Hi all!
Today I updated Mozilla Firefox to its newest version, 3.5.7. Unfortunately, colours are off (more saturated), it doesn't seem to read colour profiles as it did. Should I change anything in its configuration? Does it happen to anyone else?

Check "gfx.color_management.enabled" in about:config, it should be set to "true".

/ Jacob

Thanks, Jacob, but I can't find that line. I have:
gfx.color_management.display_profile
gfx.color_management.mode ( value: 2)
gfx.color_management.rendering_intent (value: 0)

I've read somewhere I should change the .mode to 0, to disable colour management. Is that it?

Jacob, don't have that... all I have it for gfx is...

gfx.color_management.mode
gfx.color_management.display_profile
gfx.color_management.rendering_intent
gfx.download_fonts.enabled
gfx.use_text_smoothing_setting

Thoughts?

Dave

THey changed it I read somewhere. Will try to find the link.

Here it is:

http://blog.duber.cz/misc/firefox-color-management-madness

Thanks Clyde! :-)
I've already done that, but photos look too saturated all the same :-(

The advice given on the article is rather stupid, you want to color manage tagged images, so I would put gfx.color_management.mode to 2 and not 0.

Yep, didn't mean that the advice about the chosen setting was best, just a good explanation of the changes they made in 3.5.

setting 2 is what I use too

How do you get to these settings? Thanks.

--NEVERMIND, GOT IT!

I know this is a horrible bump but there may be others in the same position as me. For no apparent reason Mozilla removed support for ICC version 4 profiles after version 3.0, they instead use the older ICC version 2 profiles instead. I am using a Huey Pro at the moment and it just so happens that the profiles created by the Huey are version 4 profiles which renders colour management useless. This doesn't sound like much of a problem but I've just done a comparison of what photographs SHOULD look like in PhotoShop against what they look like in Firefox and was amazed at just how "far off" everything was. It's extremely fortunate that I haven't taken part in screening recently because I'm sure that I would have rated many photographs I see terribly because of the way Firefox renders them.

The bad news is that turning colour management off in Firefox hasn't changed a thing, the results didn't even change! The even worse news is that it doesn't look like this is going to get fixed in Firefox 4 according to Bugzilla.

I also noticed most (not to say all) of my images looked consistently different after upload and I have blamed my not calibrated laptop display.

It was the same saturation problem, but the differences were so alarming that I was forced to delete many of those uploaded pictures...

Could it be also something else, not related to my computer? (except my questionable artistic taste, of course...)

I am a bit worried about the combination of an uncalibrated display and faulty browser settings - if both color distortions are added (or go in the same direction) - I mean if they have a cumulative effect, then... the way an image is displayed might be extremely different from how that image really looks...

So my question also is: how can we see the image in its standard appearance? Regardless of the computer on which it was processed? Regardless of the browser modifications... Let's say not a RAW file, but a common JPEG image... ?

I think you can't unless you're able to read binary code....

There is no standard appearance. Only the appearance the photographer has intended to give it bases on his own monitor. Only with good quality calibrated monitors at both ends of the pipeline will you be able to see something very similar to what the photographer has intended.

Of course there are also 'rough' guides that can help you set up your monitor with testimages http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ but it will never be the same as a real calibration set and software.

I use testimages from the site I've linked to set up my system..

If there is a real big difference in results from you system and what you get after uploading maybe check the 'color space' setup of your monitor and software... has to do someting with adobe colorspace and sRGB which is used on the web.

If you work with an Adobe setup and dont convert the files to sRBG that might result in a difference... But that is too technical for me.... to explain properly

There are calibration monitor devices, colour profiles, etc., the problem is as it appears in the fact that different display/ print devices/ papers have different capabilities and techniques of colour rendering and it would seem that it is difficult or virtually impossible to make a photo look the same throughout the print/ display media... it is 'nothing worse' then when a photographer is disappointed with a print (while he or she had high expectations based on the photo appearance on the screen), getting a decent print is probably a trial and error process (unless you have a proven routine which works for you)... at the moment I am after a high-quality print of a photo and intend to try C-Type (and possibly Giclée) prints on a few different papers and pick up the print that appeals to me the most (I hope I won't be disappointed with them all)... if you process from RAW and do little adjustments (use gray card shots for WB, etc.), look at histograms and numbers, rather than image appearance on the screen (which as you know can be 'deceptive') there is a fair chance that the print will look great (assuming you have used a decent camera and a lens, and chose a good professional lab for printing or you have your own high-quality print/ development 'lab')... appearance of the image on the screen may depend on the monitor (make, quality, type LCD, Plasma, CRT, etc. I head LED will be something, also how the monitor is calibrated and which colour profile is used), graphic card (yes can matter a lot), software used, ambient light, etc. (sometimes even music you are listening to ;) )... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_management

Willem,

Thanks for your reply, and for the link... I think it's very useful, I took a quick look for now, but I'll try to explore it later...

