Hey guys I am struggling with this issue for quite a while and can not find an answer.
When I start with perfect Tiff image convert it to JPG it looks the same on my screen. When I post it on this website and open it as a pup-up window in Safari it looks the same as the original or very close to it. However when I post it to any of my websites it looses significentely the color especially the reds and yellows. It is like a gray out washed out version of it. I have three different websites with three different servers and the results are the same. If this is what it is than I will live with it as for now I am asking everybody and trying everything and nothing seems to work.
I am using MackBookPro and G5 with caliberated screen so it is not my screen problem.
Any help highly appreciated.
andre napier

I am no colour guru

you are supposed to use SRGB for the web so if your tiff/jpg are A1998 then convert to SRGb - some of the colour will go

Then boost up the Saturation and save (for web)

Safari on my mac seems to display A1998 images well while other browsers like IE dont

how you get round that the colour guys know...

SMM

Morgan,
I do all of this. The question is when YOU post images on web that are either "saved as" straight jpgs or "saved for web" do you see severe difference in your post as compared to original. I can over compensate but with reds it is so severe that even with compensation I am nowhere close.
Andre

Here's an action that goes throught the neccesary steps to save for web. I'm no expert so if anyone has another workflow jump in...

The action does this:

1.converts to sRGB, flattens image
2.converts to 8 bit
3.opens image size dialogue, use the size that matches your webpage or use
4.zooms image to 100 %
5.opens "unsharpmask" filter, sharpen the image for web with your preferred settings.
(I usually end up with something like 200%, 0,3 radius, 0 threshold.)
6.opens save as dialogue, give the file a name, remember to not write over your original!)
7.closes image without saving (you want your original left untouched...)

Make sure your screen is set to 2.2 gamma when editing your files, if not images will look to dark on windows computers.

As I said I'm no expert on this, jump in where needed! My images at least look the same on my machine and my chick's when I do this... (she's windows...)

-axel

Click to view attachment

Safari is the only web browser, that I know of, that is color managed (ICC profile aware).

With other browsers, the color display is pretty random.

Guys,
Thanks for the help so far. I use Safari only, I have fully caliberated screens. My prints match exactly my screen. I use the same actions in PS as you suggested. This is not my imagination and we are not talking minor differences. My reds are gone by 30-40%. There has to be more to it.
As I said if I post an image in LL it opens as a pop-up with right colors. On my Website www.AndreNapier.com the colors are gone. ????????????????????????????????????????????????
Andre

Since your jpegs work fine on other sites but not on your own, I presume that the problem lies with the coding on your site. You should have it checked out.

-ron

Repeating what's been said above - The problem should be that you need to save your web work as sRGB. So before you save for web, you need to convert image profile to sRGB. You shouldn't need to boost saturation before hand either. You only need to do that if you don't convert profile to sRGB.
But a thought here, are you using PS CS3 as that is supposed to get rid of the need to convert to sRGB when doing Save for web? But I've not found it to work quite right.

This jpeg colour thang is a common problem, but having looked at your website in Opera and FF the images actually seemed OK to me. But the thumbnails really bug me as they are square in shape and squish the rectangular images to fit, resulting in funny shaped heads.


Always use all the Browsers to test. Safari is not the most common browser, so the fact something works in Safari is not that relevant. And test on a PC too, Same reason. Fonts and gamma vary. And again to repeat above info, use gamma 2.2 not the quaint old fashioned mac 1.8 Gamma for your display.

Some helpful links... Northlight Link

Browser Color Tutorial Link

To make my point a bit clearer : Look at the image in Safari (attached here) and than in my web site. I have to make it look like this to be able to achieve normal look.
AndreClick to view attachment

Andre, I did the test. I opened both side by side in Safari and Firefox. The picture om your website is a litle more saturated than this one. No difference safari/firefox. I also tested to upload this picture to my website and same results. If you open the image in PS as sRGB the image looks very poor. If you proof is as Adobe RGB it looks exaclty as the one posted here, also the same as when you open it in a browser. It could be that the flash version is more saturated than normal.

