make Photoshop and your browser look almost identical, choose sRGB as your monitor profile. Then continue with life. One less thing.
(On the Mac, they called it TV before the Tiger release of OS X because they couldn’t choke out the term sRGB, a Microsoft/HP-inspired standard.)
Here’s how you do it on Windows:
Go to Control Panel > Display > Settings > Advanced > Color Management. You should see a dialog like this one:
Enjoy the newfound harmony between Photoshop and your browser.
But…but… Why did my monitor profile suck? Alas, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the people who wrote it.
Disagree? Have something to add? Post it!
July 30th, 2005 at 7:15 pm
So if my color monitor configuration screen lists:
Default monitor profile:
Color profiles currently associated with this device:
I assume this means I am already using sRGB?
August 8th, 2005 at 4:13 pm
sRGB WAS included before Tiger.
August 9th, 2005 at 1:15 am
*Oh* *my* *god* was this really getting on my nerves….
I more or less figured this out slowly myself, but was glad to find confirmation here. Photoshop always looked different. Another trick is to soft proof in Photoshop in “Monitor RGB” (this is *not* setting your working space to Monitor RGB - don’t do that - BAD!). But you’d have to remember to set that all the time. This is so much better.
Just to spell it all out, you may have to hit the “Add” button in widows and go find the sRGB ICC profile in the colors directory before you can set it as your default.
My wonderful monitor profile, when loaded by Photoshop, would turn solid blue into a pleasant violet. I kept thinking “photoshop must be right” until I did that simple test (pure green, red and blue swatches) and saw it was obviously not. Sigh…
Thanks smugmug for the sanity check.
August 17th, 2005 at 6:08 pm
lol… if you only knew how many hours…days…months the brainiacs in our IT department have spent trying to calibrate monitors, printer profiles, etc. It has been painfully obvious that one of our monitors was too magenta while another was too cyan and we print on a Kodak ML500 and a Fuji Pictography…they just kept calibrating those monitors with the EyeOne over and over scratching their heads. They are going to fall over when I tell them this. Funny how the obvious solution is oftentimes overlooked.
September 3rd, 2005 at 12:46 pm
Smugmug *does* alter photocolours, they’re far too washed out. If I was to upload them onto my own webspace they’d look identical to how they do on photoshop, where was smugmug seems to desaturate images upon uploading. All photos viewed online look great, all of my photos on Smugmug look a bit crap. Please advise other I will leave Smugmug for Photoshelter!
September 3rd, 2005 at 2:43 pm
Hi Pete,
Wow, those are GREAT shots of the Tour de France!
The reason they look washed out on the web is they’re in the Adobe RGB color space, which browser software like Internet Explorer doesn’t expect or know how to render. Here’s why:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-1998
As an aside, there’s quite a lot of dead weight in those photos. Photoshop preferences are set to include a thumbnail (10k) and an info block (12k) with info on half-tone screening, etc. If you want faster uploads you can set your preferences on Photoshop to not generate a thumbnail, etc.
Thanks,
Chris
November 2nd, 2005 at 8:15 am
Great info. I know I still have deep confusions about it. I went though all the trouble of calibrating my fancy Apple displays and using that profile. Are you saying I should ditch that and just use set the system display preference to use sRGB? Wow.
May 10th, 2006 at 1:31 am
This got me confused…
Suppose I want to display a pixel with RGB values of 140, 140, 140. This should be a neutral gray. Suppose, then, that my monitor isn’t quite perfect, and (without correction) displays this as 52% red, 48% green, 50% blue, i.e. having a slight magenta cast.
Shouldn’t I 1) calibrate my monitor, producing a color profile specific to my display, and 2) use that profile for the monitor? That way the 140, 140, 140 pixel would actually be displayed as neutral gray.
Puzzled,
–js–
July 21st, 2006 at 10:17 pm
Do I do all of my color correction in Adobe then change to sRGB or c.c. in sRGB? I am correcting all of my photos for a wedding and it would be good to know ahead of time. This will be my first album…
November 27th, 2006 at 10:57 am
To get back on the topic:
I had a “calibrated” CRT. When it got flaky I got a reasonably well reviewed LCD - not a pro model, just a pretty good monitor. It has several “color temperature” choices and one of them is “sRGB” which is about 6500K, I believe. Bottom line: I set that and knew immediately that I wasn’t going to do calibration. It looks at least as good as my “calibrated” CRT did. My experience is that calibration can be imperfect, I guess.
Since then I’ve run the monitor like that; PhotoShop Elements using sRGB color space, and the match between what I see, what I print, and what smugmug prints (when I select True Color) is really quite good - makes me very happy. Your opinion may differ. But any remaining difference is reallly quite small and probably largely due to the different media (monitor, matter paper, glossy paper).
