Is Your Browser Color Managed?

On May 25, 2017, android wrote
(in ):

In article2017052523112329662-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom,
Savageduck wrote:

On 2017-05-26 06:04:58 +0000, said:

In iganews.com,
Savageduck wrote:

On May 25, 2017, android wrote
(in ):

In iganews.com,
Savageduck wrote:

On May 25, 2017, android wrote
(in ):

In ,
Tony Cooper wrote:

I am still baffled by this type of thinking. The viewer doesn't have
any idea at all what you intended. How can the viewer report an
inconsistency of unknown values?

The only way to get the capture presented to the viewer the way you
intended it to be perceived is with a high quality print.

...and that might be a solution, but who here is prepared to produce
high
quality prints to mail around the globe for a Usenet discussion?

Dunno! Anyways, one have to have reasonable expectations on them
reproduction capabilities at the other end when dealing with the average
internet viewer. Use sRGB as colorspace and so on...

Why would I use sRGB for high quality prints when it isn’t part of my
workflow?

It's internet standard...

For online viewing, not printing.

And online viewing was your original problem...

Problem?
What problem?
I am not the one with a problem.

--

Regards,
Savageduck

On May 25, 2017, android wrote
(in ):

In article20170525231507560-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom,
Savageduck wrote:

You don't read everything that is written do you?

I will share JPEGs for online viewing in sRGB, but I don't print from
JPEG or use sRGB for my print workflow, which has nothing to do with
the internet.

And the original topic was... Drum drum drum!

"Is Your Browser Color Managed?"

....and that question opens a wide field of discussion with regard to color
management, workflows, display calibration, and image evaluation, all leading
to thread drift within the general area of the original topic. What we
learned is many of us use more than one browser, and sometimes the results
differ from one to the other.

--

Regards,
Savageduck

In article .com,
Savageduck wrote:

Problem?
What problem?
I am not the one with a problem.

Oki...
--
teleportation kills

In article .com,
Savageduck wrote:

What we
learned is many of us use more than one browser, and sometimes the results
differ from one to the other.

Oki...
--
teleportation kills

On Thu, 25 May 2017 21:28:35 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , PeterN
wrote:


(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.)

people perceive colours in the same way.

if someone says they see bright red, another person will also see
bright red, not azure, lemon, russet or grey.

Individual perceptions of color may vary from one individual to another,
just as taste, and hearing do.

nope. this was well established long ago not to be true.

http://www.livescience.com/21275-color-red-blue-scientists.html

In work published in the journal Nature in 2009, Neitz and several
colleagues injected a virus into the monkeys' eyes that randomly
infected some of their green-sensitive cone cells

duh. they need a study to figure out that infecting some of the cells
in an eye will affect perception?

the fact remains that people with normal vision see colours the same.

Extraordinary! It so happened that at the moment I read that I had
http://www.livescience.com/21275-col...cientists.html up in
my browser. Of course you won't believe that article.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Thu, 25 May 2017 21:44:53 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:

"nospam" wrote

| 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.
|
| only if the browsers aren't colour managed.
|

You just snipped the quote making exactly the
opposite point. Read the article and look at the
comparison pictures. 3 yellow cars, all different
hues. 3 different color-managing browsers. Why
is this simple point so hard to grasp?

But what kind of color management?
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Thu, 25 May 2017 22:26:17 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:


"nospam" wrote


| while you can't 'control' anything (nor was that ever a goal), you
| absolutely can ensure that an image is visually consistent across
| multiple devices.
|
No, you can't. As the article shows, even if you
use color management on your own devices, IE may
show a different image from Firefox. (That's the quote
you snipped. If you want to disagree with the author
that's one thing, but you could at least read the
article we're talking about.)

But getting back to the original point, I wasn't
questioning the value of color management locally.
I was only saying that once it comes to the Web
the idea of controlling what people see is not realistic.
The author mentions that sRGB should be used for
the Web. So what value does color management in
the browser have, unless you're viewing something
like a friend's art photographs with an embedded
color profile other than sRGB?

A real world example:

Say Eric has a family get-together next month. He
takes pictures, shooting in RAW with a good camera.
He then decides to post some online for family to see.
First, he's probably going to work with sRGB, since the
pictures are going online. Then he's probably going to
save to JPG, since the pictures are going online. Does
he need an embedded profile? Isn't sRGB default?
So why embed an sRGB profile?

Because sRGB might be a so-called default but a great number of
devices and applications can't even hit sRGB but instead do something
else. The profile that is embedded probably won't exactly be sRGB and
will need correction to display as sRGB. And all of this will be
wasted if the screen can't display sRGB, which is usually the case.
That's why you calibrate the screen to find out what it really does.

Cousin Susan was wearing a very sexy red minidress
and he's got a picture of that to post. But something's
wrong. He remembers it tomato red. In the photo there
seems to be a shadow or blue tinge making it look
cranberry. So he adjusts the hue.

So.... he's got an image that's already dealing with a
limited color gamut, it's been adjusted to look the way
he remembers the scene, and he's dithered colors by
saving to JPG. If he has his own website he might want
to shrink the images to save on traffic cost. If he posts
to something like Dropbox, they might further compress
or shrink for the same reason.