I've got an ATI graphic card and I've already played a little with settings, but it's really disappointing in the end, because finally the default settings are always better than all my attempts... Now I visualize the photos simultaneously on a LCD and on a CRT displays (the first a Toshiba, and the second an IBM), but I'm getting more frustrated and disoriented as they sometimes show quite different colors on an image, and sometimes, on another image, the differences are minimal... without me interfering with any settings....

I believe the combination of graphic card\system setting\display meets coincidences upon some tonal ranges, while it shows great differences upon others. It's a bit complicated for me because it's not only about simple settings as contrast\brightness\saturation, but there are also gamma settings, and the different colors have different hues... Add to this the fact that the same image seen in a Firefox browser also has two variants (accordingly to the two displays), sensibly different than the two seen only on the computer, then maybe you'll get a general picture of the whole situation...

I don't know how others see the pictures of the site, but I am wondering if the critique and screening processes do not suffer from time to time due to this lack of a "norm" in image setting and rendering...

For me it's absolutely helpless and I'm planning to take a break from editing color images and concentrate upon grayscale and monochromatic images, upon which my two displays seem to approximately agree... Still I' ve got that impression that I'm working blind, without being able to control the result of my editing...

Ah, I almost forgot: about your reply


Well, I hope some day I'll be able to (but please don't tell this to anybody - it's a kind of secret)

Thanks again so much for your extensive and accurate answer!

Dinu

No matter how many monitors one may use simultaneously, he might still be wrong - so a monitor calibrating device could be a solution...

Maybe another one would be to go for an Apple computer - I heard Macs have better color management systems than the other computers, but I really do not know much about this...

As about printing, it is a totally different world - I used to think about prints as a possible reference for a picture, but for the same reasons as those stated by you above (great diversity of systems, multiple differences in settings and materials - computer, display, printer, ink, paper), I tend not to do it anymore...


For various reasons, I do not use the RAW format, and I do not intend to do it shortly... Mainly due the great number of images that I shoot - and I keep about half of them, so there is an increasing amount of files which I all consider valuable for me, so I'll have less and less time even to simply review them and to chose what is the proper use for each... I just like the idea of shooting directly to JPEG. It might be sheer laziness...


Color profiles are another aspect I am not very acquainted with, but seem to be critical, both in computer and in browser setting - all this is getting too complicated for me, I guess...

Thank you so much for the detailed explanation - I learned a lot by reading it... Also I saved as a bookmark your link about the color management for an ulterior reading...

Best regards!

Make sure you convert to sRGB the images you want to publish online and you will be safe of many problems.

As for printing... Adobe1998 will be better.

/Rockas K.

I'll look for the sRGB setting in my editing software, and see what it gets...


Printing is a too far perspective for me, right now...

Thanks for the advice, Rockas!

if you use photoshop... you have "convert to" under "edit" menu or you can check the "convert to sRGB" in the "save to web" dialog.

you are more than welcome.

All the best,
Rockas K.

Hello Dinu,

to be honest I know almost nothing about it, but in a nutshell if you get a right ICC profile for each of your display/ print devices then the colours and overall appearance of the image accos the devices should be as close as possible... there is a notion of gamut which could be interpreted as a subset of colours which a device can reproduce, in principle monitors have 'larger' gamut than printers, so the role of the ICC printer profile is to map the colours which you can see on the screen but cannot print into colours which can be printed, it is also possible to do fine adjustment to the image in order to get the 'best' result (please see "Manual Profile Conversion" video mentioned below), the entire range of possible colours may be called the universal gamut which is by definition the 'largest' of all (don't know if there is any device which has so 'large' gamut), a monitor gamut is 'smaller' than the universal gamut, so even on the screen you cannot see all possible colours... what is also important for printing is printing process and paper (please see "C-types vs. Giclee Prints" video mentioned below)...

