How to maintain colors through browsers?

KB
Posted By
Kevin_Burke
Feb 8, 2009
Views
251
Replies
2
Status
Closed
I take an image with my DSLR and open it with the RAW plug-in. I change the color profile from Adobe RGB 1998 to sRGB and reduce the color depth from 16bit to 8bit. Everything is fine until I go to Save for Web…my colors are all washed out. I choose "ICC Profile" and save a jpg at Maximum. When I open the image in a browser like Safari, the image looks great, but if I bring the image into Flash or open it with Firefox, the image looks like it did in the ‘Save for Web’ dialogue (washed out).

To fix this, I’d been using the Monitor RGB Proof Setup to see the colors without a color profile. Someone the forums told me this wasn’t the way. How can I preserve these colors for Firefox, Flash, and other places (that don’t support profiles) the right way? Thanks!

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P
Phosphor
Feb 8, 2009
Bottom line:

You can’t.

You can’t have any knowledge how visitors will see your images, because there are so many variables in hardware, software versions, calibration, user attentiveness and care.

The best you can do is make sure your own system and workflow is mindful of the best display you can manage. Usually, that involves converting images to the sRGB color space which—though not perfect—will essentially render it as generically good as possible across a large range of systems.

After you post it online, it’s out of your control.
R
Ram
Feb 8, 2009
Kevin,

…take an image with my DSLR and open it with the RAW plug-in. I change the color profile from Adobe RGB 1998 to…

No, you don’t. Raw files are not in any color space or color profile.

Whatever color space you set in your camera affects only JPEGs and is utterly irrelevant to raw files.

A raw file is just a very, very dark grayscale containing nothing that a human being could interpret or perceive as color. Again, your camera setting in this regard is irrelevant and is ignored by ACR.

The colors are generated during the demosaicing of the file when you open it in the raw converter (in this case ACR) according to algorithms designed and chosen by the developer of the conversion software (in this case Adobe) to provide a color rendition of the image. It is during this process that you, the user, selects the color space (color space) in which your image will be rendered.

You select that in the ACR workflow options (blue links) that appear under your image preview in ACR.

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Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

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