"Eric Stevens" wrote

| In
| the course of the article, the author demonstrates
| how even different browsers, given the same
| conditions (same OS, color management,
| monitor, etc) can actually render different hues
| for the exact same color value.
|
| Which is why images should contain color profiles if you want accurate
| reproduction of colours.
|

I'll try one more time to clarify this because it's
an important point. Even if you don't get it, some
people will.

As I said, the article is pointing
out that *even with color management and use of
profiles* there will be differences in display between
browsers. He even shows a sample image, illustrating
his main point, that you just can't control what other
people see.

From the description below that image:

"Note that even the browsers that recognize nonstandard color profiles don't
all implement the monitor color profile the same way, with each successive
browser bringing up the black levels (and IE9 really pumps the
saturation!)."

And browsers are just one factor.
You're applying the logic of calibrating hardware
to the vagaries of software. Yes, you can use
color management to coordinate your printer with
your monitor. But you cannot, no matter how hard
you try, control what other people see when they
view your photo.

Even if you insisted that all recipients calibrate
their hardware before they can view your images,
which obviously wouldn't be realistic, you still can't
be sure of what they'll see. (And that, of course, still
doesn't take into account variations in color perception
between people. I'm, only pointing out software
differences here, which is a relatively small part of
the equation.)

| Firefox is fully color managed and SD will be able to confirm whether
| or not he included a color profile with his picture. And don't forget
| you have Dropbox in between.

That wasn't the point of that example. I was
pointing out that the same image was showing
differently in 2 different programs on the same
computer. Dropbox is not "in between". I viewed
the Dropbox-derived image in Firefox and then
right-click-saved it to disk to view it in IrfanView.
Neither image came directly from SD. They're the
same file.
They looked different, and it wasn't a color issue.
I can't explain it. The only thing I can think of is
that maybe Firefox is using its own graphics libraries
and, for some reason, adjusting display. Normally
software would be sending image pixel values to
the screen using the Windows GDI library. There
shouldn't be any difference. A pixel is a pixel.

Maybe it's me, but anyone on Windows can test
this easily enough. You could download his
DSF4740-E.jpg and see what you think. Maybe
they'll look exactly the same to you. But the
saturation and sharpness clearly look different
to me. You're not curious to know whether different
software might convey such differences? (Probably
having nothing to do with color management.)

I think part of the issue here is that people who
do work on computers would like to think that digital
work can be made relatively immutable. It just
doesn't work that way. Office people like to think
that PDFs and DOCs are immutable vehicles for
copyrighted material. They're not. Photographers
would like to think that JPGs are relatively immutable
vehicles for their photos. They're not. That's just
how the medium works. The JPG graphic image data
is just a grid of numeric pixel values. Graphic editing
is just the most obvious example of how mutable the
image is.

Of course, printed media are not so immutable as
they seem, either. Your photo will look different
under glass than without; different under halogen
light than under daylight; different to each person;
different depending on the direction light is coming
from; different due to the colors used for the mat
and frame. We imagine a physical print is immutable
because it's a physical object. But even our color
perception is just an approximation. We don't have
cones for perceiving yellow, for example. Which is
why it's so hard to get a pure yellow that doesn't
tip toward green or red. Because yellow itself is
a relationship between the greens and reds that
our eye registers. And probably everyone has had
the experience of viewing a flag and then staring
at a white wall to see a flag in opposing colors.
Those colors are not there. They exist only as a
quirk of our physiology.