Thanks Samuel,
Wow, Your results are completely different than mine. On my screen the picture on LL in Safari is very very red skin tone and the blouse almost orange/yellow. I had to make it look like this for the image to look good on my web. The LL pic looks the same as the oversaturated image I have on file.
Once posted on my website skin tone on my comps become nice and olivy.
With every image I post on website I have to play the game of hit and miss oversaturation.
Andre

OK I get you now

Your website must have some sort of 'image proccessor' on board - you upload jpgs and it outputs flash files - the images are being processed before display

You proabably drop your images into a watch folder some where

this folder is watched by some bit of software that creates a flash version of the image

That piece of software may not even handle profiles at all or may apply its own one

I reckon you need to talk to your web people

or get a different site like poerwed by live books (for example)

or use a pure HTML site that displays your jpgs

or just learn make the saturation adjustments through trial and error till they look right after 'processing'

SMM

Thanks Morgan,
I think you are right!
However this week I am playing with Foliolink.com ( web designed for photogs ) taking their 7 days trial and uploading images and the results are the same as on my original website.
I am wondering if any of you guys ever bother to open your original image next to your website image to see them side by side on large screen. I can live with my results if I know that it is not just my stupidity that causes it.
Andre

Remember your viewers may nt even have large screens

I look at my work on an $89 screen (accounts PC) , my PC sony trinittron, my mac eizo and mac lappy LCD - then I give up

I have thought about putting (as DPReview does) a grey scale on my site some where

Saying 'if you cant see the 25 greys here on your screen please have it calibrated to enjoy images to the full'

It is more annoying when clients accuse you of 'dark images' while viewing on thier 1995 machine

I think you need to find out about the colour management of FLASH - I have no idea I use HTML for my sites

Most likeley the app that creats your (flash) images is a bit of freeware - if your designer actually made the 'animations' in Adobe Premier or suchlike then the management is proably handled better

S

The image that you posted looks "normal" and is consistent in Safari, Photoshop and other programs that will use the embedded profile. The embedded profile for the image posted is NOT sRGB it is ColorMatch RGB. For the record ColorMatch RGB has a gamma of 1.8 and a white point of D50. sRGB is gamma 2.2 and a white point of D65. This may be the source of your problem.

The image on your web-page looks quite different than the image posted here. I think the problem may lie in the method that you're managing color profiles.

I would like to add: in Safari both images look the same, while in Firefox there is a difference to be seen, as is expected. Only Safari is color managed. Both the image posted here as well as the image on your website are in Colormatch RGB. Flash assumes sRGB, just as all other browsers in the world do. Convert to sRGB before uploading and then see what happens (include the profile).

an

xx

Much closer now.

Andre, I've had similar issues; Torben's suggestion is a good one, or use Bridge to build the gallery and post to your website in a subfolder via ftp, this will eliminate the processing that your server side gallery app is doing to build the page. I assume you're using Slideshowpro or something similar?

Lastly, when your Gallery app builds your website in Flash, it must have an "images" folder somewhere in it's path where it sources the images before displaying. Can you grab this same image from THAT location (via ftp or whater method of access you have) and provide that file to us?

There certainly IS a color difference btwn your images, I've measured pixels with Apple's built in DigitalColor Meter utility to prove it, all images are being viewed in safari.

-Nik

Hi Andre

You will be very happy with Foliolink.
I went for it (willow.no) and are very, very happy with it.

Willow

Andre, I've experienced this problem also. Here's my solution, although it might be a bit yestertech, it works. Duplicate your jpeg (in CS2) then under File-Edit in Image Ready open the file and view the two files side by side. Adjust the copy to match the original, then under File-Edit in Photoshop save the copy and insert that into your website. When the copy reverts back to Photoshop you'll notice that it's darker and has more contrast but when inserted into your website it will look great. Jim

Hi Andre,

1. I have seen this issue too, with my new style web galleries that are built out of Lightroom. I do not know why. They go in as sRGB, and supposedly come out as sRGB, but in Firefox, many of the images look softer and more desaturated slightly. Maybe not as much as you claim yours are, but they are.

2. Try this: Drag off one of the JPG images off the site, onto your Desktop. Open it in Photoshop. See if you get an alert dialogue box about "no embedded profile" or the wrong profile. I've seen this happen with iView, where, even if you check the box that says "keep embedded profiles", for some reason, in the end, the profile gets thrown away.

Good luck with it. I'll keep thinking about other culprits.

Regards to family,

MT

This is slightly at a tangent to the main thread.

I so HATE sites that screw with my browser window size so unintelligently. I have a 24" screen... why would you need full screen?

There are a section of users out there who feel exactly the same.

