Comments on: smugmug alters my colors!

By: Jill

Jill — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:45:13 +0000

Same problem as everyone else. Changed to sRBG from recommended by video card and NO change to what the display is on SM. I get very flat colors….oranges and yellow desaturate and some vibrant colors just are wrong…dark. By the looks of this tread this is a long standing issue. Please address this. I’m now playing with the image in LR or PS to correct in advance for whatever SM is doing to the image once it is uploaded.

Any other advise out there what to do..other than resort to just BW work? I see some galleries with great colors…what do they do? Help.

By: Juli

Juli — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:18:02 +0000

So if most of us are using Photoshop, or at least sRGB colors, if we view our photos on a monitor with “factory” settings, then what we see on SmugMug SHOULD be what we posted. When I uploaded my photos, I thought they looked fine. When I looked at them on my other computer, they looked flat, so I looked at mine again. Also flat. Would it be possible for you to list the “correct” color settings for a variety of monitors so we could see in advance what the general public will see when they look at our sites? Sounds crazy, I know, but if we can see what they will see, maybe we could improve our visual impact.

Also, does the “Print color correction” option have any bearing on the display?
Thanks

By: William Osterloh

William Osterloh — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:24:45 +0000

SM is obviously bumping up the saturation of displayed photos PERIOD.

SM usually knows what they’re talking about, but to tell someone to set their OS to use a canned monitor profile is only advisable if their monitor is not calibrated or they don’t have a profile from the monitor vendor. If you have a properly calibrated monitor, you’d be very, very foolish not to use it. So, forget that SM advise…it’s simply wrong…SM, you need to remove this advise or make it much, much clearer.

If images are edited using sRGB color space or converted to sRGB color space before uploading to SM, there is no reason the image should not look very similar on IE browser and Photoshop on the same monitor SM clearly is bumping up the saturation. See for yourself: upload a photo (with sRGB profile inbedded) with something red in it – the reds will be displayed on SM with substantially higher saturation.

SM – PLEASE QUIT MESSING WITH OUR PHOTOS!!! If someone uploads a photo that doesn’t contain sRGB profile, just convert it for them or set a policy that you don’t accept photos withou sRGB profiles imbedded. Whatever it is your doing now….I’ll be polite…IS VERY UNNECESSARY!!!

Dr. Terry Osterloh

By: amanda

amanda — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:38:54 +0000

Opps, it might not even be vista itself but potentially my model of monitor HP w2408h

By: amanda

amanda — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:37:55 +0000

I need some serious Vista help. . . the settings / color settings are throwing me off so I dont know if Im standing on firm ground right now to know whether my images are wrong on smugmug for good reason or due to my error. . . IF anyone out there has Vista please shoot me an email so I can’t ask a couple questions.. . Im in dire need. .

escapephoto@gmail.com

By: Dexter

Dexter — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 05:00:05 +0000

Is there a way to disable “Slideshow” then on my galleries so my customers will not end up seeing the pictures with the wrong profile?

Also, isn’t it a fact that if my customer is viewing the pictures that I uploaded but their monitor is not correctly calibrated, then they will still see a bad view of my image? It seems it’s practically impossible to guarantee then that my images will always appear color-correct since it all depends on how calbrated the monitor that is displaying it is?

By: Administrator

Administrator — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:05:47 +0000

No worries, we now add ICC profiles to all display copies bigger than thumbnail-size. Of course, that won’t save you if you use our Flash slideshow because Adobe doesn’t support ICC profiles in Flash yet.

By: John

John — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 01:01:02 +0000

I understand color management pretty well. I always convert my photos to sRGB color space before posting to the web, but Smugmug strips the sRGB profile from the photos. If there is *not* a color-space embedded, Mac browsers (including Safari, Firefox, etc.) automatically use the local monitor profile to display the photos. In my case, my monitor profile is very good (and maintained weekly), but *not* the same as sRGB, so the photos always look “bad” on Smugmug. As Chris pointed out earlier, Smugmug is now applying sRGB “on-the-fly” for Safari users, but the latest version of Firefox can *also* be enabled for color management.

So here’s my question: why won’t Smugmug just leave the profile I embed in-place in the first place? If you’re not going to do that, could you at least also apply sRGB on-the-fly for us Firefox 3.x users?

By: Martino Roselli

Martino Roselli — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:29:00 +0000

Hello Chris,

First, I love Smugmug and the service it offers, and I love the insight on these blogs.

There is lots of good information here on displaying the right colors for web presentation, but what about accurate colors in print?

I use an end-to-end color calibrated workflow to ensure that what I see during edit, will be exactly what my customers will see in final print. Therefore I assign an ICC profile to images and use a print lab that uses this profile. It is rare that a print does not match my monitor image.

So, if I must apply sRGB to my images for them to display correctly on Smugmug, my ICC profile will not be used by the Smugmug print lab for the printed images (they will of course use sRGB and it will not be True Color as I have intended).

Additionally, if I use my ICC profile for Smugmug images to print properly, they will not display correctly, and my customers will not order images because they dont like the presented colors on Smugmug.

Is there a simple fix for this? Additionally, there is significant color shift from images uploaded to Smugmug vs those uploaded to my other website hosted by an internet provider. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Cheers,

Martino

By: smugblog: Getting Great Prints » Blog Archive » SmugMug alters my colors! — Updated

Fri, 30 May 2008 04:43:51 +0000

[...] years after I posted it, the original SmugMug alters my colors! entry gets lots of passionate comments from smart [...]