I think you may find the following videos useful (these videos are made by a specific print lab but they can give you an overall impression on the subject, you may wish to watch "C-types vs. Giclee Prints", "Prepare Your File", "Preview your print", "Digital Darkroom", 2Screen Calibration", "Manual Profile Conversion", "Processing Raw Files" and "Colour Correction"):
http://www.theprintspace.co.uk/photoshop-and-colour-management-techniques.php

some details on gamut:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut

looks like virtually all photo labs print using only 8-bits per channel (which was a bit of a surprise for me as DSLRs can record between 12- to 14-bits per channel), so it would seem that the only 'bad' thing about using JPEGs instead of RAWs is lossy JPEG compression (JPEGs are limited to 8-bits per channel), nevertheless if you intend to process your image (any image adjustments) almost all agree that this should be done using all available bits per channel, i.e., either RAW in a RAW processor or 16-bit TIFF in Photoshop. then you convert to 8-bit TIFF for printing (with JPEG you would get slightly worse quality due to its lossy compression)...

kind regards,
Robert

What ever is going on with the latest release of Firefox and color management is different on my PC at home and my Mac at work. On the Mac, the image (sRGB tagged) displays the same in Photoshop, Lightroom and Firefox. On my PC Win 7-64bit at home it displays the same as at work in Photoshop and LR but in Firefox it is washed out and thin. I have tried all 3 setting for the gfx mode in the Firefox config settings, it displays the same incorrect way with all 3 settings. When Firefox 3 first came out and I was running Win XP Pro, it worked correctly and the browser display matched the Adobe app's.

I sort of just ignore how it looks in my browser at home...

Don't just tag the image as sRGB... but convert it.
Usually the tag works but not always. With complete conversion no mistake is possible :-)

This is a universal problem, it doesn't matter if the images are tagged or converted. I checked the photographs with colour management on and off and there was absolutely no difference (it really is that bad). It's probably worse for monitors (like mine) that have been profiled.

They are converted from raw as sRGB not just tagged. I only used that term for discussion.

I use Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 and I've just checked out - it is set to sRGB so I suppose it saves all images this way...

Meanwhile I discovered my editing software has a monitor calibration option which creates color profiles for the computer...

Best regards, Rockas!

Robert,

Extensive and very comprehensive presentation of the color features applied to printing!

Great links also! I just read a bit about the notion of "gamut" you mentioned - I clicked your Wikipedia link... One of the ideas I found interesting, beside all the other explanations ( which I'll have to review in order to deepen my understanding) - quoted from Wikipedia:

"Photographic film can reproduce a larger color gamut than typical television, computer, or home video systems."

One of the important pro assertions in favor of film!

Thanks so much for your explanations and links!

And


sorry, but you've just proved the contrary... so, one can learn a lot from the knowledge you share!

Best wishes,

Dinu

I have been having the same issues, my images look how I want them to in Photoshop CS3 but when I look at them in Firefox the color is off. I have tried everything to try and solve the problem and nothing has worked. Then I started narrowing down the problem to Firefox not supporting v.4 ICC profiles and I was happy to think that the issue wasn't with me or my hardware but with my browser and that I could continue editing and just know that they would look off in FF.

But then I remembered that anyone with this version of FF will also see the wrong colors which is a problem since I will be doing alot of band promos soon and the photos need to look the right way(or close to it) in whatever browser the band or their fans are using. So now I'm back digging around the web for an answer which brought me to this discussion, and it seems you guys know what your talking about so I figured I'd chime in and ask: How can I solve this dilemma? To me the only option seems to be to find out how to make Huey save the ICC as a v.2 instead of a v.4 but I'm still very new to all this color profiling stuff so maybe there's something I'm not seeing, or if that is the only option how exactly would I go about doing it?

A couple more notes: I'm using a Windows XP desktop with ATI Radeon HD 4200 on-board gfx and I shoot with a Nikon D90 set to the sRGB color space, I have two Samsung Syncmaster Monitors (205BW & 730B) and they are both calibrated with a Huey Pro, I preview my RAW files in Nikon ViewNX then open them in Adobe Camera Raw then Photoshop CS3 where I save them as a JPG with the impeded sRGB color profile and I use Firefox as my default web browser. I have noticed that I can proof the images in photoshop under "Monitor RGB" and they match what FF displays but from what I understand those are not the correct colors, also if I open the images with Safari they display the same as in PS.

Sorry for this mini novel but I'm really hoping someone can help my figure this stuff out so that I can continue shooting and editing and not have to worry about mismatched colors anymore, thank you.

THe only thing I can tell you is to repeat myself from above. The problem you describe is present in my home PC running Win 7 64 bit and Firefox 3.6.3 but at work on an Intel Mac running the latest version of Mac OSX and the same version of Firefox all works as it should. Seems like Firefox windows version is the culprit.