March 13th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Color. I upload a file to Smugmug (SM) and it looks changed, particularly the reds. More saturated. As compared to what I see in Photoshop, monitor either at sRGB or Adobe 1998 profile (Adobe 1998 is closer). Now wait this is not all. Next I download back down the uploaded photo from SM. I have copied my original from SM. And now on Photoshop this new download looks the same as on SM!!! The two views match, Photoshop and SM. I load that (2nd copy) photo back into SM and it does NOT show the change in color that the original up load into SM did.
Help. Why does the copied download match but not the original?? How to I get the original, in Photoshop, to match the SM display?
Monitor is NEC 2070NX, calibrated wiht eye-1-2.
Thanks anyone.
Regards - Tom Graham
March 13th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
So, iterations to and from SM do not change. That is copies to and from SM look the same. SM display looks same as Photoshop display. It is only that first upload into SM that I see the color change/shift.
regards - tom
March 14th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
God……..color management is so hard to understand we don`t need people making it even more confussing. CALIBRATE your monitor and don`t let anyone tell you different !!! If you print at all with a wonderful new inkjet printer. Use Adobe 98 or Pro-photo, then change to sRGB and make corrections if necessary for smugmug. If you never print your self then do everything in sRGB it`s easyer. But if you shoot in Raw and try to make Fine Art prints, CALIBRATE and your wasting your time in sRGB. regards-peter
March 14th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Thanks Peter. Color management - aarrrghhhh. !00 years form now we’ll laugh at the problem, it will be like the days when you configured a PC modem you had to get IRQ and COM ports just so. Remember that?
I found your answer while playing with it all just now. In Photoshop I had the image profile set to Adobe RGB and apparently it keeps this when saving to jpg. Then an upload to SM changes it to sRGB and bang that’s my problem. Just like you said. So, convert the Photoshop Adobe RGB profile, do, -Edit-Assign Profile, sRGB. Now what I see in Photoshop, either as a psd or jpg file, matches what it will look like when coming from SM. Bless the Lord, miracles still happen !!!!
Thanks again Peter, if I had not found it, you had the answer waiting for me.
regards - tom
ps - printing had nothing to do with my problem, only how the photos looked on my monitor
May 10th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Thanks for the information.
But in my case, photoshop and web browser(smugmug too) give the same result, while the defalut image viewer of windows xp render differently (not just color, also contrast temperature and brightness). So which one shall I believe? Is there anyway to fix it?
I know it’s not a problem of smugmug, Just wondering if anyone know the solution?
April 19th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Sorry, but this article is a load of crap.
Calibrate your screen, use the correct monitor profile, and understand color management.
No need to throw color management out of the window just because you don’t understand it.
Yes, an image will look different in a web browser then in PS. That’s because the web browser isn’t color managed (except Safari and FF3) and PS is.
If you use sRGB for web images (as you should) the difference you see will be the difference between your monitors profile and sRGB, and should not be that big.
If you use an incorrect monitor profile (sRGB), you can correct all you want in PS, but the colors will never be what you expect them to be when printed or viewed on a different monitor, since your monitor is displaying wrong!
April 24th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Yep, there’s definitely some colour hanky-panky going on at SmugMug.
My monitor is calibrated and I use system-wide colour management under Vista. Any photos meant for the web are converted to sRGB in Photoshop.
To test the theory I uploaded the same file both to SmugMug and to my webserver via http://FTP. The latter image is nearly identical to the final image in Photoshop, but the SmugMug hosted photo is oversaturated and colour-shifted, blowing out highlights and making everything ruddy.
http://www.gongzero.com/2008/04/24/testing-smugmug-gallery/
There’s the proof.
Is there a “don’t mess with my damned photos” setting in SmugMug’s control panel that I’m not seeing?
May 19th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Can someone update this color management article or create a new one for people who actually calibrated their monitors? I use a Spyder2 and the software sets Vista up to use it’s Spyder2.icc profile, but Photoshop still saves photos in sRGB causing a color shift when uploaded to my SmugMug gallery.
Does anyone know how to set the default icc profile in Photoshop to my Spyder2.icc profile? If I use the “Monitor Profile” setting, it turns color management off completely!
I apologize since I honestly have not spent a significant amount of time understanding Photoshop’s color management settings, but if someone has an answer, I’d appreciate it
May 26th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I agree, I think it needs some updating with a step by step guide for those who do have a colour profiled set up and are converting their filed to sRGB, uploading and seeing a colour shift or de-saturation occur.
Colour management isn’t really tricky in theory, yet in practice there seems to be a lot still to explain when it comes to some issues such as web browsers use / non use of screen profiles!
May 29th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
I can’t beleive how misleading articles like this are.
Let me first explain the concept better. Your monitor, as well as photos contain a range of color intensities (eg make this dot 75% red, 13% green, etc). However, what I think of when I say yellow (”canary”) might not be what you think of when you say yellow (”the sun”). This is where color profiles come in. A monitor profile says “yellow for me is canary”. A profile in your photo says “yellow for me is the sun”. These profiles allow software to say “oh, the monitor thinks yellow is canary but the photo thinks its the sun so lets adjust yellow when we display it”. With me so far?