It would be a lot cleverer to use the screen size (working resolution) to determine whether you needed to up the window size to accommodate your website or not, rather than just blandly increasing to max screen size.

...and a front page that actually serves no purpose, and forces the user to read, or apply trial and error, in order to see what are very, very nice photos.

PS I am completely prejudiced against these over engineered flash based (supposedly) immersive websites. Much prefer a straight html/php/asp/RoR sites with minimum flash required to make image transitions attractive. A photographers website should showcase the beautiful photos, not some website designers work!

As a foil to that last statement, I am looking for a good gallery system to fit into a php site, and I haven't found one yet that I really like. I'd be glad if anybody cared to share their experience with me on that one.

I totally agree with the Frontpage.
Do not like it either and I try to make it better and more useful.
Havent had much time to do it unfortunately.

But when you find your way passed the Frontpage I love the way
the pictures are presented.

Andre made me look at my pictures on my website compared to how
they look in PS3. And they are much more saturated on my website.
Have sent a mail to Foliolink and asked about that.
Maybe the sRGB profile is not longer attached to the pictures?

Willow

I personally like this kind of presentation. I've been very close to buy their services but never done it.
Willow, can I ask you about the technique behind the first picture of your Places/People portfolio? I've seen this kind of retouching before and I think it creates a very nice atmosphere, specially in trees and stones. I've never been able to achieve this smoothness. I have hundreds of pictures of stones, trees and forest but never published them because I've never been able to retouch them in the right way... . Is it a plugin? Or hard Ps work? I understand if you don't want to tell...

Thank's

A bit of a threadjack, sorry Andre (hope you don't mind...)

My new website is underway, not completely finished, and the images are not in any way current, but anyways:

http://www.godtfred.com/new/crunch.html

Flash based makes copying from the site a bit more difficult, with some stop motion photography for the "crunching" paper. Easy xml programming with "replace image in this folder using same filename" for changing content. No color conversions or anything going on, just ftp everything up and all is ready to go.

Need to find a way to mark the left and right hand side menus better though?

-axel

Andre, just a note on conversion from one color space to another: convert color space before you convert from 16 bit to 8 bit. (Settings: relative colorimetric with blackpoint compensation.) This gives the best color fidelity and lower risk of banding in gradients.

More difficult? I'd say more convenient. I get to see all the paths to your originals nicely lined up in a browser window, if I want. Like this: http://www.godtfred.com/new/images/portrett_001.jpg All I have to do is copy the whole list and paste it in my download window to get them on my disk. That's how I also could see that the image posted by Andre in his flash animation had the wrong profile attached.

Thank you all for your time and sharing knowledge. In the next few days I will try to apply what I learned here. My only final question remains. Is there anybody who can confirm that his web images look the same color in Safari compared side by side with original Jpgs.
Andre

Mark,
Dina sends her regards as well.

EPd,

you are scaring me. I paid $3000.00 to the web designer who swore that none of the images can nbe copied. Mother f........
I just settled my copyright litigation for stolen image and I have to say it is not fun procedure.

Andre

Me too, yet I was actually only after the "Why can't i drag this image to my desktop, it wont move. I dont know, someone told me you should right-click and choose save image to the desktop? It does'nt work, I'll ask IT tomorrow about it, maybe something is wrong with my computer" kind of protection...

still....

-axel

I tried to do that on Godtfreds site and I could copy it!
But when I tried to do that on my site, willow.no, I could not copy it.

I dare you to try it on my site

Willow

Unfortunately, if you can see it on your screen, then it can be copied. Period. No exceptions.

All that web designers can do is make the process a little more awkward, and hope that people on your site don't know how to workaround.

Here you go... took me less than 30 secs to download, trim and upload to my site.

EDIT: I didn't realise we were ina competition to see who could download it fastest. I used a screendump, as it's the most commonly known way of doing this sort of thing



(ps @willow: I do love your photography. I haven't figured out a more satisfactory way of displaying photos than you have at the moment!)

http://www.willow.no/Artists/11414/images/...43AM_photo1.jpg

Took me exactly one second. No, no screendumps.

And here is your original fish. Shot with a Canon 5D, I see.


Click to view attachment

Epd, could you try with the galleries on my site? There's two different flash galleries: the start movie and the simple viewer galleries on the portfolio links...

