Color manage browsers to view sRGB

kkamin · Feb 5, 2010

I've had problems with this before on here, but I'm still stumped a little and am unsure if I am getting managed color in Safari 4 or Firefox 3.

Safari:

I read Safari is automatically color managed and it is linked to the ICC profile the display is using.

I use a colorimeter for monitor calibration and my display profile is set to that created profile. Am I getting accurate colors with Safari? I just want to be able to view sRGB correctly.

Firefox:

I did a google search and frequently come up with the steps of:

1) type 'about:config' in the address line
2) then change 'gfx.color_management_enabled' to 'true'

The problem is that I don't have that preference! The closest thing I have is below. And for the value it isn't 'true' or false' but it links to a color profile. Why don't I have that preference from #2? Is my browser color managed currently though?

gfx.color_management.display_profile

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Color/Profiles/Recommended/sRGB Color Space Profile.icm
--------------------------------

Any help would be very appreciated!

Garbz · Feb 5, 2010

In firefox 3.5 the boolean was replaced with an integer value and enabled by default:
Gfx.color management.mode - MozillaZine Knowledge Base

Check it's working at this site here: Is your system ICC Version 4 ready?

You need to make sure that if you have a custom profile for the screen you use the full file path in gfx.color_management.display_profile. i.e. C:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\color\my custom screen profile.icc

This here is also important reading if you're generating your own profiles and given the option of ICCv2 or ICCv4 http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1219685&start=90

kkamin · Feb 6, 2010

Garbz said:
Check it's working at this site here: Is your system ICC Version 4 ready?
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1219685&start=90

Thanks, Garbz.
My system is only Version 2 ready. What does Version 4 mean?

Garbz · Feb 6, 2010

Two different colour profile standards. Firefox used to be version 4 capable, but the colour processor was painfully slow. v4 profile support should arrive soon again with the new faster algorithms.

There is only an impact if you use calibration software that is capable of generating v2 and v4 profiles, and it gives you the option. Choose v2. Otherwise if you're not given the option then you may be snookered if you have v4 profiles since firefox will not understand them yet.

thoughtcryme · Feb 7, 2010

Gotta love that MacOSX has system wide color management.

kkamin · Feb 7, 2010

thoughtcryme said:
Gotta love that MacOSX has system wide color management.

I'm using Mac too but I don't know what you mean by that. I need to color manage my programs like anyone else.

thoughtcryme · Feb 7, 2010

I read Safari is automatically color managed and it is linked to the ICC profile the display is using.

It translates the images profile to your monitors profile using colorsync.
So if you're not on a mac, you don't have colorsync.
I don't know if the version of windows you use has an equivalent to colorsync.
XP doesnt I know that.
Last time I used XP with PS(7) there was a seperate utility called adobe gamma.
Last I knew that only applied to adobe apps.

I use a colorimeter for monitor calibration and my display profile is set to that created profile. Am I getting accurate colors with Safari? I just want to be able to view sRGB correctly.

If your display is accurately profiled, and the image you're viewing is tagged with the sRGB profile, then safari will display it correctly.
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif]
[/FONT]

I'm using Mac too but I don't know what you mean by that. I need to color manage my programs like anyone else.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif]What do you mean by color manage like anyone else??
Are you setting your apps to use specific profiles?
In the sense that the profile you assign to the app overrides the embedded profile?
I don't know how you're doing that, but you don't really need to do it that way.
Any app that uses the Quartz framework is automatically color managed through the colorsync utility.
Of course it only applies to apps that are actually color aware.
So you don't have to manage the color in the application itself, you embed a profile into the image and apps like safari automatically recognize that profile and display the image right.
Colorsync is built into the core of OSX, so it automatically assigns profiles to devices too.
In OSX your images look the same in every app, including the finder, because of the color sync utility.
Did you generate a display profile?
Working color space like you deal with in photoshop is a little different.
You set the default profile and create a policy telling PS to either convert to the working profile, use the embedded profile, or don't color manage.[/FONT]

Garbz · Feb 8, 2010

It's a bit of a paradigm difference. Those who haven't used macs do not fully understand what the OS is doing, and those who do not use windows likewise. Both operating systems have native colour management.

The key difference comes into rendering. Windows itself controls and provides the colour profiles to all applications via an API. This means if you have a wide gamut screen, unless the application is aware of the display profile set in windows colour management it will display incorrectly. Photoshop for instance queries the OS what the display profile is, and loads it accordingly. It then adjusts the rendering of images on the display to compensate. Application level colour management (Incidentally Photoshop on mac does the same thing but most people don't realise this, and all people don't NEED to realise this

)

OSX on the other hand takes the opposite approach. It defaults to doing the colour conversion for the application, and the onus is on the application to report back to the operating system not to mess with the values of colours it displays. This is a great advantage since applications don't need to be colour aware and things will tend to render correctly if the operating system is correctly configured.

In practical terms for photography and graphic design it makes little difference. Every program worth its salt is capable of colour management. The real difference comes outside of the photography world. Movies, word documents, internet explorer, games, and my windows desktop wallpaper all look way to saturated because they aren't aware that the value of 255,0,0 is a far more saturated red than specified in the sRGB profile, and no one is doing the conversion.