Here’s where it gets hairy. Monitors (like anything, really) are not all the same. Out of the box, your monitor might display yellow as mountain dew green. Because of this, Windows by default does not have a profile associated to the monitor (how could it - it doesn’t know what your monitor shines at you when it’s told to show yellow). It could, if it had eyes. That’s what profiling your monitor is. A device is used to measure the monitor and then you do something with the measurements. One of two things can be done. Either you measure the monitor as-is which creates a profile and then assign the profile to windows (poof…now windows programs can know what yellow will look like) OR as an alternative you calibrate the monitor’s colors to some known standard (like sRGB) and tell windows to use an sRGB profile. Make sense?
The breakdown and arguments come from the following: Pro photographers as well as photoshop are aware of color profiles and color accuracy. So, when you view a photo in photoshop, it reads the profile from windows and PROPERLY displays your photos. On the other hand, you have the web full of people who never calibrate their monitors and so most browsers don’t bother with color correction. This is made worse by a large percentage of web photos not containing their own profile. Without that, a browser still can’t know how to do any adjustment. So if you view photos on the web, in actuality it’s a crap shoot as to what color spectrum its creator used or intended for it to be viewed with.
The only reasonable ways to view the web are either to use no profile at all or use sRGB. The problem with using sRGB is a lot of web designers know that most users today are using uncalibrated LCD monitors which are a FAR cry from the sRGB color spectrum. So many designers make photos simply look good for most uncalibrated monitors (often because they too are unaware of color profiles). Assigning an sRGB profile to windows without actually calibrating your monitor to show sRGB is NOT a solution. All that would accomplish is to make photoshop and other color-aware programs calibrate with wrong data about your monitor’s color spectrum. The solutions are to either CALIBRATE your monitor to sRGB for sites like SmugMug that will assume sRGB or to PROFILE your monitor, viewing the web in the typical users’ uncalibrated state. (If you profile, remember to assign it to windows!!) Either way, at least it allows photoshop to adjust the colors to show you accurate colors. If you can’t afford to calibrate or profile your monitor, search the web for tools to allow you to adjust your monitor close to sRGB, etc by eye and then assign that profile to windows.
Hopefully now you see why people may get different colors in photoshop and on the web, as well as different results from different websites.
For us here using SmugMug (I am in my trial period right now), I would suggest calibrating to sRGB OR a white point close to your native display white point. Either will give you a realistic color spectrum with merely different color temperatures (ie like daylight white versus incandecent bulb white). To the novice, probably sRGB is the best bet…but be prepared for the web to look very yellow compared to what you are used to. sRGB is a very warm color spectrum dating back to warm-toned TV sets. The only reason I suggest it is because websites that are aware of color profiles generally assume sRGB (and we know what happens when we assume).
For the curious, I personally calibrated to my display’s native white point so whites are bright/hot and not yellow or dull. This makes the web look “normal” (ie as most users would see it) but gives me an accurate color spectrum and allows Photoshop to display correct color. This also gives programs like photoshop more colors to work with because I am not limiting my color spectrum to sRGB (for instance, sRGB doesn’t have certain “deep” toned colors defined).
So now that you have a better idea of all this, you might understand why those people that argue FOR a profile aware web browser are actually right. It should AT LEAST be a toggle option so we can all be happy (I wouldn’t make a good politician making both sides happy). If it were up to me, browsers would by default do no color correction for photos that are missing profiles but WOULD correct photos that DO have profiles because THAT’s WHY THEY’RE THERE!
My two cents…curious to see the replies!
Greg
May 29th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Hey Greg,
What a great and very knowledgeable response. I’ve been meaning to update this post for awhile and your response adds a lot of good info.
Two things that have changed since I wrote the post:
1. We add ICC profiles on the fly to color-aware browsers like Safari. If you view a photo on SmugMug with IE, there won’t be a profile because IE ignores them, but in Safari you will see it.
We did this because of customer demand.
2. However… One thing none of our customers anticipated was that even in Safari, Flash ignores the profile. There was also great demand for Flash slide shows because they are so smooth and beautiful. So, you see your photos with Safari doing the right thing until you click the slideshow button and then you’re back to ignoring ICC profiles. Adobe has said they’ll fix this but I have no idea when.
Our really knowledgeable customers are grateful that we attach ICC profiles for Safari, but I feel it was a mistake. It’s too frustrating and confusing for most Safari users. Adobe, Apple and even the ICC consortium, who pressured us to attach them, don’t attach them on their sites.
Even Andrew Rodney uses Flash to display his photos on the web and he is one of the web’s biggest champions of attaching ICC profiles.
I hope this helps.
Chris
May 29th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
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