Color matching

One thing to consider is the browser. Some are better than others for wysigyg. Firefox is better than IE for example.

For what its worth, I just looked at your photo.net portfolio in 4 browsers on a PC.

In Firefox and Chrome, the colors in your photos looked to be oversaturated. In IE and Safari, the colors looked much more realistic. This effect is very pronounced in the second image on your page, "Colors at Rest", which appear to be overturned canoes.

The latest version of each browser is installed on this computer, and color management is turned on for Firefox. However, I'm not at my Photoshop computer, so I don't have utilities installed on this machine to check things like (a) the color space and (b) whether you embedded a color profile in each image, but when I see browser-to-browser differences like this, it's obvious that the problem is with the the two issues I just mentioned.

There has been much written on this topic here on photo.net in the past couple of years (...do a search...), but the bottom line is that to get the greatest consistency in the appearance of your images as viewed by strangers who might be running any OS, and using any browser and any sort of monitor, you should export all your images in sRGB space, don't leave them untagged (as you appear to have done), and always embed an sRGB profile with each image. These are all export options available to you in PS.

HTH,

Tom M

Whoops. I was typing too fast. I should have said that in Firefox and Safari, the colors appeared to be oversaturated, whereas in IE and Chrome, they looked more realistic.

Tom M

Tom - thank you so much for taking the time to look at my portfolio and to provide such a detailed response. I mostly use IE but it makes perfect sense that the colors would appear different to other browsers. I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "tagging" images in PS, but will learn this and use it for future image uploads. For the past few years I've had a portfolio through another photo site and have learned the ins and outs of that system. PN is quite different (in a good way) and I am still learning how to do things correctly here. I'll make corrections and reload my images so they better match the image as seen on my calibrated monitor. Thanks again for your help.
Irene

Hi Irene -

Actually, in my opinion, it makes no sense at all that colors appear differently in different browsers. If they all adhered to industry-wide color management standards, there should hardly be any difference in how a file looks when viewing it on different browsers. Unfortunately, not all browsers support this standard.

Probably the shortest answer to your question about "tagging" and "embed profile" is that the first tells future viewers of the image that the numbers in the file should be interpreted as sRGB colors, but doesn't give them a method to do so - it assumes that the program being used by the future viewer is smart enough to know how to do this. The second, "embed profile", gives future viewers a translation table which is the mathematically correct method to display your file on other computers.

A couple of good introductory articles on the subject are here:
http://dpbestflow.org/color/color-management-overview - put out by ASMP
http://www.seanduggan.com/technique/downloads/ICCprofiles_web_images.pdf - another nice overview

In case you are interested in even more technical background on this topic, just Google {+"color management" +browsers +site:photo.net }, and pay particular attention to any postings by Andrew Rodney - he is one of the most knowledgeable experts on photo.net on this topic.

With respect to fixing your galleries, my suggestion would be to use the Save For Web" dialog box as it appears in the two latest versions of Photoshop, CS4 and CS5. Use the attached screen shot as a guide. Pay particular attention to the checkboxes for "Embed Color Profile" and "Convert to sRGB" They should both be checked. - they are two different options. Also, feel free to raise the "Quality" slider to about 90 (if possible) to minimize JPG compression artifacts.

HTH,

Tom M

Tom - thank you very much for the extended explanation. I'll read the articles you suggested and also do some experimentation to see if I can fix the color issues using the suggestions you suggest. That's the thing about my work: I'm a writer who does photography in support of her writing. About a year ago, I was asked to submit work to a local gallery and since then I've been doing more photography that is not related to my other work. Every time I think I have a handle on the post-capture process I realize there are huge gaps in my knowledge. But, that's exactly why I came to this site - I know there are some very knowledgable people here and hope to learn as I go along. I hope to upload a new image to my gallery using the suggestions you made and see if this helps with the "true color" problem. Thanks again!

You are quite welcome, Irene. Don't feel bad - there are many, many photographers with decades of experience for whom this is all new, mysterious and a quagmire of potential mistakes. However, the good side is that once you "get it right", your images will look the best they feasibly can to the largest number of people (ie, those with non-color managed, non-calibrated, off the shelf monitors).

With respect to posting a new image, my suggestion is that you should simply re-post a newer version of one of your current images that clearly is problematic (say, the canoe shot), with the "convert to sRGB" and "embed color profile" boxes checked. I'll be happy to look at it again in the same four different browsers and let you know what I see. Be sure to leave the old version up for comparison.

Regards,

Tom M

Hi Tom - I've posted two images into a folder entitled "color test". These are two versions of the same image, one done according to your suggestions and the other posted as before. I chose these particular images because of their high color, thinking that this might make it easier to see where I've gone wrong. I'm still not 100% sure I did this correctly, so when you have time, please go take a look and let me know what your think.
Thanks again for all your help. I am getting to love this site because everyone is so willing to help.
Irene

Where would the Save for Web settings be in Lightroom?