Please explain what I do wrong

[jaapv]

Whenever I upload an image to the gallery, the colour shifts to blue and it loses contrast. It happens when I use sRGB, so it is not that I use some wide-gamut profile. I tried uploading without profile, but that made it worse. What am I doing wrong? I must confess I prefer putting it in Photobucket, where I can save my Jpegs at max quality without change and linking to them. Please, can't we have 900Kb per image max here? I would even pay for it. The nicest would be if we could upload full-res and have thumbnails, but I suppose that would need elaborate safeguards against copyright theft.

 

[Jack]

Hi Jaap:

You can upload full res files to the GALLERY no problem. Also, there is no pixel dimension OR size limit on what gets uploaded to your gallery. The only limit in the gallery is TOTAL storage space, which is 20 megs for the free account. The only size limit for anything here is on ATTACHMENTS, which can include images. Here we limit on total file size and resize to 900 pixels in the initial display. Full size display on an attached image remains available via a click.

As for color accuracy, we've checked this out thoroughly from our end and are gtting near-perfect matches to what we upload, so I'm not sure I understand what you are seeing? I will reiterate they DO need to be converted to sRGB before uploading though.

Using your images in the gallery as an example, they all look well saturated on my monitor. But beans looks a tad blue like it was taken in shade, while busco looks yellow like it was taken in evening light. They both very clearly are not blue though... I just assumed this was how you processed them.

Send those (or any others) to me directly in an email --- jack-at-getdpi-dot-com. I will open them in CS to compare them directly on my color-managed system.

Jack

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Also, best for attached images to make them 900 pixels wide at the longest dimension. Any bigger we want to remind you to be concerned about image theft.

 

[jaapv]

I think the problem is I was compressing them down to 250 Kb, I'll try full-quality 900 pixel ones later.

 

[robsteve]

Jaap:

It may be how you are converting to sRGB. What program do you use to make the jpegs? What steps do you use for saving them.

In regards to file quality, I just use 75% jpeg in Lightroom or 8 in Photoshop. You shouldn't need files 900k large.

For example, the image below is about 150k and is 900x600 in dimensions.

 

[jaapv]

I work my files as 16-bits tiff , reduce to 900 pixels wide and then convert to 8-bit and sRGB (if I remember) and use "save as" in PS or PSE (mostly PSE, I find it offers enough for a good file) and choose jpeg. The quality screen comes up and I choose the quality to match the size.

 

[robsteve]

Jaap:

If you are doing that, I can't see where you are running into the 900k limit. When I use your workflow, I choose 8 for jpeg quality.

 

[jaapv]

I didn't, I thought the limit was lower...

 

[robsteve]

Doesn't seem to be any limit. Here is another shot, 2,000 pixels high, and 75% quality jpeg. It was under 500K.

 

[wbrandsma]

Does this blue shift to your images already happen in PSE or PS after you converted to sRGB? If so, make some final adjustments to your image before saving the lowres file for webviewing.

Wouter

 

[jaapv]

No, it was on uploading, it looked like uploading the wrong colourspace (which I didn't); Í think I've got it licked now though.

 

[Jack]

Jaap:

I think I've discovered the issue some folks are having with color viewing. Bottom line is Safari does NOT render reds and magentas accurately at all, and it gets worse as saturation increases. Try using Firefox and see if you get better results:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Cheers,

 

[Maggie O]

Jaap:

I think I've discovered the issue some folks are having with color viewing. Bottom line is Safari does NOT render reds and magentas accurately at all, and it gets worse as saturation increases. Try using Firefox and see if you get better results:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Cheers,

I've found that Safari is much better than Firefox, myself.



So, I'm not sure that getting Firefox is really going to help, I'm afraid.

 

[Jack]

Wow, your system is showing a HUGE difference -- ar eyou using the latest versions of each browser? On our machines, the most current version of both browsers are very close, except in the reds and magentas where Safari appears to oversaturate and bumps contrast.

In my case, better means that the browser replicates the look of the image exactly the same as Photoshop does when they are opened side-by-side. But your point about Safari being color-managed is of course correct, but now I can't explain why my image below looks "wrong" in Safari but correct in Firefox; the image is tagged sRGB and my monitor is profiled.

Here's some more data: It looks the same "wrong" as Safari if I open it in my Mac's Quick-look viewer, but looks correct if I then drop that same file into CS.

Any ideas?

 

[mark1958]

I am not sure if this will help at all but i had a very similar problem to Jaap when i posted into photo.net. My image could look right--- like it did in CS3 on every site i tried to upload except photo.net. It had that unsaturated and pale blue washed out sky look. There was no difference when using firefox or safari. This was a long term problem. However, I noticed that I might have had something mis-checked on the software choices when i calibrated my monitor... and I think this was somehow related. Nonetheless, I switched calibration programs and I noticed the difference is gone. I am not sure if I got an auto update safari fix sometime during my autoprogram updates or if the re-calibration fixed my problem.. All i know is that it is gone now. I am curious if you figure out what the issue is.

 

[Maggie O]

Well, it might be that CS isn't calibrated for your display, but I'd (or better yet, my friend amy, the pro color profile and calibration guru) have to see a bunch of settings on your computer.

Safari seems to more accurately match the display of CS3 on my machine, so there's definitely some sort of YMMV thing going between different systems. I do know that since I discovered the difference, that I've been outputting directly to 8-bit JPEG for the web (right out of C1, CS3 or iPhoto) and checking files in both browsers and that seems to have fixed the display problems in Firefox.

FWIW, my SO has been part of the Mozilla dev team since almost the beginning and he says that Mozilla's biggest weakness its handling of graphics, especially color, especially compared to Safari, which has access to all of OS X's internal color management goodies.

 

[Maggie O]

Hummm, on my MacBook Pro, the JPG looks the same in CS3 and Safari:

 

[Maggie O]

Serial posting here...

Jack, you just migrated your CS from Windows, yes? Maybe some settings are still Win-centric?

 

[Jack]

Serial posting here...

Jack, you just migrated your CS from Windows, yes? Maybe some settings are still Win-centric?

Decent thought Maggie, but I took the opportunity to do a fresh set-up and re-organization from ground zero in CS3... Moreover, I know how to profile and keep things color managed. It appears as though the sRGB tag is getting applied twice, and again, looks like it is happening in both Safari and Finder, which is making me believe it is an issue with Leopard...

Just for grins, are you running Leopard?

 

[Maggie O]

No way. I hear it won't run CS3 worth a damn. :ROTFL:

I'm on Tiger still.