Going online, the image has thus been downgraded in
several ways from the original shot. What advantage did
color management give him? It helped to ensure that he
saw on his monitor the most accurate possible colors
as captured by the camera. Whatever those are. He
thought Susan's dress needed to be altered. Was that
a problem with his eyesight? Or was the shot tinged?
Or was he so taken by Susan's behind that he imagined,
in "hindsight", let's say, that her dress was brighter than
it actually was?

No matter. The image goes online. Now 20 family members
see it. It's unlikely that even one of those people has
installed the color profile for their monitor, much less
calibrated their monitor with an external device. They
have different browsers, different eyes, different OSs,
different monitors. They're all looking at a notably
downgraded version of an altered photo of Susan's
dress. What purpose did it serve that Eric calibrated
his monitor? Almost none. It only helped him to get
the colors he wanted for his own eyes, on his own
computer, as he looked at the image of Susan colored
by his own imagination of what he saw at the party. And
as the article author pointed out, even on his machine,
his color managed browser is probably not showing him
the exact same colors that Photoshop is showing him.

Then his cousin Ed writes and says, "Nice pictures.
But how did Susan's orange dress come out red?"
Where's the discrepancy? It's anyone's guess.

You're trying to achieve an absolute objectivity where
none exists. With color management locally you can
achieve some degree of correlation, but you can't
translate that to other devices and software, and
on the Web you've already settled for a relatively
low quality image where exact color matching is not
very relevant.


--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

"Tony Cooper" wrote

| However, there is a second way to determine consistency: two or more
| people, one of which provides the standard, with their own laptops
| sitting in the same room under the same conditions. Two or more
| screens can be compared.
|

But of course that has no real world application.
And even then it wouldn't be surprising to get a
conversation like.....

# That's a nice blue.

@ Blue? You mean the green?

# Green? Is that what you see.
What do you mean by green?

Are they both seeing the same color and naming
it differently, or are they seeing different colors.

An interesting example of something similar made
the rounds online awhile back:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...lour-constancy

"Savageduck" wrote

| You are stating that any comment from a viewer that reports an
| inconsistency can be assumed to be a problem at the viewer's end.
|
| Tell me what is troubling you and we might come to a consensus as to
| whether or not you are seeing my intended image, or if I have made some
| gross illogical adjustment, or if it is a taste issue, or a problem
| with the viewer's system.
|

I think there's an issue of context here, which is part
of the original point. If you share a high quality photo
with photographer friends, or maybe a publisher, you
may assume they have a calibrated monitor on their end
and you can coordinate what OS/software they use to
view the image.
So if they see some problem it's likely to be an issue on
their end and perhaps you can straighten it out.

If you post a JPG online, to share or use on a webpage,
any inconsistency is not the viewer's "problem". It's your
problem if you expected precision. Presumably you're doing
your best to make a consistent presentation, but you have
to accept the context and recognize that your audience
will see various things. It's just the nature of the medium.

| For example, in many of your images
| the grass in the image "doesn't look right" to me. California grass
| is different from Florida grass in color. I may be seeing what you
| intended, but still not feel the image is right. In this case, the
| inconsistency is the viewer's perception of what is right.
|
| Agreed. Florida and California are quite different.

I think of you as a notably talented photographer.
You've posted photo after photo that have been
beautifully done. One of my favorites is a photo you
took of a swan that appeared to be swimming through
liquid obsidian.
But now, with this discussion, I realize that my color
management is so poor I was probably just looking
at a photo of that crummy California grass and it was
distorted on my monitor.

On 2017-05-26 14:24:01 +0000, "Mayayana" said:

"Savageduck" wrote

| You are stating that any comment from a viewer that reports an
| inconsistency can be assumed to be a problem at the viewer's end.
|
| Tell me what is troubling you and we might come to a consensus as to
| whether or not you are seeing my intended image, or if I have made some
| gross illogical adjustment, or if it is a taste issue, or a problem
| with the viewer's system.
|

I think there's an issue of context here, which is part
of the original point. If you share a high quality photo
with photographer friends, or maybe a publisher, you
may assume they have a calibrated monitor on their end
and you can coordinate what OS/software they use to
view the image.
So if they see some problem it's likely to be an issue on
their end and perhaps you can straighten it out.

If you post a JPG online, to share or use on a webpage,
any inconsistency is not the viewer's "problem". It's your
problem if you expected precision. Presumably you're doing
your best to make a consistent presentation, but you have
to accept the context and recognize that your audience
will see various things. It's just the nature of the medium.

| For example, in many of your images
| the grass in the image "doesn't look right" to me. California grass
| is different from Florida grass in color. I may be seeing what you
| intended, but still not feel the image is right. In this case, the
| inconsistency is the viewer's perception of what is right.
|
| Agreed. Florida and California are quite different.

I think of you as a notably talented photographer.
You've posted photo after photo that have been
beautifully done. One of my favorites is a photo you
took of a swan that appeared to be swimming through
liquid obsidian.

I can't take credit for the shot you described, the shooter must be
PeterN, Tony, or some other yet to be IDed photographer.

But now, with this discussion, I realize that my color
management is so poor I was probably just looking
at a photo of that crummy California grass and it was
distorted on my monitor.

As soon as we get to late May mid-June the hills around my home, and
the "green strip" behind my house are far from green and closer to
"California gold" in color.
--
Regards,

Savageduck