Color Managing for the web

[John Curran]

I have a question regarding what if any hoops anyone else might go through to adjust the color of thier images before posting them to the web. While most of us as photographers have probably taken the steps to color manage our own monitors carefully and accurately, that really only accounts for a small number of internet viewers. I would think that 85% of the people who view color images online do so on monitors that are too blue. Lap tops have notoriously lousy color and LCD monitors are only a little better, most CRT monitors ship at high color temerature settings and few users probably change them. I have experienced that some of my scans that are posted to the web, appear washed out and flat looking on unbalanced (but still real-world) monitors. Does anybody else out there bother adjusting for this phenomenon and what steps might you be taking?

Thanks

John Curran

[PViapiano]

Actually, John, I notice quite the opposite. I find that the monitors I buy for home and office to be very close to color-correct, with maybe some adjustment needed in brightness to be perfectly right on. My laptop, a Dell, exhibits wonderful color representation. Nevertheless, I profile all my monitors with Monaco Optix XR...

Make sure you convert your web images to sRGB before uploading them, otherwise you'll see the washed-out colors you describe...

You can never adjust for all the possibilities out there, so just make sure it looks good on your familiar profiled system.

[Walter Calahan]

As PViapino says, convert your web images to sRGB.

I profile my monitors. I scan for Adobe RGB 1998. I make all my adjustments, then convert to sRGB. After which I check the color balance of the file to make sure it is what it should be after the convertion.

[paulr]

I agree with converting to sRGB. Some people don't bother, on the grounds that most web browsers ignore profiles. But I see a couple of advantages. Currently, all mainstream Mac browsers use color management, and will interpret the profiles. And on the PC side, sRGB will help your image get into the general ballpark of most of the monitors out there.

I suspect sRGB could be a problem for people whose images contain lots of bright, saturated colors. I don't have experience with this; maybe someone who does could chime in.

Something I find helpful is to do my final conversion for web in Adobe ImageReady, with offers real-time preview of jpeg compression and of simulated colors for different platforms and browsers.

The biggest problem I find is that so many people are using their laptops as their main computers now, and laptops typically ship with very bright, high color temperature settings. Images created for a color calibrated monitor can look cold and washed out on a lot of people's laptops.

[Jeffrey Sipress]

I am using ColorMatch RGB for web images, produced on a Mac. On a few occassions I thought it rendered color more accurate to my master file, but usually it seems the same as sRGB.

[John Curran]

As PViapino says, convert your web images to sRGB.

I profile my monitors. I scan for Adobe RGB 1998. I make all my adjustments, then convert to sRGB. After which I check the color balance of the file to make sure it is what it should be after the convertion.

I do the same thing, scan for Adobe RGB 1998, then convert to sRGB for the net. Everything looks fine on my monitor. It's un-calibrated monitors that I'm concerned about. Thanks for the replies.

John

[John Curran]

In thinking over the responses recieved from this post, I think that with the exception of Paulr, most of the respondents have missed my point. So I'll try it one more time in an effort to clarify this thought. Besides I need to increase the number of my posts.

Every CRT monitor that I've taken possession of, had to be reset to 6500K. All of them came out of the box with a default setting in the 9000K range. I have read that this because the higher color temperture reduces eye fatigue when the ambient light is flourescent, which is true of most offices where most computers are used. While newer laptops afford users the ability to adjust thier color temperatures, most older ones do not. The only way I can adjust the color temp of my IBM T21 (my internet machine) is through the Adobe Gamma Loader. What about the users who don't have Photoshop installed?

Granted, while most visual arts professionals (photographers artists etc) are surfing the web on color adjusted monitors, we are probably a small percentage of the internet community. How many non VA pros on the net bother to set thier monitors to 6500K? I'm willing to bet the answer is very few. I am convinced that by far the vast majority of people who view our images on the net, (I'm talking only about color images here) do so on monitors that are too blue.

I'm not so sure that converting to sRGB prevents images from appearing washed out on blue monitors. sRGB is a smaller color gamut that is more efficient for images posted to the web (smaller file sizes), however I don't think it offers any guarantee as to color accuracy from monitor to monitor. (I do post my images in sRGB).

'You can never adjust for all the possibilities out there, so just make sure it looks good on your familiar profiled system.'

Well that's not neccessarily so. Given that you can calculate that these 'blue monitors' are a specific 2500K too blue, you can adjust the color of internet thumbnails by removing some blue, a sort of color correction filter for the web. I have found that pulling 12-15% of blue cast from thumbnails, helps to restore some of the pop that is lost when the images are viewed on the blue monitors that probably 85% of my viewers are using. The downside is that viewers using correctly adjusted monitors will see an image that is slightly too yellow, but this is preferable to being washed out for the majority of viewers. The little bit of Golden cast does not appear objectionable and we are only talking about thumbnails here.

I just wonder about how many potential sales are lost when internet shoppers pass over an image as apparently ho-hum looking because the colors are washed out by thier own monitors.

Thanks again

John

[paulr]

I work on a color calibrated system, but then take a look at the results on other systems, including blinding bright, ice-blue laptops. Usually things work out fine. The images look different, but still good. Every now and then I'll have to go back and make some compromises ... like, make the shadows a little darker than ideal on my home monitor so they'll still be acceptable on a brighter one. But I've only had to do that a few times.

[Marko]

Every CRT monitor that I've taken possession of, had to be reset to 6500K. All of them came out of the box with a default setting in the 9000K range. I have read that this because the higher color temperture reduces eye fatigue when the ambient light is flourescent, which is true of most offices where most computers are used. While newer laptops afford users the ability to adjust thier color temperatures, most older ones do not. The only way I can adjust the color temp of my IBM T21 (my internet machine) is through the Adobe Gamma Loader. What about the users who don't have Photoshop installed?

(...)

I'm not so sure that converting to sRGB prevents images from appearing washed out on blue monitors. sRGB is a smaller color gamut that is more efficient for images posted to the web (smaller file sizes), however I don't think it offers any guarantee as to color accuracy from monitor to monitor. (I do post my images in sRGB).

John,

You are actually trying to tackle two issues at the same time here.

First, virtually all monitors in use today, save for a few very expensive models, are limited to sRGB color space. Therefore, while you don't have to attach an sRGB color profile to your web-bound images, you should convert to sRGB before saving them. That way, the color space gets correctly compressed into the reproducible range so the monitors won't simply clip the out-of-gamut colors.

Second, you have absolutely no control over how the web viewers are going to see your images on their systems. The sanest thing to do is to simply accept that as such and move on.

Seriously, your viewers will see your images under the same color-shift and contrast range under which they see everything else. Say they have a strong green-blue shift and contrast so compressed that they cannot distinguished the darkest and the lightest few steps on the gray wedge on their systems. Human vision is highly adjustible by nature and so they will very quickly start to see that particular green-blue cast as pure white.

That is what makes our vision so unreliable and creates the need for color calibrating systems in the first place. But that is also what will make them see your image no worse than any others they may see on that system.

[John Curran]

Seriously, your viewers will see your images under the same color-shift and contrast range under which they see everything else. Say they have a strong green-blue shift and contrast so compressed that they cannot distinguished the darkest and the lightest few steps on the gray wedge on their systems. Human vision is highly adjustible by nature and so they will very quickly start to see that particular green-blue cast as pure white.

Good point. Thanks for the input.

John