Thank's

http://www.samuelaxelsson.com/nature/bin/i..._garden_034.jpg

Click to view attachment

I hate to scare people, although this is not the first time it happened on this board. I will not post the exact procedure in a public place like this, but I only used standard functionality of my browser. There is no geek-level involved here. Unfortunately. What really concerns me is that there seem to be people who make money on selling lies to their customers, claiming that they can build a copyright proof website.

Absolutely agree with EPd here. Lies and more lies.

I used a method even less complicated than EPd as well!

Edit: As I have now posted above, it was screen dumped. Not elegant, but very commonly known.

I'd have to add that I think Samuel's photo is slightly safer from having a decent print made than Willow's, because his is only some 500-odd pixels wide, while hers is over 900 pixels wide. The smaller the pixel dimension, the harder it is to get a good print.

But as for stealing to another website, with no up-rezzing, I doubt if there is a way to protect an image. Adding a visible copyright watermark of course at least requires the thief to go to a little more trouble to get rid of it.

Flash certainly doesn't protect anything, as you guys have amply demonstrated.

OK, I will not dare you guys again.
I just have to live with it I suppose.

I am joining this thread a little late.

Yes, there is NOTHING you can do to stop people copying your images. I hope that some technology becomes available which can scan the net looking for almost identical images to your own. It is doable but might take time before it happens.

As for flash - I am surprised that so many photographers use it. When flash scales images to fit the screen size it uses primitive interpolation with very nasty artefacts. It can really ruin image quality (at least on this 1440x900 monitor I am currently using).

Here's a good example of excellent photos spoiled by flash image stretching:
http://www.koendemuynck.com/

Try People, image 001 - look at the lance.

I have just finished refreshing my www.sammorganmoore.com website

15k asp/html script watches folders, lists them at the bottom and counts and displays the images

no flash only java on the text style and my own screen sizer !

retro or cool ??

SMM

both in my book


I think that's a "he", but I might be wrong

I think you're right. I've now checked his website.

As I now realise you are using flash to display your images here's a post from Joe Weiss [the creator of Soundslides] which may be of use.

Since Flash doesn't have color management, you'll want to "Convert to Profile" and use "Generic RGB" ... before importing in SS+.

The Flash Player does not perform any color profiling, so using the generic will give best results.

I've got an older version of PS installed on this particular machine, but here's what I'm doing ...

Under "Image" > "Mode" > "Convert to Profile" ..
Then set the "Destination Space" to "Generic RGB Profile"

As for the out of focus issue that you're seeing, can you email me an example? The most helpful example would be a link to a test slide show, and one of the images out of your projects' "raw" folder.

Though I seem to recall, not finding a 'Generic RGB' profile when I tried to solve this issue with Flash/Soundslides. Though JW uses a Mac and I was on Windows when I tried it.

Thank God, I am still accepted as a man.

Hey Frode (aka "Willow"),

Sorry for the rash gender assumption.

I generally don't like flash on websites, but yours makes much better use of it than most other websites I've seen. One thing about your website bugs me a bit however. For some reason some of the images don't render properly on my usual browser, which is the excellent Norske Opera (9.23), and I have to go to Firefox (my second-place browser) to get everything working right (the fish image in "still lifes", for example, only comes up right in Firefox).

How can a good Norwegian photographer have a site that doesn't work perfectly with Opera?

-Eric

P.S. It's true that a simple right-click doesn't let a viewer steal an image directly from your site, so a thief at least needs to know something.

Is this correct?

My initial thought would be that most flash sites (all we have discussed here) load .jpg files (for example...) into a part of its .swf file from somewhere on the server. This .jpg file is not embedded in the flash file and should be treated as any other bitmap object.

However, if flash does not let the profile follow the image to the browser, then the default should still be sRGB, as browsers default to this profile if they don't find any embedded. Or am I way of the mark here?


This is exactly why I use flash. Where in my mind it would be easier to win a legal battle if a user is tech savvy and had to find code to download an image. This would make an argument like "the offending party is well aware of metadata and embedded keywords, copyrights and other linked/embedded content, thus using the image without reading and complying the embedded limited release and copyright statements is the fault of the offending party" easier for a court to follow...?

Of course, my images on my website don't have correct copyright protection embedded yet

By the way, have you heard anything from your service provider Andre, is it the website that somehow changes the profile, converts or assigns to something other than sRGB?

-axel